WordLive - Year OneSample

Prepare: Look back on what God has done in your life in the past. How has he got you to this point? Difficult times During difficult times, the hardest thing can be to find words to speak to God. Our thoughts are jumbled and confused. We try to focus on him and fail. We might not even be sure that it’s worth speaking at all. When we are like that, psalms such as this can give us words which we can’t find ourselves. This psalm is to be prayed more than studied, spoken more than analysed. Dealing with disaster The background is national disaster (vs 9,10). Imagine the kind of events the psalmist was writing about. It wasn’t just the events themselves which had caused suffering, it was their emotional aftermath. All of this had taken its toll on the people (vs 13,14), and especially on their leader (vs 15,16). Many would have given up by now, but the psalmist is committed to God (v 4). He recognises God as the source of all his success (vs 5–7). He knows that God has been utterly faithful in the past (vs 1–3). Crying to God But he has also searched his own heart (v 21). He just cannot see why God is allowing this suffering. So now he does the one thing left to him. He tells God exactly what he thinks (vs 23–26)! And in the process this psalm gives us the words and the permission to cry to God from the depths of our own hearts, too. Respond: Are there things making you want to say, ‘Rise up and help us’ (v 26)? Read this psalm aloud and make it your own prayer. http://www.wordlive.org/Session/Classic/2012-11-18