Head: Know God's Word | Heart: Love God | Hands: Follow God's Way
Read Psalms 7-8
Head
Psalm 7 depicts a time in David’s life when he needed God to intervene, while Psalm 8 provides a moment for David to reflect and praise God. In Psalm 7 David is being pursued by his enemies and he needs God’s just judgment to keep David safe. This Psalm ends with David giving thanks to God “I will sing praise to the name of the Lord most high.” As we keep reading Psalm 8, David uses language from other scriptures to reveal and remember the truth of who God is. David reflects on Genesis, the first book of The Bible. He thinks about creation; how great His love must be that He created us, simple humans, but gave us so much to rule over and work. What a testament to God’s love for us! These two Psalms are placed side-by-side in the book of Psalms, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they were written back to back or around the same time.
Heart
Reading these Psalms together allows us to see how we can use Psalms in our own lives. When we are struggling, there are Psalms like Psalm 7, that we can read and reflect on to help us remember God will go before us, and no matter what we are going through, we can praise God. There are Psalms, like Psalm 8, that give us beautiful language to praise God with. The authors of the Psalms used their personal experiences and descriptive language to pray and sing back to God. We can do the same thing with Psalms today. When we don’t have the words to express what we are feeling, we can turn to the Psalms and read them like a prayer or song to God! God wants to hear from us, no matter what that means. He doesn’t expect our words to be perfect, he just wants to hear from us.
Hands
God gave us The Bible as a tool to help us learn about Him and grow in our relationship with God. Grab some post-its or note cards, pens, and make notes in your Bible about some key scripture you can turn to. For example, write “Psalm 8 – praise God for creation and giving us life!” on a Post-it and stick it on the page for Psalm 8. Make as many notes in your Bible as you can think of. This will help you create shortcuts to key scripture you can turn to through a variety of circumstances.
Prayer: Dear Lord, thank You for giving us The Bible as an incredible tool! Help me learn to use it to grow in my relationship with You. Thank You for examples of real people in The Bible I can learn from, like David. Please teach me how to turn to You in all circumstances in my life. I love You, God, Amen!