Be Still And Know

God created us with a wide range of emotions for a reason. I can know in my head and even articulate the Gospel, but until my heart is changed and I experience the gut wrenching sorrow that comes with the understanding that I am sinful and undeserving of God’s grace and mercy, and the joy of the realization that he made a way for me to be deserving through Christ, I can’t truly have a relationship with him.

Life is where we learn to love him. And so, he gave us the psalms.

The psalms are love songs and grieving songs and angry rants and jump-up-and-down-for-joy celebrations. There are also some historical ones that are thrown in to remind us that there is nothing new under the sun and God keeps his promises.

Some days his blessings are making me cry out, “Give thanks to the LORD for he is good; his love endures forever” (Psalm 107: 1, NIV).

And sometimes my pain puts me in Psalm 6: 6-7: “I am worn out from groaning; all night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears. My eyes grow weak with sorrow; they fail because of all my foes.”

Jesus is in the psalms too. A lot of the psalms are prophecy of his death and resurrection. Never forget that all the pain and suffering the psalmists are experiencing is just a taste of what Christ experienced on the cross. Remember that when you are in the valleys of life. Remember you are saved from that pain. You are held.

“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging…Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth” (Psalm 46: 1-3, 10, NIV).

With Love in Christ,

Stephanie