Dear Diary...

Have you ever been allowed to read another’s journal? It is an amazing thing to be trusted with someone’s inner thoughts, struggles, joys, fears, expectations and hopes. We can learn about someone from their “story” but a journal exposes their soul.

Although we have more “story” on King David than any other single person in the Bible, we also have his personal journal. Nearly half the psalms are written from the real life of David, written from caves while unjustly being hunted like prey; from battlefields of miraculous victory and troubling defeats; from bedrooms sorrowing over sin.

In his psalms, David authentically put into words what it means to experience indisputable joy, unquestionable confusion, undeniable fear, understandable anger, unexplainable peace.  David held back nothing; he is almost embarrassingly honest.

Psalm 77:3-4  When I remember God, I moan; when I meditate, my spirit faints. ..I am so troubled that I cannot speak.

Psalm 16:11  You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Psalm 42:5-6  Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?

Don’t miss it. David’s psalms not only give us permission to have an emotional responses to life, but also ask us to refuse to deny them.  Yet, David’s psalms are not given to us to simply to encourage “venting” but to urge and compel us to take our emotions to the one who has given us breath.

David’s psalms reveal that the only way to neither deny our emotions nor be controlled by them is to submit them to the truths found in God Word that reveal His passionate and all-powerful love for us.  Praying through our fears and tears, with our Bibles open, we find a way to courageously face our emotions without being undone by them. 

Whether today finds you experiencing indisputable joy, unquestionable confusion, undeniable fear, understandable anger or unexplainable peace, don’t miss an opportunity to journal your own psalm. Bible open, why not pray through your own fears and/or tears—be they tears of joy or sadness?

You can trust God with your inner struggles, joys, fears, expectations and hopes. Besides, He already knows the “you” behind your “story.”  And we have far more reason to trust the love of God than David or any of the psalmists. In the words of C.S. Lewis,   “These poets knew far less reasons than we for loving God. They did not know that He offered them eternal joy; still less that He would die to win it for them.”

Psalm 131:2-3  But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me….O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time forth and forevermore.

Pattie