Psalms (Extra Nugget Preview)

What do emojis and Psalms have to do with each other? Take a listen to this free preview of our Extra Nuggets: Psalms episode to find out! You'll learn that we can take all of our emotions to God and pour our heart out to Him.

If you enjoy this episode, check out Backseat Bible Nuggets: Extra Nuggets by subscribing in Apple Podcasts. We have are working our way through the books of the Old Testament in the Bible.

Transcript

Hey friends! The episode you’re about to hear is a sample subscriber episode. I wanted you guys to get a taste of what those Extra Nuggets are like. So I hope you enjoy! And if you haven’t already, you can subscribe by clicking the button in Apple podcasts for more episodes like this.

How many emojis can you imagine or picture in your head right now that show all different emotions? There’s the crying face, the laughing face, the face with hearts all around, the praise hands, or my favorite the fancy dancing lady.

Well, since emojis didn’t exist back in Bible times, they would write out their emotions and that’s exactly what we find in the book of Psalms. 

This book has 150 chapters but it’s actually made up of 5 sections called books…so it’s like books in a book. Cool! The first 2 books look at King David, who is a main character in this book, and his family history. The 3rdbook talks about the Israelite people and their exiles, remember we’ve talked about that in previous episodes! The 4th book looks forward to when someone will come to rescue their people and establish God’s kingdom. Can you guess who that might be? JESUS! Right!

Within all of the writings of Psalms we see tons of emotions. In fact, I love this book BECAUSE of its emotions. There are lots of different writers of the Psalms, but we know that King David wrote lots of them. And when we read his writings it’s like getting a glimpse into his heart and mind. Sometimes I kinda feel like I’m reading his diary or something! But his writings are prayers to God that show great love and thankfulness to God as well as times when he cried out to God in sadness and pain. We see David and other writers in Psalms taking hard questions to God about things happening in their life. And I’m encouraged to do the same!

In fact, Psalm 142 verse 1 and 2 is our special verse for the book of Psalms. Let’s say this together, you can repeat after me, “I cry aloud to the Lord - I lift up my voice to the Lord for mercy. - I pour out my complaint before him - before him I tell my trouble.” 

So if David, a man after God’s own heart, as he’s described in the Bible, takes his troubles to God, why shouldn’t we do the same?

But I also love of the Psalms show us how to praise God for all of His different attributes. There is so much to praise God for, not just 1 or 2 things, and the book of Psalms shows us how we can keep praising and never really run out of things to praise Him for. I’d love for you to read Psalm chapter 139 together with whoever you’re listening with because it’s one of my favorite chapters in the whole Bible. It talks about how God knows us better than anyone else and how He created us in our mom’s belly’s when she was pregnant. It talks about how God knows our thoughts before we even say them out loud. It talks about how God knows every single one of the days of our life before we were even born. 

So, whatever day you’re listening to this episode, He knew you’d be listening and He knows what’s happening tomorrow and the next day and so on. And I could keep going, but I love how it sums it up in Psalm 139 verse 17 when David writes, “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, the would outnumber the grains of sand.”

And that’s where I have to used the exploding brain emoji! Think of all the little grains of sand in the world and if we were to count them, which we never could in our life time, God’s thoughts would still be more than that. How crazy to try and wrap our head about, right?! 

Okay, let’s talk about some questions together. You can pause after each question to discuss and remember...don’t overthink it. The point is to get conversation started!

1.     What does the book of Psalms teach us to do with our emotions?

2.     What emotion do you need to take to God today? I want you to pray together right now and tell God what’s on your heart.