Emotion On Display: Your You You You You You

Try to imagine the Bible without the Psalms.
What a different book it

would be! What a different place the church would be. And what a
different person I would be.
It’s not as though the rest of the Bible does not teach truth and
awaken emotions. I learn things and feel things everywhere I read in
the Bible. But it’s not the same. The Psalms do not just awaken the
affections of the heart; they put the expression of those affections in
the foreground. They feature the emotional experience of the psalmist
intentionally against the backdrop of divine truth.
Emotion on Display
They do not just invite the emotion of the heart in response to
revealed truth. They put the emotion on display. They are not just
commanding; they are contagious. We are not just listening to
profound ideas and expressed affections. We are living among them
in their overflow. We are walking in the counsel of God-besotted
wisdom, and standing in the way of amazed holiness, and sitting in
the seat of jubilant admiration.
We touch pillows wet with tears. We hear and feel the unabashed
cries of affliction and shame and regret and grief and anger and
discouragement and turmoil. But what makes all this stunningly
different from the sorrows of the world is that all of it — absolutely all
of it — is experienced in relation to the totally sovereign God.
God at the Bottom of It All

None of these emotions rises from a heart that has rejected the all-
governing God.
 “Your waves have gone over me” (Psalm 42:7).

 “You have made my days a few handbreadths” (Psalm 39:5).
 “You have rejected us and disgraced us and have not gone out with
our armies” (Psalm 44:9).
 “You have made us like sheep for slaughter and have scattered us
among the nations” (Psalm 44:11).
 “You have made your people see hard things” (Psalm 60:3).
 And in it all, “O Lord, you have searched me and known me!” (Psalm
139:1).
God is behind everything. This is the great difference between the
Psalms of Scripture and the laments, complaints, and sorrows of the
world. For the psalmists, God is a rock-solid, unshakeable,
undeniable, omnipotent Reality. Their emotional experiences get
their meaning not by denying him or his power or his wisdom, but by
dealing with him as he is: absolutely sovereign. “Whatever the Lord
pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps”
(Psalm 135:6). This was the psalmists’ unshakeable conviction — all of
them: “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases” (Psalm
115:3).
Taste and See That He Is Good

They never turned against God and rejected him because of their
calamities. The fool says in his heart there is no God (Psalm 14:1), but
not the psalmist. It was unthinkable to the psalmists that their
sorrows should drive them away from God. Where would they go? “If
I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are
there!” (Psalm 139:8). If God is God, then all emotional life is lived in
his presence. He makes sense of it. Or there is no sense.
But sheer omnipotence is not the main reason the psalmists never
forsake their God. The psalmists know from experience that he is
good and faithful. They know that, if they trust him, he will act on
their behalf (Psalm 37:5). They testify again and again,
 “You have multiplied, O Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and
your thoughts toward us” (Psalm 40:5).
 “You have drawn me up and have not let my foes rejoice over me”
(Psalm 30:1).
 “You have given me the shield of your salvation” (Psalm 18:35).
 “You have given me relief when I was in distress” (Psalm 4:1).
 “You have healed me” (Psalm 30:2).
 “You have been the helper of the fatherless” (Psalm 10:14).
 “You have maintained my just cause” (Psalm 9:4).
 “You have turned for me my mourning into dancing” (Psalm 30:11).
 “You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain
and wine abound” (Psalm 4:7).
Plant Your Heart Here

In great mercy and wisdom, God has chosen to give us the Psalms. He
has put them at the very center of his inspired word. Surely this is no
accident. The heart is the center of our emotional life. And God’s
heart-book is at the center of his word. How easy it is to find!
This is an invitation. God wants our hearts. He will take them as he

finds them. And then, with the healing balm of the Psalms, he will
shape them. Accept his invitation to come. On the front door, he has
promised, Enter here. Find your delight in lingering here in
meditation.
You will be “like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit
in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he
prospers” (Psalm 1:3).

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Try to imagine the Bible without the Psalms.

What a different book it

God at the Bottom of It All

 “Your waves have gone over me” (Psalm 42:7).

Taste and See That He Is Good

Plant Your Heart Here

This is an invitation. God wants our hearts. He will take them as he

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