Out of the Depths, Part 1

Emotions are powerful. Our emotions profoundly impact the quality and condition of our lives and our relationships. Learning how to understand, process, and express our emotions is an important part of practicing the way of Jesus together. This is perhaps never more clearly revealed than in the book of Psalms. The gift of the Psalms is that they give us all language to process our emotions before the throne of heaven–revealing us to ourselves and revealing where we are in our relationship with our Heavenly Father.

Raise a Hallelujah
Bethel Music

Freedom
Jesus Culture

Firm Foundation
The Belonging Co

Make Room
Community Music

The Cry of the Soul
“Emotion propels us into the tragic recognition that we are not home.”

–

Romans 8:22-23
For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

–

Psalm 6:6-7
I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping. My eye wastes away because of grief.

–

Psalm 25:16-17
I am lonely and afflicted. The troubles of my heart are enlarged.

–

Psalm 38:3-4
There is no soundness in my flesh because of your indignation; there is no health in my bones because of my sin. For my iniquities have gone over my head; like a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me.

–

Psalm 38:17
I am ready to fall and my pain is ever before me.

–

Psalm 42:5
Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?

–

Psalm 42:9-10
I say to God, my rock: “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”

–

Ways We Try To Deal With Emotions
1. We bury them
2. We dwell on them
3. We try to avoid or escape them
4. We apply a different behavior

–

Psalm 42:5-6
Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.

–

Psalm 42:8
By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.

–

Psalm 42:11
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.

–

How Do We Live in the Tension?
1. Desperation

–

Psalm 42:1-2
As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

–

How Do We Live in the Tension?
2. Dependence

–

Proverbs 3:5-6
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways, acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.

–

How Do We Live in the Tension?
3. Surrender

–