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Praying with Psalms

Mar 12, 2025 | Pastor Matt Peeples

Praying our Doubts

What do we do with doubt? It's easy to think that doubt is the opposite of faith. If you have doubts, that must show a lack of faith. In a world where so many are deconstructing their faith, doubt can feel like the first crack in what you thought was a solid foundation. Isn't faith supposed to be about absolute certainty? When you open up the pages of scripture, you find a much different story. You see people with doubts and uncertainty and a God who meets them in their doubts. In Psalm 73, we see an entire Psalm dedicated to the Psalmist lifting his doubts to the Lord in prayer and finding a deeper, more resilient faith on the other side. Join us as we walk through how to take our doubts to God and find a deeper, more resilient faith on the other side.

 

Psalm 73:1-3, 12-26

1 Truly God is good to Israel,

    to those who are pure in heart.

2 But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled,

    my steps had nearly slipped.

3 For I was envious of the arrogant

    when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

 

12 Behold, these are the wicked;

    always at ease, they increase in riches.

13 All in vain have I kept my heart clean

    and washed my hands in innocence.

14 For all the day long I have been stricken

    and rebuked every morning.

15 If I had said, “I will speak thus,” I would

    have betrayed the generation of your children.

16 But when I thought how to understand this,

    it seemed to me a wearisome task,

17 until I went into the sanctuary of God;

    then I discerned their end.

18 Truly you set them in slippery places;

    you make them fall to ruin.

19 How they are destroyed in a moment,

    swept away utterly by terrors!

20 Like a dream when one awakes,

    O Lord, when you rouse yourself,

you despise them as phantoms.

21 When my soul was embittered,

    when I was pricked in heart,

22 I was brutish and ignorant;

    I was like a beast toward you.

23 Nevertheless, I am continually with you;

    you hold my right hand.

24 You guide me with your counsel,

    and afterward you will receive me to glory.

25 Whom have I in heaven but you?

    And there is nothing on earth

that I desire besides you.

26 My flesh and my heart may fail,

but God is the strength of my heart

and my portion forever.

Series Information

During Lent, our midweek messages will focus on Praying the Psalms. To read over the Psalms is to discover that many of them are not about lofty, high doctrine but about how the human heart works. Our message themes will revolve around the guilt, doubt, anger, fear, hostility, rawness, and white heat of the emotions expressed in the Psalms. Each week, and culminating on Good Friday, where Jesus is praying Psalm 22 from the cross, we will take one of these deep feelings, and instead of expressing it or just discussing it, we will see how they pray it.