Emotions: Our Book of Psalms

In April I was learning a lot about emotions and how in life, we you are in a constant ebb and flow between them. If I’m honest though, I had developed a difficult relationship with my emotions. When anger, fear, discouragement, doubt, or sadness would come around, I just pushed them away. Somehow I had come to believe that these emotions separated me from God.

One day God asked me, “What if I see nothing wrong with what you’re feeling? What if I am here too?” Somehow this hadn’t occurred to me. These emotions were not a place of shame. I had no reason to feel bad for them. His love for me was not reserved for the tidy and pleasant places of life. He was in all of it and the highs were no different than the lows. There was no more value in one than the other, and there was no end to his love and mercy, no place where he stopped being proud of me. God created emotions, he feels emotions too.

We see evidence of this on the cross.

The Cross & The Psalms

Now, I had been walking through Psalms for weeks, but the Lord has continued to build and bridge more and more truth within them. On Good Friday, I listened to a preacher named, Bob Sorge, and He spoke about the cross and its power. He mentioned that the most important thing David had to be proud of wasn’t his kingdom, or the books he wrote in the bible, but the most important thing David would be proud of today was that Jesus the Christ himself quoted Him on the cross.

As Jesus has endured the full anguish and despair of the cross, his last words came:

Matthew 27:46 (NIV)

 About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).

David, the Psalmist, writes the exact same words hundred of years before this moment:

Psalms 22:1 (NIV) —written by David

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from saving me,
    so far from my cries of anguish?

This was astounding to me. Jesus used David’s words. They were valuable to him. These words filled with doubt and fear, disappointment and anger, pain and brokenness. He loved them. He felt them.

This gave me permission to express my own emotions, honestly and without shame, freely.

Honor God with Emotions

In Psalms, David expresses every emotion, from the highest Hallelujah to the deepest of wails. But there’s something that he always does beyond cry out. In Psalms 22:1, he starts of his cry with a reminder, “My God, My God”. He reminds himself of God’s closeness and intimacy, He still claims him as he expresses the depth of his pain. All throughout Psalms we see David doing this. Throughout every wave of emotion, He glorifies God. He is honest, raw, and transparent in every expression with God, but that does not keep him from glorifying God all the same. This is the honor in our scars. We feel, but we feel with God. We cry but we cry with God. We don’t let Him go in the process, and He doesn’t let us go either. We feel fully every emotion we have in the presence of the one who loves us.

Honor God by feeling with him the best way you know how. Be honest. Don’t hide.

What if he doesn’t see what you’re struggling with as something to cover up and hide, but a place of intimacy?

What if God doesn’t see your weakness as a source of shame?

What if God doesn’t want you to get it together but wants to meet you where you are?

What if he doesn’t see the emotional breakdowns as something to “get over” so you can “get back on track”?

What if he doesn’t want you to be good but to be honest?

The Psalms of our heart are a place of honor. So write your psalms, sing them out, because they have become a place of glory.

—

To Jesus,

Just as David wrote the psalms of his heart, I write mine. These scars are glory, to honor you forevermore <3

xx Yours