Psalm 30 (I'm Here Because I've Been Brought Through It)

The Neighborhood Church

Psalm 30 is a Psalm of hindsight. As the dust of danger and difficulty finally settled, the poet realizes that he is now healthy, grateful, and joyful because God brought him through it. But he didn't always feel thankful. Psalm 30 includes "real talk" about our lived experience of danger, anger, and absence. How do we understand God's anger? Does God still love us? What if we feel God's absence? Is God still working in us? We explore these questions and more. NOTES -- // SCRIPTURE FOCUS -- Psalm 30 // The Psalms are the prayerbook of God's people that covers the vast landscape of human emotion and experience. // The Psalms give us permission to bring our whole selves to God, telling their story and inviting us to sing along. // A Psalm of Hindsight -- "I didn't think I'd make it but now I see you have turned my life around." // Their story is your story... 1. Need, 2. Petition, 3. Rescue, and 4. Gratitude ...so sing along // ANGER -- Always spoken of as "Fleeting" in Scripture. Our understanding must be rooted in Scripture and informed by our Christology. Did Jesus get angry? Yes. Does a loving parent get angry? Yes. But if we interpret anger, remember that it's rooted in love. // "God loves (verb). God is love (noun). Every verb God does is an expression of the noun God is. Anger is an attribute, but love is God's essence." (GREG BOYD) // ABSENCE -- A universal experience of saints on the journey. St. John of the Cross speaks of the "Dark Knight of the Soul" that God brings us to in order to grow and go deeper. // Our experience of God's presence is like our experience of the sun -- always shining but occasionally obscured by the clouds in our field of vision or our rotation away from its warmth. // FINAL THOUGHT -- Though our interpretation tells us God is angry, he never stops loving. Though our experience tells us God is absent, he never stops shining. But we can only understand this after the morning comes. Until then, keep walking because God is still working.