How do we make faith “rubber-hitting-the-road real”? How do we make it genuine? How does Jesus really fit into my 21st century, crazy-busy, pulled-in-every direction, wearing-20-different-hats life?
We’ve just started a 5-week series on the book of Psalms. It’s here in the Bible that we find some shocking, impolite, and very real interactions between God and His people. Take Psalm 77 for example. It makes some serious allegations:
Will the Lord walk off and leave us for good? Will he never smile again? Is his love worn threadbare? Has his salvation promise burned out? Has God forgotten his manners? Has he angrily stalked off and left us? ‘Just my luck,’ I said, ‘The High God goes out of business just the moment I need him’.
The author of Psalm 77 is experiencing real life struggles. Are his interactions like anything you’ve ever heard? Do you talk to God like that? Usually we’re on our best behavior with God. But, here the author doesn’t hide his thoughts and feelings from God. As he wrestles, he finds hope in trusting God. Later, the author writes, “You are the God who makes things happen.”
I think that the Psalms are a great place to begin to understand what the Lord wants for us and from us. Jesus wants our honesty: raw as it may be, and as true as we can tell it. Eugene Peterson, the author of The Message, a Bible paraphrase says, “get everything in our lives out in the open before God.” Reading Psalms is a great place to learn just that.
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