Heart and Soul Work
Sometimes the most spiritual thing I can do is take a walk, or take a nap, or take a shower. Pick one.
I’ve been writing and leading a women’s Bible study at my church.
Psalms to the Rescue I call it, for indeed many times throughout my life, psalms have rescued me. Righted me when upside down. “He drew me out of deep waters” (Psalm 18:16).
God has given me a God-centered perspective on life, the universe and everything, when all around voices cry “Crucify.”
Doubts aplenty. Confusion and chaos cloud the view. Is there a refuge? A rock? A fortress? A Redeemer!
The psalmists cry YES! From centuries beyond the current cultural influencers, the words on the pages of the Bible remain the same.
Nothing has changed!
Nothing in the heart of man. Nothing in the need for human beings to know God, not as an abstract idea or a philosophy or a religious practice.
God wants His people––yes, “we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand …” (Psalm 100:3)––to experience joy and restoration, the forgiveness for SIN, and to enjoy His presence in the midst of our everyday lives.
Choosing Something Hard
I thought I had prepared myself for how hard this process of writing a Bible study would be. I knew I’d have to make choices about how to manage time, what to read, think and pray.
The teacher must be taught.
Like writing this blog, to write anything involves imagination, decisions, and discipline. Forces me to choose priorities and admit my limitations.
Writing requires thinking about the reader, not simply reorganizing my own thoughts, or as Philip Yancey wrote in PRAYER––Does It Make Any Difference? “I wonder if prayer is a pious form of talking to myself.”
I find myself wondering if writing is a pious form of talking to myself.
How many words have I hidden in my heart that I might not sin against God? (Psalm 119:11)
Thoughts collide to explain to myself why I choose to believe how I got here and that God asks me to do something hard.
“The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.”
“To whom much is given, much is required.”
“If anyone starts to build . . . let him count the cost.”
OH! And what about the words of David in Psalm 51?
In David’s penitent prayer for forgiveness, he asks God to cleanse, create, restore, renew. He seeks to recover the joy of his salvation.
Then David promises to teach others, to sing about God’s mercy, and to praise God to others.
And what if he didn’t? What if David hadn’t kept his promise? What if David had quit praying, thinking, and writing––in that order?
Well, for one thing, there would be no Psalm 32, which David wrote sometime after his confession for his sin with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah.
In Psalm 32, David describes the blessedness of forgiveness and the misery of trying to silence a guilty conscience.
“When I kept silent,
my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
For day and night
your hand was heavy on me;
my strength was sapped
as in the heat of summer.
Then I acknowledged my sin to you
and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, ‘I will confess
my transgressions to the Lord.’
And you forgave
the guilt of my sin.”
The cleansing David received when he confessed his sin removed the guilt, but not the consequences.
Yet what had changed took place inside David’s heart. He had recovered the assurance of God’s presence as his deliverer, protector and his hiding place.
David did the required maintenance needed for his personal relationship with God to go forward. Deeper and wider too.
The psalms David wrote (as well as all the others in the book of Psalms) remain to this day a hiding place for God’s people––those who seek God’s face (see Psalm 27), not simply seek from God the gifts He provides.
Inside Out: from Agony to Ecstasy
“What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
I titled this week’s lesson “Examine Me & Forgive,” week six of eight, focused on Psalms 32, 51, and 139.
The lesson is really about joy––the joy of THY salvation restored. When you and I stop hiding from God, when we confront “the stubborn silence of unconfessed sin” . . . and its devastating physical and psychological effects [1] we can like David enjoy the blessedness of forgiveness.
When I attempt to hide or run from God, I’m actually trying to hide the truth from myself. God knows.
When the LORD sent the prophet Nathan to confront David, David had lived each and every day hiding from God.
(Read 2 Samuel 12 to see what it took for David to admit what he had done.)
Someone in my group asked, “How low did David get before he sought forgiveness?”
How do we readers and thinkers know that David was not seeking forgiveness?
When Nathan told David about the man who had only one sheep, beloved and a part of the man’s family, and the rich man who had many sheep yet took the one sheep from the man to kill and provide a meal for a traveler,
David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.” 2 Samuel 12:5–6
David’s response reveals that a person who has not dealt with his own sin will become indignant about other people’s sin.
The prophet’s confrontation is what it took to break David’s pride and presumption. David was the king. Untouchable. Unapproachable. Yet as fallible and guilty as any and every human being who sins.
David’s response to the prophet opens his heart. Psalm 51 shows us the agony, the physical and spiritual need for confession and cleansing, describing his own broken and contrite spirit, which David emphasized, “God will not despise.”
Blessed Assurance
Our lesson yesterday ended with Psalm 139, the psalm I titled “Forgiven, Inside Out.”
I kept thinking about the PIXAR movie Inside Out, a brilliant creative way to illustrate for audiences the conflicting emotions inside us all.
JOY wants to run the show, always put on a happy face. But life happens. And all human emotions exist for a reason. A person cannot experience joy unless they know sadness too.
Psalm 139 describes the blessedness of being known and understood by God––from the darkness inside my mother’s womb to the tomb.
“Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain to it” (v. 6). I cannot comprehend that God knows me inside out.
The psalmist digresses in verses 19–21 when he shifts focus, thinks about other people’s sins. (An attempt to dodge guilt and accountability? Maybe.)
But the psalmist ends by asking God, “Search me and know my heart: try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (139:23, 24 KJV).
God knows. And that’s a relief.
I think I’ll take a walk.
“For I am ready to halt, and my sorrow is continually before me. For I will declare mine iniquity: I will be sorry for my sin.”
[1] NIV, footnote Psalm 32:3–5