A Psalm for the Hurting
Psalms for the Soul

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All right good morning church we’re continuing our series, psalms for the soul and for the past few weeks we’ve been going through topics that christians are often made nervous to talk about we’ve been talking about them because the psalms talk about them and we’ve talked about topics like discontentment, anger, anxiety in coming weeks we’ll talk about depression spiritual doubts but today we’re going to be talking about personal hurt

today’s message from psalm twenty five is entitled a psalm for the hurting now i want to ask two diagnostic questions to just kind of check and see who i’m talking to this morning here’s the first question how many of you would say you’ve experienced an event in your life that was emotionally devastating something so wounding that it actually altered perhaps even your personality maybe even your future you’ve had an event like that in your life lift your hands somebody who’s had a hurt looked at just about the whole house we’ve had a hurt that’s really affected us here’s the second question how many would say that this painful issue has yet to be resolved? this is still a hurt for you okay not as many hands now i got these two questions from jimmy evans book when life hurts finding hope and healing from the pain you carry it’s not a very scientific survey is it that i just took but you’ll notice a couple of things that jimmy evans points out in his book he says this

here’s the first truth life hurts life hurts we’re all touched by pain and heartache and often that pain is so devastating so traumatic so pro family wounding that it alters the fabric a very emotional health in some cases the pain is so unbearable that it redirects the very course of our lives changing the face of our future

here’s the second truth and it’s just as sobering the pain we experience is seldom resolved so pain hurts we have pain in this world and it’s seldom resolved few of us are equipped to properly process the hurts we experience so they remain buried deep within our souls what are we going to do about the hurts that we feel

dr paul meyer in his book finding purpose beyond our pain writes this pain free living is impossible this side of heaven well aren’t you glad you came to church today right? We will never find the magic pill to prevent sorrow and suffering in his book finding purpose beyond our pain dr mayer identifies seven struggles that we all experience among them he lists these injustice rejection loneliness loss discipline failure and death and so if pain is unavoidable what do we do? Where do we take our pain if we have physical pain most of us call the doctor the pain lets us know hey, i need help i need to go the doctor and if you’re a man your wife calls the doctor for you right? Because men don’t like to admit that we have pain the truth is pain its like the warning light in the dash of your car that says you need to check the engine or you need to check the oil that’s what pain is letting you know something is needing your attention and the truth is many of us wish we could just go through life without feeling any pain but i read an article just this past weekend about someone who was born genetically without the ability to feel pain and you might think that’s a blessing but by the time he was in his early twenties he reports he already had had seventy broken bones he would say something just doesn’t feel right you go to the doctor and find out he had three you know, three vertebrae broken in his back or something like that and so we find out that people who are born without the ability to feel pain actually don’t live very long because they don’t know how to avoid the things that hurt them you know in that way pain can be helpful so let’s talk about it where do we go with their pain?

You might go to the doctor when you have physical pain but here’s what i believe we must go to the lord jesus when we have pain in their soul because he’s the only one that can help he’s the only one that can bring healing the key verse in the passage that we’re going to be studying today is psalm twenty five verse eighteen and as we look at i want us to consider three areas that we will be working on together this morning he says david the psalm assessed of the lord consider which means look upon lord take a hard look feel what i’m feeling here lord look and he says, consider my affliction that’s which is coming from his enemies that which is coming from people that are hurting him he says, consider that lord and then he says, consider my trouble that’s which is bubbling up on the inside that’s hurt that’s coming from other places like loneliness and those kinds of things and then he says, forgive all my sins well, that’s the third category we’re often hurting ourselves self inflicted pain because we’ve made bad decisions in their life and we’ve brought unfortunate consequences and so david covers these three categories in his psalm so as we look

david in psalm twenty five lifted up his hurting soul to the lord for help and i believe this morning that we can do the same we can lift up our hurting soul to the lord and he will give us help as we look, i think we’ll discover three ways to lift up our soul to the lord for his kind of help

as we dig in this morning i want to make a couple observations you look at psalm twenty five and you’ll notice it has twenty two verses well, that just so happens the hebrew alphabet, which is what the old testament was written in hebrew has twenty two letters in it. what david has done here he has written an acrostic poem that begins with each of these twenty two hebrew letters it would have been a way to help people that we’re seeing this psalm remember it because from a child they would have known the hebrew alphabet and so they could remember the next verse

the other thing i would point out to you, which is a little bit more complex and maybe you’ve never heard of it but the dramatic form of the psalm is called a psalm of lament it’s shaped a certain way chiastic it comes from the greek letter “chi”, which is like x so if you look at how that falls in here it’s this idea of like this and so you see the inside of the x and so versus one through three carry the same thing as verses nineteen through twenty one and then verses four through seven are repeated again in similar fashion and fifteen through eighteen eight through ten are like twelve to fourteen verse eleven stands all by itself

here’s what i’m convinced of that when we study god’s word not only are the words inspired but even the grammar is inspired so it can show us something so that’s the way i’m going to preach it i’m going to preach it with that in mind but now let’s read the text and let’s listen to the lord’s word for those that are hurting today

of david to you a lord i lift up my soul oh my god in you i trust let me not be put to shame let not my enemies exult over me indeed none who wait for you shall be put to shame they shall be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous make me to know your ways oh lord teach me your paths lead me in your truth and teach me for you are the god of my salvation for you i wait all the day long remember your mercy oh lord and your steadfast love for they have been from old remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions according to your steadfast love remember me for the sake of your goodness oh lord good and upright is the lord therefore he instructs sinners in the way he leads the humble and what is right and teaches the humble his way all the paths of the lord our steadfast love and faithfulness for those who keep his covenant and his testimony for your name’s sake. O lord, pardon my guilt for it is great who is the man who fears the lord him will he instructed in the way that he should choose his soul shall abide and well being and his offspring shall inherit the land the friendship of the lord is for those who fear him and he makes known to them his covenant my eyes are ever toward the lord, for he will pluck my feet out of the net turn to me and be gracious to me. For i am lonely and afflicted the troubles of my heart are enlarged bring me out of my distresses consider my affliction in my trouble and forgive all my sins consider how many are my foes and with what violent hatred they hate me oh guard my soul and deliver me let me not be put to shame for i take refuge in you may integrity and uprightness preserve me for i wait for you redeem israel oh, god! Out of all his troubles, this is god’s word.

We’re looking for three ways to lift up our souls our hurting souls to the lord for help. Here’s the first we’re going to be looking at how to find deliverance from our enemies. Trust the lord for deliverance from enemies, as i stated earlier, we’re going to look at verses one through three, and then we’ll see it repeated in verses nineteen through twenty two in these two sections, he’s talking about his enemies, his foes, and he’s, asking for the lord to help him with the hurts, that are being inflicted upon him by them, and so that’s the first category of hurt that we feel someone else has hurt us, and david is saying, lord, i want to trust you with that let’s take note of david’s prayer notice in verse one he says to you, oh lord, i lift up my soul. Now how do you do that? How do I lift up how did i even get a hold of my soul? How do i lift it up to the lord? What do i do? How do i do that? we have to pray we say, lord, you made me in my soul that with that is that is my personality that is who i am that’s who talks back to me when i talk about myself everywhere you go there you are there isn’t that, right? and so lord how do i do this?

And so he says this david says i’m going to lift up the details of how i feel to you i’m not going to hold anything back i’m not going try to be too christian in this prayer there so what i’m saying i’m just going to get real in this prayer because lord, you know what i think anyway? So i’m just going to pour it out god’s not afraid of you he’s not friend your questions he’s not afraid of your feelings he already knows how you feel anyway. So david says i’m just going to lift up my soul to you so he lifts it up to the lord and then verse two he says,i trust in you in other words, i’m going to entrust this to you i’m going to entrust my enemies and the pain they have inflicted on me i’m going to trust that to you i’m going to give that to you, lord that’s what david says in verse nineteen he says consider how many are my foes lord you handle them while i live for you my thoughts and my soul have been caught up thinking about them about those people that are attacking me but here’s what i’ve decided you take care of that i’m going to follow you

you see it reminds me of peter and john over there in the book of acts chapter four where peter and john had healed that man that was born crippled then they put them in jail overnight and they beat them and then they informed them hey stop preaching in the name of jesus and they said no we can’t do that we have to obey god and so they set them free and they went back to a prayer meeting and the people got together and prayed this lord you consider their threats but as for us help us speak the word of god boldly and it says in the place where they were praying was shaken that’s how david is praying he says lord, you consider their threats as for me i want to live for you and so he’s praying like that

verse twenty says guard my soul in other words be like an umpire look at my soul and go that’s in bounds that’s out of bounds help me order up my thoughts and my feelings so i can stay and protect me from dangerous self talk self talk that’s not of faith but is of fear help me to stop the after effect of being injured by someone because you know how that goes you get in an argument with someone and they say something you that hurts and then you say something, but it wasn’t a good thing because you think you don’t think of the good thing to say back to people until after it’s over you’re like, on your way home, you should have said this to him that would’ve got him, and then maybe you wake up in the middle of the night, you replay the whole thing again. There’s this after effect in your soul, when you feel when you’ve been wrong or had a sense of someone having wronged you, and David says, lord, guard me from that i’m inflicting the pain on myself over again because i keep thinking about it, just deliver me verse twenty deliver me, get me out of here, help me to be rescued.

And then verse twenty says, i take refuge in you, it’s, just like last week, he didn’t say, i’m going to take a refuge over here over there i’m going to find my place of rest inside of you, lord, i’m gonna take myself to you, because how do you get away from the problem when the problem is you where do you go to get away from you? As i said earlier. Everywhere you go, there you are. How do you get rid of you? What are you talking about? Gary? How do you get rid of this pain? That’s in your soul? these feelings that you have towards people who have hurt you find your safety. You’re safe place in the lord lord, i lift up my soul to you. I want to find my true identity and how i really should feel . And you’re my refuge. And this is how he’s praying and he prays like that.

Then he says in verse twenty one, i’m gonna wait for you i wait for you in other words, i’m not going to take action against my enemies. I’m not going to try to find vengeance on my own i’m gonna let you handle it. And then verse twenty two’s like a ps it’s like david was praying because oh yeah one more thing israel’s got the same problems too rescue them out of their troubles too. Do you ever do that When you get ready to say wait a minute, lord, there was one more thing that’s kind of what verse twenty two feels like to me it’s like he changes, topics redeem oh, redeem israel oh god out of all their troubles and so he you know he’s the king he started thinking about how he’s not the only one who’s hurting because of enemies what does he call his enemies verse two he calls him them enemies don’t let my enemies exult over me and then when he repeats that conversation in verse nineteen he says consider how many are my foes we don’t use that word a lot lately i’d bring that one back here my foe which means enemy literally in the hebrew this idea of someone who hates you with anger because i got a lot of people who hate me with anger adversary he describes him he says they’re wantonly treacherous wantonly it means empty or without purpose and treacherous has the idea of lying in other words they’re telling lies on me that they’re doing it for their own empty reasons they’re just trying to get me in trouble here’s the point they’re treating me without justice they’re treating me unjustly and listen that’s the heart of one of the deepest hurts if someone has treated you unjustly i didn’t deserve that and somebody’s hurt you it wasn’t fair

In verse two verse three and verse twenty they were shaming him verse two let me not be put to shame verse three none who wait for you shall be put to shame verse twenty let me not be put to shame for i take refuge in you that shame it just keeps coming up you know being humiliated by someone is one of the deepest hurts because it attacks your identity you have been humiliated by someone that’s what david’s saying don’t let them humiliate me lord

you see one of the things we read about in the scripture is that jesus not only took our sins on the cross but he took our shame he took our shame so if you’re still feeling shame you haven’t given it to jesus because he took it

David said in verse two don’t let him exult over mein other words don’t let him party on my shame don’t let them go around bragging about how they got me lord lord i’m gonna give my enemies to you need names every kind of flavor of how he’s feeling about it how do we do it as christians david’s given it to the lord how do we do it? Because we have more we have more wisdom from god in the new testament right? So let’s just kind of ask that question how do we deal with the hurts that are afflicted on us by our enemies here’s a better pill l i’m going to offer you but it tastes really sweet once it goes down to the belly, but i’ll admit it tastes a little bitter at first ask god to deliver you from your enemies without trying to take revenge yourself because we want to hurt them back, but instead of trying to hurt them back, pray like psalm fifty nine says, deliver me from my enemies. Oh god, protect me from those who rise up against me. Deliver me from those who work evil and save me from bloodthirsty men.

Lord, you handle it, i want to give that to you pray like paul who teaches in the book of romans beloved never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of god, for it is written, vengeance is mine. I will repay says the lord, but don’t we take the lord’s job? Yeah here’s a here’s, some medicine that even with a little sugar, it doesn’t taste that good and instead of taking vengeance, decide to ask the lord to help you forgive them and love them. What? Come on, now you’re taking this too far listen, listen to me. There are people who are ten years after the fact, twenty years after the fact, something that someone said to them is still hurting him that person has long ago forgot it, but it’s still hurting them, why, because they’re hanging on to it jesus says this you’ve heard this is jesus people listen you’ve heard the law that says love your neighbor and hate your enemy but i say love your enemies pray for those who persecute you and that way you will be acting as true children of your father in heaven you want to look like jesus you want to you wanna follow jesus say i don’t like this person they’ve hurt me help me to love him and he will gary you don’t know what they did to me i don’t you’re right but i know what jesus teaches and it’s real medicine it’s real medicine that can set you free from the hatred

remember how jesus prayed on the cross father forgive them for they know not what they do even as they gambled for His clothes that’s our jesus and he lives inside of us when we accept him as lord and savior that’s his spirit inside of us that says i’m sorry there’s no room in your heart now for hatred there’s no room in your heart now for revenge i’m a child of god i want to love those who persecute you i want you to pray for them

remember jesus and how he was treated so unjustly isaiah when he prophesied about this coming messiah he said he was despised and rejected by men a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised and we esteemed him not he knows how you feel he was a man of sorrows he felt hurt and pain you can call on him he understands

when we lift up their souls to the lord in prayer he can be our help. Will you do it? We asked jesus to take that person that you hate and turned them into someone that you pray for and that the lord would replace your hatred with love this is strong medicine, but it works here’s the second

ask the lord for guidance through suffering. Now the first category was those that afflict us, those enemies and foes who hurt us, and many of them with intentionality hurt us on purpose. But now this category covers other things that hurt us loneliness and and then some and things that just happen in this world of trouble, like your house burns down or a hurricane comes through or somebody gets bad news from the doctor there’s. All these categories of stuff, if that happens because we live on planet earth and it hurts and so now we’re looking at the b sections, if you will verses four through seven and then verses fifteen through eighteen that holds this category of bad stuff that happens to us, that hurts

notice how david prayed for god’s hands on guidance he’s like god i don’t just need like your i’ve got your word i do but i need you to like get your hands on me and guide me show me thy ways oh lord teach me thy paths lead me in thy truth i need some hands on help here because i’m hurting so bad i don’t know which way i don’t know which way to turn

timothy keller in his book walking with god through pain and suffering writes this he says when pain and suffering comes upon us, we finally see not only that we’re not in control of our lives but that we never were over the years i also came, he says, to release it to realize that adversity did not merely lead people to believe in god’s existence. It pulled those who already believed into a deeper experience of god’s reality loving grace one of the ways we move from abstract knowledge about god to a personal encounter with god as a living reality it’s through the furnace of affliction you know what you might know jesus now you know who he is but you’ll really know and experientially when you walk through the furnace with him well i don’t really want to go through the furnace i agree with you i don’t want to but you find jesus there that he’s already with you he’s with you right now. But there’s something about when you go into a season of suffering it’s like he leans in all the closer david’s asking for that he asks god, i need some hands on god i need verse five your salvation. God, i need verse six your mercy, your steadfast love verse seven i need your goodness it’s like david’s reminding god of his own character traits. It would be like your child coming up to you saying, daddy, you’re good and you’re merciful and i know you love me. I’d be thinking what did you do, but i’d also be thinking this, whatever it is you’re doing right now, it’s working because you’re calling on the better side of me. Well, that’s all god has you know who needed to hear that not god,

david was reminding himself of who god is in his prayer. He’s going god’s not like my enemies he’s not going to judge me. God, i can hand him things that i’m too, like they’re so fragile. I’m afraid to tell them to anybody, but i can tell him because he loves me. I can pour it out to him i don’t have to bottle it up i can get it out and show it to him and he goes ahead and shows me I already know about it anyway child

David calls on the very traits of god that have healing power for his hurts and we can call on those traits too god i need your grace right now david lists some of his hurts and verses fifteen through eighteen he lifts him up by name he says first of all lord, i feel like i’m caught in a trap it’s like my feet are caught in a net and i need you to get me out i’m in this circle of self defeating hurt where i just keep on being hurt and there’s people like that everything hurts them because there’s a hurt underneath that gets triggered and they’re just so easily offended i’m caught in a trap of offense i can’t stop being just like hurt all the time and lord get me out of this trap

verse sixteen i’m lonely look at verse sixteen because you could break it up like he asked for certain things he has turned to me and been gracious to me for i am lonely and afflicted you could say like this turn to me for i am lonely be gracious to me for i am afflicted so if you didn’t like that would be like lord i’m lonely turn to me face me i need to see your face lord like come close because i’m lonely if you lost someone you won’t see them again until glory you won’t see them again till heaven lord turn to me loneliness is a deep hurt some people are lonely in a crowd because the one person they’re looking for isn’t there be gracious to me for I am afflicted lord i’ve been rejected by other people and it’s hurt so better i asked she said no i wanted her to be my friend and she rejected me i needed friendship i wasn’t accepted at school i wanted to hang out with this group of people they were my friends in elementary school but now they’ve rejected me because i’m not somehow cool enough or whatever rejection it really hurts and and he says lord don’t reject me be gracious to me because i’m hurting gracious it means to show grace it means unmerited favor others have rejected me but lord except me because i need acceptance but i feel the pain of rejection

David is getting real here, he is lifting up his soul he says in verse seventeen he says look lord the troubles of my heart are enlarged they just get worse because the truth is, the more i think about my hurts, the more i experience them again. Get me out of this. These distresses bring me out only you can do it only you can bring me out

Verse eighteen says, consider my trouble lord you know how it feels and he really does friends. He really knows he knows how it feels psalm thirty four verse eighteen says the lord is near to the broken hearted and saves the crushed in spirit he is always near all of his children, but there’s just something about when i’m suffering, he leans in and takes hold of that situation if you’ll let him. If you’ll call on him.

Hebrews chapter two verse eighteen talks about jesus that says, since he jesus himself has gone through suffering and testing he’s able to help us when we’re being tested, when we’re going through times of trial and difficulty, he knows how we feel and he’s able to help us. How many of you went through the book of daniel together with us a few weeks ago? You remember going to the book of daniel, chapter three. Remember the three hebrew children shadrach, meshach and abednego have been together nebuchadnezzar the king of babylon said if you don’t bow down to the statue I will throw you into the fiery furnace and they said well we don’t know if god’s going to rescue us or not but know this king we will not bow down to your idol and so he said turn it up turn up the heat hotter and they turned it up hotter and threw the three hebrew children into the fiery furnace but then a fourth a person appeared one like the son of god and walked in their midst and nebuchadnezzar said look we only threw three in and where’s this fourth one coming from shadrach, meshach and abednego when they came out you couldn’t even smell any fire on their clothes and not one hair on their head was singed you know sometimes god calls you into the fiery furnace but then he joins you there and then people around you go who are you come out and talk to me who is that with you but there’s something different about you see sometimes it brings god great glory to allow you to join him in the fiery furnace there’s purpose for the believer

the eastern religions say that pain is just your imagination it has no meaning but the christian god teaches us that pain is real but it also has purpose it’s not wasted don’t waste your pain he doesn’t waste it,

tim keller says in his book if you remember with grateful amazement that jesus was thrown into the ultimate furnace for you, you can begin to sense him in your smaller furnaces with you. This means remembering the gospel remember what christ has done for you and remembering that when you suffer your smaller sufferings that you’re joining the one who suffered for you and he leans in closer and he makes you one who he glorifies, that others might learn about him c s lewis says, god whispers to us in our pleasures speaks in our consciences but shouts in our pains remember what i told you earlier about how pain is like the warning light on the dash your car, he shouts to us and says, you better get that checked i need you to take a look at that because i want to work with you about something i need to get your attention there was no other way to get it, so this is how i’m going to get it god shouts

is he shouting to you this morning in some painful area? Bring your hearts to jesus who’s to say that perhaps that hurt he’s given you he’s giving it to you so that he might walk through the furnace with you and then comfort you with a comfort but that would be in excess so that you would have enough left over for others

notice how paul writes about that in second corinthians he says he comforts us all he comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others when they’re troubled we will be able to give them the same comfort god has given us when god comforts your hurt he gives you not just enough to make your hurt experience healing but it gives overflowing comfort so that now you have the exact medicine to give to that one who’s hurting in the same place you have been hurt many a ministry comes out of a hurt many a calling comes out of a furnace experience

may i remind you some of you are new to our church but most of you know this my father died when i was eight years old he was thirty nine he died of cancer he was a two pack a day smoker and he got lung cancer that killed him he was my hero i loved that man but the lord allowed him to pass from this world that broke my heart i was like a little puppy dog following men around looking for a father for years and years after that from eight years old my grandfather, my uncle baseball coach a teacher at school looking for someone that would be a mentor to a little boy i didn’t know it at the time. I look back on it now and recognize that it was a wound a father wound but you know who healed me the father helped me he held me and he gave me not just enough comfort he gave me mentors along the way grand fathers and uncles and coaches who brought me along. But ultimately i recognized the only one that could touch my soul and heal that wound that was in me for a father was him the father and i gave my life to him. And when he gave me comfort, he not only gave me comfort so i wasn’t looking for a father figure anymore because of family he gave me so much extra father healing that i wanted to be a father and that’s. Why i’m a pastor today so i commend you men and women so i can be a father and a grandfather and a great grandfather. He put healing and listen, if you’re hurting today, it could be a calling if you’ll just allow the healing to come will you do it will you call on jesus? He allows healing, he allows it to have purpose if you’ll turn it over to him

here’s the third seek the lord for forgiveness of sin the first category was enemies afflicting the second category was all the kind of trouble that comes at us in this world that hurts this third category is a little different it’s self inflicted pain it’s hurts and hang ups that we have where we’re trying to cope with life and we end up hurting ourselves worse arevyou with me understand i’m saying some of what’s going on in your life you brought on yourself and and you’re hurting

david recognizes that in his prayer and that center section in the psalm it is the center section the section where he admits i’m a sinner and i need forgiveness he talked about the enemies here in those verses he talked about troubles that come from other areas in the middle verses but right here in the center he talks about self inflicted pain verses eight thru fourteen listed his confession verse eight he says, i’m a sinner and i need direction good enough right the lord therefore instructs sinners in the way that’s not a popular word anymore but it’s a bible word it means you’ve missed the mark of god’s holiness the old preacher used to say you got to get them lost before you can get them saved that’s often true, especially in america where we think everybody’s good and we’re not

the bible says you’re born spiritually dead in sin apart from christ you must be born again spiritually in christ recognizing that you’re a sinner and david recognizes this he says i’m a sinner i need help

he goes on in verse eleven he says, for your name’s sake o lord, pardon my guilt for it is great because i’m guilty modern psychology tries to help us with guilt because guilt is a disabling, hurtful emotion and so they try to help us by telling us you shouldn’t feel guilty you shouldn’t feel guilty therefore stop feeling guilty because you shouldn’t feel guilty. The bible takes a different track, the bible says you know why you feel guilty because you are your guilt you feel guilty because you are guilty but you don’t have to continue in that place. Jesus wants to take your guilt and pardon so that you’re set free so there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in christ jesus he wants to take your guilt and david confesses that to the lord and then again he reminds the lord of his attributes in verse eight it says you’re good and upright and your way is good verse nine, he says, you lead the humble who are the humble, the ones that will admit that they are sinners that they would admit that they need a savior verse ten he says you have steadfast love you are faithful you have unconditional love that i can rely on verse thirteen he says how many this is good i gotta lean in here his soul shall abide and well being you get it you can get healing for your soul you can live there where the lord you lift up your soul to him and he just washes it clean and he replaces your hurt with his healing in your anxiety with his peace your fear with his faithfulness listen to this parents listen to this grand parents his soul shall abide in wellbeing and his offspring shall inherit the land. Here’s what i see here your self inflicted pain, your sinful coping habits you’re going to pass those on to your kids and they’re going to be hurting in the same place you’ve been hurting unless you break the chain right now

and so i’m going to give this to jesus. I’m going to confess my sin and my guilt break the chains so that my kids could be set free so they don’t have to hurt in the same places i’ve been hurt

verse fourteen the friendship of the lord he wants to be your friend no wonder the lord called david a man after his own heart because david knew how to lift up his soul to the lord who does see psalm thirty eight tells us how it makes you feel my guilt overwhelms me it’s a burden too heavy to bear my wounds fester because of my foolish sins i am bent over and racked with pain all day long i walk around filled with grief a raging fever burns within me my health is broken i am exhausted and completely crushed my groans come from an anguished heart listen that’s what unconfessed sin feels like

how do you get help from that hurt ask jesus to take it ask him to forgive you of your sins ask him to take away your guilt and replace it with joy how does christ do it

first peter chapter two he personally carried our sins in his body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right but it is by his wounds you’re healed once you were like sheep who wandered away but now you have turned to your shepherd the guardian of your souls he wants to shepherd your soul give him give him your sin there’s self inflicted pain

why did jonah get find himself in the bottom of the mediterranean sea in the belly of a fish because he was in sin that was self inflicted pain he brought it on himself and the lord was disciplining him but then when he followed the lord the lord was faithful will you confess your sin and your guilt to the lord and let him cleanse you from that kind of hurt heal you from that kind of hurt whether its enemies from without hurts from within or even self inflicted pain how much of that did the lord take on the cross he took it all he took all your sin and all your shame and he identified with you about becoming human and has taken on all that we are you know

Psalm twenty five is an acrostic psalm as we said it it’s got this beautiful castaic literary form but more than that it falls into a category that we often don’t utilize in modern christianity it’s called a lament a psalm of lament which is where we get the word lamentation too weak to cry out to tell the lord the truth about how you feel

in modern christianity we try to sing everything in a major key because we are all happy all the time but the truth is hurt hurts and lament is appropriate when you give it to god like this and so sometimes you need to sing in a minor key we need more minor key prayers and more minor key singing because it really helps when we hurt

i remember when i was growing up we would sing more laments here’s one that might help today i am a poor wayfaring stranger wandering through this world of woe there is no sickness, no toil or danger in that bright world to which I go i know dark clouds will gather around me i know my way is rough and steep yet golden fields lie out before me where weary eyes no more shall sleep i’m going there to see my mother. She said she’d meet me when i come home. I am just going over, Jordan are you coming with me . We’re all just going over home

my mother and father they’re waiting for me and now i know you have loved ones there too this life is temporary and it’s okay to sing a lament once in a while because the lord leans in and joins as you lift up your soul to the lord are you hurting? Give it to jesus let’s pray lord thank you. Thank you that you meet us right where we are. Lord, i pray for the person this morning that might be far from you, but they would desire to be near today that they want to know you as lord and savior. If that’s you, my friend, would you pray right in your seat right now with me, dear lord jesus, just pray that right now, dear lord jesus, i’m a sinner I admit i’m a sinner, i fall short but i believe that you died on the cross for me and that you rose from the grave and that you live today, which you come and live in me. I want to be a child of god, would you save me and forgive me and make me the person you want me to be. I want you to be my lord and savior. If you prayed that prayer believing in your heart, then god will save you through jesus his son. Others were here this morning and you know christ the savior. But you’re hurting. Perhaps you’re holding a grudge against an enemy. Would you obey god’s word now Surrender that enemy to the lord. Say, lord, i give him to you. I give her to you. And now, lord, replace my feelings of hatred and hurt with love and forgiveness. Only you can do it, lord, give me the medicine. Maybe you’re hurting from a loss. Maybe you’re lonely. Maybe you feel rejected. Whatever it is, say, lord , i lift up my soul to you right now. I believe you can help me, lord. In this world, there will be trouble. But we lift up our souls to you in jesus name amen.