“God opens the comfort and hope of certain portions of His word to our souls, when we suffer some particularly difficult trial. Such was the case for me when my mother passed away. Those Scriptures that spoke of the reality and sting of death and the hope of the resurrection were all experientially theoretical, so to speak, until I faced the death of my mother.”

God’s word is so rich and full, we will never be able to exhaust its wisdom, instruction, correction, comfort, encouragement and restorative power in this life. There is much in Scripture that we will never experientially appropriate into our lives until God has placed us in a particularly difficult situation in life. There are many Psalms that we neglect until we find ourselves in the difficult circumstances of life. It’s not until we go through the trials of life commensurate with those of the Psalmist that will we ever draw strength from the imprecatory Psalms and the Psalms of lament.

Believers rightly love to read the well-known and beloved Messianic Psalms. While all the Psalms are Messianic Psalms, we love reading those explicit Messianic Psalms (e.g. 1, 2, 8, 16, 22, 23, 24, 45, 89 and 110) for the strengthening of our faith. We also love reading the great Psalms of repentance and pardon (e.g. Psalm 51, 103 and 130). We are familiar with the creational Psalms ( e.g. Psalm 8, 19, 104 and 139). We have cross-stitching or calligraphy prints of portions of these Psalms hanging on the walls of our homes. We encourage one another with verses from them in our conversations. However, most believers pass over many of the Psalms that God has breathed out for the nourishment of our souls. If we are honest, we have found it burdensome to read the Psalms of lament or the imprecatory Psalms. I seriously doubt that there is one person who has any part of Psalm 88–the darkest Psalm–hanging in a frame on their wall of their home.  One simple reason for our neglect of these Psalms is that God had not yet placed us in a situation in which our soul finds the comfort and hope in them.

God opens the comfort and hope of certain portions of His word to our souls, when we suffer some particularly difficult trial. Such was the case for me when my mother passed away. Those Scriptures that spoke of the reality and sting of death and the hope of the resurrection were all experientially theoretical, so to speak, until I faced the death of my mother. Likewise, those portions of the Psalms that speak of betrayal, injustice, opposition and the valley of the shadow of death are all theoretical until we experience such trials in our lives. We learn to love the honesty and the heart felt agony of the Psalmist, when we find ourselves in similar circumstances.

Read More