This Easter morning, we listen in on a conversation from that first Easter Day … but a little known story, later that day, in the evening, as it was getting dark. Because sometimes hope comes from the most surprising place – when you most need it and least expect it. Let’s listen and learn as Jesus shows us that though we might give up on God, he has not given up on us. And he has given each of us a new starting point for our story in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
God’s word tells us to take care with our hearts. He calls each of us to guard and keep our heart, for it is the wellspring of life: everything flows from it (Prov. 4.23). We are in a cultural moment that loves to look at and live in our feelings … but what really lies down deep in our hearts? How can we know it – and how can we feel it, tell the truth about it, and trust it to God?
As we move toward Easter, we want to grow in “heart health.” To help us lift up our hearts to the Lord, we are going to root down deep in the Psalms. These are the 150 prayers in the middle of the Bible that teach us to pray, to be honest and open before God and others. They are both God’s words to us and words we are invited to say back to God.
John Calvin famously called the Psalms “an anatomy of the soul.” As he said: “there is not an emotion of which anyone can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror.” When you look in the Psalms, you see every facet of your heart and emotional life pictured there. What you learn in the process is what David Taylor says so well: “no emotion is excluded from prayer; no topic is out of bounds.”
When I look at myself and our world, I want to see people who have come alive – people who live whole-hearted lives with God and others. There’s no shortcut to take; the path lies directly through your heart. Let’s go there and learn how to lift our hearts up to the Lord and experience the freedom it brings.
Why now? The season of Lent is here – the 40 days before Easter. “Lent” comes from an old English word for spring, when the days “lengthen” as the daylight lingers. In church history, we use this season as an opportunity for reflecting, for remembering, for repenting as we recall the death and resurrection Jesus that saves us. Lent isn’t for navel-gazing or moping: it’s for clearly facing our own condition in light of the love of our Lord Jesus Christ. We never repent thinking we could earn God’s forgiveness, but we always repent because of his staggering love for us that remakes our very lives. Common ways to mark this season include:
- “Giving up/putting down” something normal – taking a good and ordinary thing in life and doing without it or abstaining from it. When your heart’s desire or attention gets pulled back to that thing, use it as a moment to remember and call your heart to desire Jesus that much – or more.
- “Choosing/taking up” something new – maybe a spiritual practice or habit like a plan for reading or praying in a new way, a practice of having a meal with someone new each week, a weekly commitment to serve a neighbor or community, etc.
- In light of our series, here’s one I would encourage you in: reading and praying through the Psalms in 30 days. If you start on Thursday 3/5, we’ll finish on Easter!
We put together a short list of resources if you want to explore more:
- two books that offer an overview (Taylor and Keller),
- one of devotions on the Psalms (Ortlund),
- a few copies of just the Psalms for easy focus in praying and reading,
- and one of the best short commentaries on the book of Psalms (Kidner).
Enjoy this time as we learn to be honest.
anger, passion, and praise
Palm Sunday means Psalm 118 – a prayer both on Jesus’ lips and in the people’s praise. We look at passion for God’s praise – in the streets, in the public square, and at the table after a meal. Along the way, we get a sense of what anger really is – a passion for what matters to you, a voice to be heard – and two key pictures of when it is rightly ordered (Jesus in the temple) and wrongly ordered (the leaders in response). We discover that this Psalm helps us see Jesus for who he is, give him the praise he deserves, and gain a passion for more people to enjoy him and praise him.
from hurt to healing: taking revenge to God
Psalm 137 stands out in the Bible as a white-hot cry of pain from a place of hurt.
Let’s discover one more way the psalms teach us to be honest about our hearts before God and others… instead of denial or resentment and revenge, bringing our hurts to God and finding attention and healing. Thank God that his word embraces our very real world, in all its hurt and hardship.
Psalm 126: Restoration
Week 2 brings us Katie Macturk as a guest preacher from Storyhill Church! Continuing our “To be Honest” series, we sit with Psalm 126 and heart’s gladness and sadness. Looking back at the restoration that God has accomplished in the past gives us the confidence to ask God to restore us once more. The same God who has restored us before can restore us again!
from fear to faith, wisdom, and help
First of the new series! We look at Psalm 27 and the core human emotion of fear. Over these five weeks, the Psalms will both show us our hearts and teach us to be honest with our hearts to God. They teach us to pray, as David Taylor says, “Not to escape your life but to be open and unafraid about it”. Psalms help us express our hearts to God, not praying what we “think” we are supposed to, but what’s real and what we really feel. Today in Psalm 27 we get a prayer for when we are feeling fear – and learn to feel it and face it and take it to God, discovering help, wisdom, and faith.
God is the one who over and over again in the Bible says these words: “Do not be afraid, for I am with you.” As Scotty Smith put it:
- the most frequently repeated command in the bible is “do not fear. Don’t be afraid.”
- and the most frequently repeated promise in the Bible: “I am with you”.
May you discover the gift of fear – telling the truth, discovering your need and gaining a heart of wisdom — becoming whole-hearted, depending in love on the God who loves you, who has sent his son to secure a place for you, and who gives you his Spirit. He will never abandon or forsake you.