WordLive - Year OneSample

Prepare: How are things with you today? Strange question to ask as you embark upon your special time with God, but your wellbeing matters to him. He made you, gave you the breath of life and through faith in his Son has given you new life. So tell him now what’s going on.

Emotional honesty
Even though this psalm is full of longing, lament and faith, it’s also a play on words, an acrostic poem where every verse starts with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Carefully constructed, this psalm oscillates between different moods.

One of the dominant themes is the writer’s emotional honesty. He acknowledges his earlier sins (v 7), his afflictions and distress (v 18) and his enemies (v 19). This raw intensity is often lost on the reader, filtered through a sophisticated ‘spiritual’ mesh.

Vigorous faith
We are uncomfortable expressing our darker emotions to God in prayer, preferring to present a more palatable picture or to speak more generally of our failure and sin. Not so with David.

But in equal measure, David articulates faith in a most vigorous way. When he asks God to show him his ways (v 4) and to remember him (vs 6,7) he is not merely expressing correct doctrine but speaking as a man who needs God to act.

Respond: Find a sheet of paper and write a title at the top, for example ‘My Psalm’. Now pour out your longings to your Father. Focus on your feelings more than anything else.

http://www.wordlive.org/Session/Classic/2012-07-15