Thoughts from Psalm 39

It is interesting to me that David had challenges with his perception of himself - and in some ways as I have had in my life. I have been noticing, though, that God did not rebuke David when he would share with God how he felt. That, to me anyway, is very important. God does not condemn me when I feel 'down'. In fact, I am seeing God as longing for me to share with Him how I feel - up or down or otherwise. That doesn't mean I will 'stay' where I was when I first started sharing with God how I felt, but it does give God the opportunity to show me where my 'view' is not in agreement with His view of me, and as I agree He gives me a new perspective.

Psalm 39 resonated with me along these lines. How I put Psalm 39 in my own words is on the 'paraphrase blog to the right if you would like to view it. But I'll share just a few thoughts about it here.

Anyone who knows me also knows I can talk fairly easily. And when I get excited about a topic I sometimes have a hard time being quiet - to put it mildly.

It almost sounds like David had some struggles in the area of communications as well. It sounds like David had gotten himself into some difficulties by some things he had said, so after some consideration, David decided to just 'quit talking'.

It doesn't sound like that lasted very long but it also had the effect of raising David's stress level almost to the breaking point.

It is nice to have a friend that is willing to listen. But when there is no human friend or even if there is, God, I believe, uses this Psalm to invite me to share with Him. I can tell Him what is bugging me. I can tell Him what makes me angry. I can even tell Him that I don't like the way I think He is treating me.

There is another aspect that someone suggested to me that I really like. God is desiring to have so many 'JOY/PEACE' experiences with me that when there comes a time when it seems things are really tough, or I might even be tempted to think that God doesn't understand me at the moment, I can look back on the many, many 'JOY/PEACE' experiences that I have already had with Him and because of those I can choose to 'trust' Him that He hasn't changed one bit even though I may not be able to 'see' right, right then.

Psalm 39 ends with the following prayer to God. "Have compassion on me so I recover strength before my life ends."

Might that word 'compassion' have something to do with God 'coming into my life with passion' . Sounds like a good way to recover strength also. "The LORD is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?" - not even of a wrong self image.

You can agree with God too!

Bringer of Peace