Why Is It So Hard to Believe God Loves Me? with Glenna Marshall (SEEN SERIES)

What if the most life-changing truth isn’t simply that God loves people, but that God knows and loves you? He knows every thought, every word, every action—and still pursues you with steadfast love. That’s the heartbeat of our conversation with author and Bible teacher Glenna Marshall as we open Psalm 139 and let it reshape how we see God—and how we see ourselves.

Click here for show notes and to connect with Glenna Marshall.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Glenna Marshall
• 0:41 Life In The Local Church
• 2:19 Why Write About God’s Personal Love
• 4:58 From Overcorrection To Confusion About Worth
• 7:36 Human Love Versus God’s Love
• 10:08 Overwhelmed By Information And Limits Of Knowing
• 12:21 Reading Psalm 139 Aloud
• 15:31 God’s Presence As Love
• 18:36 Is Psalm 139 About God Or Us
• 20:16 Shame, Forgiveness, And The Cross
• 24:04 Wanting To Matter In Small Lives
• 27:06 The “Hard” Verses And Imprecatory Prayer
• 32:40 Justice And Mercy Held Together
• 34:28 Where To Find Glenna
• 35:24 Final Encouragement To Doubting Hearts

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Well, welcome friends. I'm excited to introduce you to my guest today. I am speaking with Glenna Marshall. Glenna is a writer and speaker who loves to lead others into a deeper discovery of scripture. She is the author of four books, The Mom of Two Sons, and she is a member of Grace Bible Fellowship in Sykeston, Missouri, where she and her husband have served for 20 years. So welcome, Glenna, and thanks for being here. Thanks. I'm happy to be here and to chat with you today. Awesome. Before we get started in some of the questions I have, um, would you just tell the listeners a little bit more about who you are and the work that you do?

SPEAKER_03: 0:41

Yeah, well, I am married to my pastor. So I am a pastor's wife, and a lot of our life is really entrenched in local church ministry. I lead a women's Bible study every week. And then I, in the last maybe year or so, took on discipling the teenage girls at our church, which is not something I really ever saw myself doing because I'm a boy mom just down to the core, but I love it so much. Like being around teenage girls, I just remember the drama of my junior high and high school years, and everything is incredibly stressful for them. And so I love that they let me into their life. And I just want it's a really bright spot of ministry in my life right now. And actually, I'm headed there tonight to meet with our teenage girls and we're just walking through scriptures and chit-chatting about stuff. So that brings me a lot of joy. And then um, I my actual work, work, pay work, would be uh writing books and uh traveling as an as a speaker to women's conferences and retreats. And I just love to teach God's word. I love to open up to a chapter and walk through it. And I have been changed by studying God's word, and I want that for other Christians so much. So I feel like if there's a subtext to anything I have written, it is please, please, please read your Bibles. So yeah, so I feel like that's my life mission. I'm gonna make you love God's word if I can.

SPEAKER_01: 2:08

Yes, yes, I love that. I love that. I feel like we have a lot in common just in your passion, your mission, and I'm also pastor's wife. So have that in common too. Yeah. So you, your most recent book, it is called Known and Loved, Experiencing the Affection of God in Psalm 139. And I love, love, love Psalm 139. We are in the midst of a series on the podcast called the Seen Series. And so I'm I'm in the middle of writing a Bible study. I have a passion like you. Like, I want the Bible to come alive for people. I want them to read it. Um, but what I do is I'm taking the life of six different women in scripture that may have felt unseen or invisible or marginalized. And in every chapter on day four, I always include a psalm, a psalm that that woman might have related to or have it kind of encapsulates her life. And I love Psalm 139 for Hagar because Oh wow, yeah. She says, You are the God who sees me. And this is a psalm all about being seen and known. And so when I saw your book, I was like, let's have a conversation about Psalm 139. Yeah. So I love that. That's a beautiful idea for a study. Yeah. Yeah. So my first study, Graced, um, was the same thing. It was graced with six women in scripture that God rescued, redeemed, and restored from sexual brokenness. And so seen is kind of following that pattern of six more women, but kind of a different sort of brokenness, just that feeling of being invisible and unimportant. And anyway, this is not about my book, it's about yours. So um, tell me why did you write the book and what's your hope and your heart behind it?

SPEAKER_03: 3:58

Yeah, I think that, you know, as a writer, and this may resonate with you as someone who writes studies, you're always observing, you're always paying attention to common struggles in the church. And in my own church context, where I've been for a very long time, and then also traveling around, speaking, getting into conversations with women at conferences and retreats, I have seen a struggle in recent years and I have wondered how to address it. And it's something I've struggled myself with is Christians who know that God generally loves them, like maybe even generically loves them. Oh, I belong to him, so therefore he has to love me. He saved me and now I stuck with me. But really struggling to believe in a personal individual love from God, that God doesn't just love his people, but he actually loves me, Glenna or you, Teresa. So, you know, I see this problem, and I have wondered what is that? And what how did we get here? And I think it's maybe an overcorrection of some theological shifts. I know that 25 years ago, theologian Don Carson wrote a book called The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God. And it was this very much needed correction to that kind of American Christianized, God is love. He just wants me to be happy, you know, this very permissive God loves me, therefore I can do whatever I want. Well, that's not it, because that's not God's love. God's love corrects and it restores and it chastens and it disciplines and it rescues and it redeems, you know. Um, and so I think that book, which is a fantastic short little treatise on the love of God, by the way, just a little commercial for it, but it came at a time when we really needed it. And now I feel like we've overcorrected to the point that we are so aware of our kind of wretchedness before the Lord, like I'm such a worm, you know, that we've overcorrected and we're confusing our unworthiness of God's love with worthlessness. And that is way too far because God values us. I mean, we are created in his image, he loves us for that reason. We have inherent value. But also when you look at what he has done for us in Jesus, I mean, no one loves us like the Lord loves us. And so I wanted to sort of, I don't know, respond to this problem that I'm seeing in my own church and a lot of other churches and even in my own heart, like feeling like if I am not good enough, I'm gonna lose his love. But you can't lose what you cannot earn. And God's love is not earned, it is given graciously. And so, how do I address this? And one day I'm just reading through Psalm 139, and it just washes over me that this is a beautiful treatise on how God intimately created, is invested in, knows, and loves and delights in his people. And so, kind of reading that with a gospel lens, it's really helped me work through what does it mean for God to delight in his people? And as someone who writes, this is what you do when you're working through something, you write a book on it because you can't stop talking about it and you want other people to benefit from what the Lord has taught you.

SPEAKER_01: 7:07

Yes, that is so beautiful. I was getting chills while you're talking. I'm like, yes, yes. Why do you think? I mean, I know you talked about like theologically there was this shift, but in a in a more personal way, in a way of just the everyday woman who hasn't read that book, you know, sure. Why do you think we struggle so much to believe, to accept, even for me? Like I can stand on a stage and tell women how much God loves them. And yet I can struggle with that in my own heart and really embracing that for myself. Why?

SPEAKER_03: 7:46

I think there's a couple things going on here. I think, first of all, we are so aware of our shortcomings. You know, if you have any level of self-awareness, you see the ugly side of yourself. You know the things that you've done that you're ashamed of. And I think that makes you think, well, God just can't love this. You know, I'm such a mess on the inside. Um, maybe shame for sin is something that we secretly harbor and we think that, well, God can forgive her, but maybe not me for this. But I think underneath what we have done when it comes to God's love is we have imbued his character or put into his character human versions of love. So if we have been poorly loved by someone, that's maybe how we view God's love for us. So, you know, for example, let's say you grow up and you did not have a father who loved you well, or maybe you didn't have a father at all and that was in your life. And so when it you think of God in terms of a loving father, you just have no concept there, or you have a very poor version. And so you sort of put into God's character what you've seen or received from people who were supposed to love you unconditionally. And that's why we need to go to God's word to tell us who he is. This is his revelation of himself. It's what he wants us to know about him. So when we go to God's word and let him tell us who he is, then we can like look at his love and knowledge, which are divine versions, they're not human versions. His knowledge is completely different from ours, his love is different from ours. He is able to be all of his character traits perfectly without denigrating any of the other ones. We as humans can't do that. Our love is often tainted by selfishness or pride or anger or impatience. I mean, I love my children. I would step in front of a train for either one of them with no question at all. But I am gonna fuss at them for their messy rooms and I'm gonna snap an impatience when they don't, you know, hop to it like I've told them to. And God does not do that, he is steadfastly patient. And so I think our struggle at the bottom of disbelieving how he loves us is because we just have so many flawed experiences with human love, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01: 10:08

Yes, yes. You're talking a little bit about God's knowledge and love and how it differs from ours. You know, we can think about, well, God knows everything. Like we know how flawed we are, and certainly he knows how flawed we are. So, how does that, how does his knowledge and love differ from human knowledge and human love?

SPEAKER_03: 10:31

So if you think about knowledge, so when like you and I knowing each other, it is something that happens with time. We get to know each other by spending time with each other. Even if you think about your children, if you have children, you know them, you've known them their whole life. However, you're still getting to know them as they sort of develop in their character. And as my children, you know, my teenager specifically, mom, you don't know everything about me. And, you know, the older he gets, the less I seem to know him. I know when he's about 25, he's gonna think I'm very smart because that's what happened to me. I hit my mid-20s and suddenly my mother is brilliant. Everything she said was true. But um, you know, in human relationships, we have to get to know people. But God never had to get to know you. He has known everything about you, every thought you would think, every word you would speak, every step you would take, every decision, every sin, every thought, every single thing. Before he created the universe, his knowledge has been exhaustive for eternity past, which is kind of a brain-bending thing. But it's not like God accumulates knowledge. So his knowledge is exhaustive and thorough and complete and always has been. That's very different from us. Um, and his knowledge is determinative. So you can know that an apple is red, but God actually makes the apple red. You know, like his knowledge is divine. And it's interesting when you think about Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 and Satan tempting them. He tempted them with God's knowledge. If you eat this, then you will be like God in knowing good from evil. And they were not created to be omniscient. And so, neither, and neither were we. We were not created to know everything. Our minds were not created to be that way. When we try to accrue knowledge, we're trying usually to manipulate outcomes or to distort things. And yeah, we are human, God is God, and and the knowledge that he has is so vastly different from ours. And that's a good thing because yes, he's completely knowledgeable, but he's also completely good, and that makes him trustworthy and he's gonna do all things well. If we had that kind of knowledge, I'm not sure what well, when people do, like they try to control and they're corrupt, and I mean our sin problem just taints everything. And so we can trust his kind of knowledge because he is so good.

SPEAKER_01: 12:57

I love what you were saying. Um, this is kind of a little bit of a rabbit trail, but you were talking about how we were not made to know as much as we do. And I I think the world that we live in and the amount of information that is pouring into us at and the rate is part of the problem. Yeah, agreed. Humanity, you know, that like we're not made to hold all of this, to know everything that we know. And I don't know. Do you have any thoughts about that?

SPEAKER_03: 13:28

Yeah, sometimes when I am like scrolling on my phone, I just have to put it down and think, I was not created to have this kind of information. I don't need news from the entire world, plus someone's morning to evening routine of a person I've never met, you know, plus every criticism or argument on social media, all held in this little glowing thing in my hand, it produces a lot of anxiety and discontentment and frustration and impatience. And my brain was not made for this. And so I just, you know, I think about um I'm reminded suddenly of the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis, of man trying to reach the heavens. And there's so much pride in trying to be all and to know all and to have all the power. We just were not created for this. And I don't really know what point I'm coming to, except to say that it is good for us to know our limitations and to function within the limitations that God has given us.

SPEAKER_01: 14:28

Yeah. Yeah, I just thought I'd throw that out there because it's just part of it's part of scripture that that I liked how you said that that was how Satan tempted them with the knowledge. Like you will know. Um, so we're talking about Psalm 139, and I have more questions about it. And I was thinking originally, like, let's read it at the end to close out the episode, but I'm thinking it might be nice to read it now. Yeah. Just because as we're talking about it, maybe somebody hasn't read it right recently and they don't even know what Psalm 139 is about. So why don't we read it now and then we'll continue discussing it. So if you'll read it for us, I will.

SPEAKER_03: 15:09

It's 24 verses, and it kind of sits in about three distinct parts. Um, so I'll read through starting with Psalm 139, verse 1. Oh Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know, when I sit down and when I rise up, you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, it is high, I cannot attain it. Where shall I go from your spirit, or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed and sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night, even the darkness is not dark to you. The night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you. For you formed my inward parts, you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works, my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance. In your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God, how vast is the sum of them. If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake and I am still with you. Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God, O men of blood, depart from me. They speak against you with malicious intent. Your enemies take your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with complete hatred. I count them my enemies. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.

SPEAKER_01: 17:11

Oh my goodness. So much. So much. Do you have a favorite verse or two in Psalm 139?

SPEAKER_03: 17:18

I know it's um, yeah, it's hard to pick. Um, but I will say one that I have loved for a long time is verse 5. You hem me in behind and before, you lay your hand upon me. And the reason being is that I think that one of the ways that God communicates love to his people, if you are to walk through the whole story of scripture, he communicates love through presence, through committing to be with his people no matter what. So if you go through the story of the Old Testament, you have God uh dwelling his manifest presence with the people of Israel, you know, in coming out of Egypt. And then you have the the tabernacle and then the temple, and then everything changes changes when Jesus comes and walks the earth physically, and then things change again when Jesus ascends to heaven after his resurrection and sends the Holy Spirit a Pentecost. And you have God who loves his people by surrounding them with his presence. I just think that is such a beautiful and encouraging truth. And so that verse, you know, really verses five through 10 where he talks about there's just nowhere I can go that you're not gonna be there. And you get this picture that David kind of paints geographically. If I go up to the heavens, if I go down to Sheol, the grave, you're there. And then he says, if I take the wings of the morning while the sun rises in the east. And then he says, if I go to the far side of the sea, which for him would have been the Mediterranean, which would have been west. So he kind of spans his arms out as far as you could go, you're right there with me, and your right hand holds me fast. I just love the imagery of Hebrew poetry, really. It just paints a beautiful picture that there is nowhere we can go. And that just gives me so much comfort.

SPEAKER_00: 19:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 19:05

I think that particular verse is my favorite, the one that says, if I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of this sea, even there, your hand will lead me, your right hand will hold me fast. And I've thought about that not just for me, but my some of my kids are pretty adventurous and they've gone to the far side of the sea, the other side of the earth. And whenever they have traveled, I remember the first time two of my kids were going to Africa. And I'm I'm watching online this little like map of the airplane going across the globe. And I was like, I didn't know how far away this was. And that verse came to my mind that for my kids, even if they go to the far side of the sea, like God's hand is guiding, he's with them. And I and I loved everything you said about presence and oh, it's so beautiful. It's such an amazing psalm. So, listener, if you don't know Psalm 139, it is a great one to just soak in, to memorize, to meditate on. Um, but when when you read that psalm, it kind of sounds like it's about us, and it also sounds like it's about God. So, which is it? Is it about us or is it about God?

SPEAKER_03: 20:18

I mean, I think it you could say yes, it's about both of us, but I mean, because scripture is God's revelation of himself, it's first about him. I mean, when you read it at first glance, this particular psalm, you see the the um pronouns used. David's like, when I sit, when I rise, when I'm here, when I'm there. But ultimately what he's doing is he's casting us back to, you know, you've searched, you're here, you're there, you're everywhere, you him mean. And he really turns you to, I mean, I think God is the hero of the psalm, as he is in it in all of scripture. This is David telling us, you know, this is who I am, but the only way I have knowledge of myself is through knowledge of who God is first. And that's really, you know, if we want true knowledge of who we are, scripture tells us, but it's helpful for us to first look at scripture through the lens of who is God here? What is he revealing to us about himself? When we see him in his proper um place, then we can see ourselves in our proper place. And so ultimately, I think this psalm is about the God who knows all and the God who delights in his children.

SPEAKER_01: 21:25

Love it. Yes, yes, that's a great answer. Yes, the answer is yes. The answer is yes. Um, what about the person who feels like there's so much shame? Like Glenna, you don't know my story. You don't know what I've done or what's been done to me, or the this podcast, we talk a lot about brokenness. We talk, you know, the listener, any listener has things in their life that they're ashamed of or they're hiding, or they feel like, how can God really love me? Like, what would you say the person who feels like, yeah, God's love is good for you, you good people out there, but not for someone like me.

SPEAKER_03: 22:09

Yeah. Well, first of all, I would say scripture teaches that there's no one who is good, truly. No one seeks after God. The real hero of scripture is that is God who seeks people and makes them his children, and they were his enemies. And that's all of us. We all start off as enemies of God. Paul tells us very clearly in Colossians, he describes us as being alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds. In Ephesians, he says we're dead in our sins. And there's no real hierarchy when it comes to sin. If you have failed in one point of God's law, you're guilty of failing all of it. God's word is very clear. So while some of our sin may feel more shameful, there are some areas of sin, you know, I'm thinking of sexual sin, particularly where people carry so much shame. While it may seem that way, all sin is an offense against God. And so, you know, I am coming to you as a person who's been a believer in Jesus for most of my life. And so some of the worst things that I have done and thought and said have been done and thought and said as a professing Christian. And that brings another kind of shame where the enemy may say to you, God could never forgive you for that. What the enemy says to me is, how can you call yourself a Christian after doing this? And so shame can take a lot of different forms. The thing about shame is that shame lies to us and says to us that we can't be forgiven or that we can't truly walk with Jesus because we've done this. But I, you know, again, God's word says to us, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because Jesus took it all at the cross. So the question you have to ask is, is Jesus' blood enough to cover my sin? And if you think it's enough to cover everyone else's sin but yours, that's actually a pride problem. You're saying that you're an exception to the gospel. But what Jesus says, if the Son has set you free, you are free indeed. And again, in 1 John 1, John tells us that if you um confess your sin, he is faithful and also just. Like it's right for him to forgive your sin and to cleanse you from unrighteousness. No one's an exception to the blood of Jesus. It is powerful, it is enough to save us and save us completely. And so when we are still holding on to feelings of shame for sin that Jesus has paid for, this is when we have to preach the gospel again to ourselves. The gospel saves us, but it also sanctifies us. And we have to, we, we should take those feelings and we should run to the Lord, not cower and shame away from him. He's the one who's dealt with our sin. So where else are we going to go with it? You know, he's the one we should run to. I think of that parable that Jesus told of the prodigal son who squandered his inheritance, and then he comes crawling back, thinking he'll be a servant in his father's house. And what does he find his father doing? Standing there waiting for him. And then when he sees him, the father runs. And and we are supposed to view our father like that father. But we run to him with our sin. We run to him with our shame. Who else is going to dress us in robes of righteousness? And so uh we should not listen to shame, but we should just run to the Lord with it.

SPEAKER_01: 25:33

Yes, and amen. Love that. You're um, I did a series last year called the Shame to Shining series, and that that is resonating with me, just that whole message about the that the cross is enough. It's enough for every sin and for us to for us to come to the cross and say, Yeah, but it's not enough for me. It's exactly right. Like you said, that's pride. It's it's it's a backwards form of pride, but it is pride. It's saying to Jesus, thank you, but it's but it wasn't enough. And how can we dare say that his sacrifice on the cross was not enough? Yes. Um of us, uh oh wait, no, no, no. Sorry. I'm going to I have question eight here, and I think that this one what came from your um sheet. And I'm gonna edit this right here, but it says some of our doubt about God's love for us is rooted in a desire to matter and be remembered in this life. How should God's care for us shape how we think about the years God has given us on the earth?

SPEAKER_03: 26:40

Is that your is that um that is more of a that comes from one of the chapters in the book that stems from um kind of an innate desire to matter, but what if we live really small lives? Like, do our lives matter? You're welcome to skip that and move on to something else if you want to.

SPEAKER_01: 26:55

I'm concept. Um what are we? We we're good on time. Um, but now that I understand the the context of the question, I'll just go ahead and ask it.

SPEAKER_03: 27:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 27:06

Okay, so I have another question. A lot of us, you know, we want we want to be seen, we want to be known. That's a God-given desire, and yet so many of us live very small, maybe seemingly insignificant lives. How can God's love for us, his care for us, shape the way we view our lives, even our small, little, seemingly insignificant lives?

SPEAKER_03: 27:33

I think that the time in which we live right now in the 21st century, living in the American culture of the West, I think we feel a lot of pressure to live big, famous, flashy existences, you know, where we've left this big mark on the world. I think maybe in the time that, you know, Psalm 139 was written, most people were nobodies. And there was no way to be known around the world necessarily. I mean, David would have been an exception, but really just in that part of the world where he lived. And um, but I think for us, because the world is made small by social media and the internet and things like that, uh, we want to be known by everyone. But what really matters is that we are known by God. And so the call that God has given us as Christians, you know, what we want to hear when we die and we close our eyes to this life and open our eyes to our eternal life with Him, what we want to hear is, Well done, my good and faithful servant. And faithfulness is not bound by fame or wealth or influence or popularity. We don't need the Lord to say, Well done, my good and accomplished servant, or well done, my good and wealthy servant, or well done, my good and famous servant, but just faithfulness. And faithfulness is a command and a fruit of the spirit, and that can be lived out in any context, whether the Lord has given you a large sphere of influence, or whether you live in virtual anonymity, just plugging along in a menial job with us, you know, in your house with your family or your town or your small local church or your co-workers where you live. The call to faithfulness can be lived out anywhere. And because your life already matters to the Lord, where he has placed you with whatever size sphere of influence, your obedience is to be faithful with what he's given you. And that's really it. And so, you know, I think of like, um I think of my grandparents, all my grandparents were first generation believers. And so, you know, their faith in Jesus kind of bent the direction that the family tree grew in in a completely different way. And yet, my grandparents were ordinary people, you know, a homemaker, a chiropractor, an electrician, you know, like these were ordinary people. No one would ever know their names outside of where they live. Lived at their time, but they were people who loved Jesus and they loved his word and they loved the local church and they raised their children to believe in Jesus. And then the next generation, my parents, raised their children to believe in Jesus. My parents aren't famous or well known. They have ordinary jobs, ordinary people. And then now my siblings and I, like we're raising all of our children to know and love Jesus. And I think these are ordinary small lives that have eternal, eternal ripple effects. And I just think no matter where you've placed you, where God has placed you, if you are faithful and just obedient and you love Jesus just day in and day out, and you're seeking to follow him, man, that is eternally impactful. And that is that is plenty. That is enough. That's all God's called you to is faithfulness, where he's placed you.

SPEAKER_01: 30:50

Yes, I love that. I just want to, I just want to listen to you talk because everything you're saying, my heart is going, yes, yes. I think about Ruth. You know, her story is she was such an ordinary person. You know, we we read her story and we're like, Ruth, you know, she she did this epic thing of traveling with Naomi. And and yet she would never have known her role. All of the women in the line of Jesus, all the people in the line of Jesus, like they were just living their faithful lives, knowing God, being known by Him, and they weren't out there trying to be famous. I don't, I don't know if that was a thing back then. I mean, maybe it was in some capacity, but not like it is today, not like it is like it is for us. And so you have this whole scripture filled with people who lived ordinary, faithful lives, and and we're now reading their stories, and we're now saying, wow, look at what God did, look at the extraordinary things, look at the way he used Ruth and Naomi, these widows, these nobodies in their town to impact the kingdom of God. And so I love that. I love that. All right, there is a part of the psalm. I know what part it is. It's like, what in the world? So it's verses 19 to 22, where you know, David is praising God, you know me, you love me, you've made me. And then all of a sudden he's like, Slay the wicked away from me, you bloodthirsty men. I hate the people who hate you. So let's talk about um what it kind of feels out of place. It does. What in the world is this portion of the psalm about? And how does it get?

SPEAKER_03: 32:40

Yes. So this is an imprecatory prayer, otherwise known as a prayer of cursing. And it feels wildly out of place at first glance. In fact, someone said to me recently uh in an interview like this, you know, I was memorizing Psalm 139 and then I stopped when I got to that weird part. It's like, don't we all? We have like verses 13 and 14 on a coffee mug. Nobody's putting, oh, that you would slay the wicked on a coffee mug. You know, you're not gonna Instagram that. So what is this doing here? Well, at first it seems out of place, but what you have here, now let me just define an imprecatory prayer. What it is, is it's a prayer for God to bring about what he has already said will happen to those who continually reject him. So, for an example, um, in Psalm one, I think verse four or five, David, or it's not David, but the psalmist says um that the wicked are like chaff that the wind drives away, and that therefore they will not be a part of God's congregation of his people. They will not stand with the congregation of the righteous and they will perish. And it's a statement of fact. And in using that chaff analogy, he's saying there's no root, there's no fruitfulness. He's comparing them to the righteous man who love God's who loves God's law and is like a tree that's firmly rooted by a stream. And he is always flourishing, he is faithful because he's being fed by God's word. So you have this kind of picture of deeply rooted, inconsequential, then piece of chaff that floats away on the wind. So that's Psalm one. The wicked are like chaff. It's a statement. Then you go to Psalm 35, which is an imprecatory psalm. It's a cursing psalm where David says, Let the wicked be as chaff. And so what he's praying there is that the wicked would be, those who reject God, would be what God has said ultimately they will be. So he's praying for God to bring his judgment about. And so that's essentially what an imprecatory prayer is: like, Lord, would you bring about this thing that you have already said will happen? So interestingly, we pray imprecatory prayers all the time without realizing it. So when you pray, and I'm sure you have, and I'm sure your listeners have prayed, come, Lord Jesus. And we pray that all the time because we see all of the things happening in the world, and you see godlessness and uh violence and oppression and uh corruption, and you pray, come, Lord Jesus, and you're praying as you should, for the Lord to come and to make all things right and to give us our resurrection bodies and to take us to the new creation. But when we pray that, we're actually praying for him to bring judgment on those who have rejected him. There's a verse in Revelation 14 that says, uh, when Jesus comes, and we're, you know, make things right. Well, he is, he's gonna come and he's gonna judge the earth. And in Revelation 14, it says that the blood of the wine press of God's wrath will be like 180 plus miles long, like that's how long this river of blood is, and as deep as a horse is tall. This is what happens when judgment happens. I mean, it's like a really gruesome passage. And so when we pray very innocently, oh, come Lord Jesus, we're actually praying for Jesus to enact judgment on the wicked. And it feels very wrong, but it's not wrong to pray for God to bring about justice because God loves justice and he hates oppression. That's very clear in scripture. So when you get to this section in Psalm 139, you're like, what's happening here? Well, think about it. David has praised God for his intimate care and investment. He has praised God for how carefully he makes human life. Then you get to verse uh 19, and he said, he calls the wicked, oh men of blood. These are men who are shedding blood, they are taking human life, which is something that God values. And so they are doing this, and it is in complete uh opposite of what God would have them do. So, what David's saying is, You have made me, you know me, you love me, I'm with you. Like your enemies are my enemies. I am aligning myself in loyalty to you, Lord. And so I hate these men who love what you hate and hate what you love. It's just they are polar opposite of you, but I'm gonna love what you love and I'm gonna hate what you hate. So he's aligning himself with God in loyalty. And I think that's the right response, you know. If God has done all of these things for you, you belong to him, and therefore you need to align and submit yourself to his desires. But at the same time, we are New Testament Christians. You know, we are living on this side of the cross and we know Jesus who said, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. And so it's like, which one is it? Do we pray the impregatory curse or do we love our enemies? And I would say we do both. Because, you know, when you see mass injustice, like I don't know if you're aware of what's happening. Our Nigerian brothers and sisters are being slaughtered by the thousands simply for believing in Jesus. I mean, they the persecution happening in the Nigerian church right now is just an atrocity. So when I look at the news and I see this, my prayer is, Lord, cut off the arm of the wicked, to use kind of a psalmic language, you know, and I'm praying for those oppressors to be stopped. Now, in my flesh, I want to say, Lord, just you know, annihilate all of them. But the thing is that we have to remember is that we were all enemies of God. That's where we all start. And and he sent Jesus to move us from enemy to friend and to daughter and son, and we're gonna share Christ's inheritance for eternity. So when I pray, Lord, cut off the arm of the wicked, ultimately what I should pray is, Lord, save the wicked, save the wicked, shine the light of the gospel into their lives and give them faith to believe. And if they will not, then end their reach as oppressors. And we have to go back to that truth that because God is all-knowing, he knows all motives, he knows all hearts, he's sovereign, he's good, therefore he's gonna handle this the right way. We don't take vengeance, he handles vengeance because he will do it right and he will do its best. And in the end, Jesus will return and right every wrong. And so it's a little complicated and layered, but I think when it comes to a prayer like this, as Christians who know the whole gospel story, we know who we were, we know what God has done in our lives. We pray for justice and mercy. And I I think we pray for both. And so we we leave God to handle things as He will see fit, but we should always long for every lost soul to come to faith in Jesus and be reconciled to God.

SPEAKER_01: 39:20

Yeah, yeah. Justice and mercy. I mean, you you see that Jesus is the perfection of grace and truth. Yeah. You know, and and and that's what that is. It's justice and mercy, all wrapped in one. I love the way you put that, and that kind of helps us kind of put those verses in context and make a little sense out of that where you're right. I I have memorized one Psalm 139, and I get to that and I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing here.

SPEAKER_02: 39:48

It feels so weird coming out of your mouth. Oh, that you would slay the wicked.

SPEAKER_03: 39:52

But you know, that's why we read the Old Testament and the Psalms particularly with a gospel lens. We should always look for Christ. I mean, he said in John 5.39 that the law and the prophets are about him, that scripture is about him. And so we need to read scripture with him and what he has done for us at the cross and mine. And I think it helps us make sense of verses like these.

SPEAKER_01: 40:14

Yes. Oh my goodness. Glenn, I feel like we could talk for hours, but we could. We need to wrap up a little bit. Um, where can people find you and connect with you?

SPEAKER_03: 40:24

Yeah, so I have a website. It's like a good old-fashioned blog from like the early 2000s because I'm 44 and I'm struggling to like make leaps to other areas on the internet. Um, so I it's just glennamarshall.com and I write there not as much when I'm working on a book, which I am right now. So, but uh on social media, I'm at Glena D. Marshall. That's probably the place I'm most active on the social media platforms.

SPEAKER_01: 40:48

I'll have links in the show notes. I always will have links. Um, and I'll have links to your books as well. Um, but in closing, would you speak to the listener who has a hard time believing that God really knows everything about them and loves them with that deep and perfect love?

SPEAKER_03: 41:12

I would say if you doubt that God knows you completely and therefore could possibly love you completely, I want to, because I and I've already said this, I want you to read God's word looking for those truths because it is so easy to look at your life and maybe look at the things you don't have, or maybe the things that have happened to you, and to let your life experience tell you what you think is true about God. But God's word is true and it is truth and it transcends even our experiences and and really can help us interpret our life experiences correctly. I think so often we look at what happens to us and we say, well, this, you know, I didn't get this, therefore God must not love me, or this happened to me and I didn't want it to, therefore, God must not love me. But if we start with scripture as our absolute truth and we see that God is the source of love and we let that be the lens through which we view our life experiences, then it kind of flips the script. And so we start with the premise God is good and he does good, Psalm 119, 68. We start there and then we look at our lives and the things that we don't have or the things that happen to us, and we start with, well, I know God is good, I know he loves me. Therefore, if he has allowed this, he will somehow redeem it and recycle it for my good and for his glory. And I may not see it in this life, but I'll see it in the one to come. So let God's word be the lens through which you view and come to believe what is true about him.

SPEAKER_01: 42:41

Yes, yes, and amen. And thank you, thank you so much for having this conversation with me on beauty and the brokenness. Absolutely. So happy to do it.