There Is None Like You Flute Piece

Lent 2009
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Calendar of Events
February
S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
2/14-15 Marva Dawn will be speaking at Heritage.

An internationally renowned theologian, author, and educator, Marva
serves as Teaching Fellow in Spiritual Theology at Regent College in
Vancouver, BC, Canada. A scholar with several graduate degrees and a
PhD in Christian Ethics and the Scriptures from the University of Notre
Dame, Marva is also a popular preacher and speaker for people of all
ages. She is the author of numerous articles and over 20 books,
several of which have won awards and\or been translated into
Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, and other languages. She has preached
and taught at seminaries, clergy conferences, churches, assemblies,
and universities throughout the world.
2/21-22 The Psalms : An Overview
2/25 Ash Wednesday

Worship service at 7pm
2/28-3/1 Simplicity: When God is our shelter
March
S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 23 25 26 27 28
29 30 31
3/7-8 Sin: When God does not satisfy
3/14-15 Disappointment: When God lets you down
3/21-22 Celebration: When God comes through
3/28-29 Trust: When God is faithful
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April
S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 30
4/4-5 Hope: When death comes near
4/10 Good Friday

Worship service at 7pm
4/12 Easter Sunday

Worship services at 7:00am, 8:45am, 10:15am, 11:45am
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Worship
The theme that we’re pursuing this year at Heritage is “Worship”.

We’ve looked at… [summarize the messages that have already been
completed]. During Lent, we’re immersing ourselves in the Psalms,
and seeking to let their shape form our worship.
Lent
Toward the end of the 4th century, the church began a practice of
setting apart the 40 days before Easter to prepare themselves for the
great celebration of the resurrection of Jesus, which is what Easter
commemorates. This period - Lent - was a time of focused study,
prayer, fasting and preparation for those who were to formally enter
into the church through baptism on Easter Sunday. This preparation
was not just for those who were seeking to enter the church - rather, it
was for the whole community, as the church collectively prepared to
celebrate the wonderful work of faith and redemption that the Holy
Spirit had begun in their hearts. Traditionally, the 40-day period did
not include the Sundays, and so Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent,
occurs 46 days before Easter Sunday.
The season of Lent has fallen into disregard in the contemporary

evangelical church, in part because it has been associated with the sort
of “high church” liturgical worship that some churches have rejected
as ritualistic and lifeless. However, many churches that had originally
rejected formal or deliberate liturgy are now returning to practices
that incarnate biblical spirituality in communal traditions of disciplined
reflection and worship. Observing the season of Lent is one such
communal discipline, which we at Heritage practice, to bring our
entire church together in a focused practice of preparing our hearts for
the work of God among us.
As we enter together into this Lenten journey this year, we come to

the Psalms. One hundred and fifty pieces of poetry, simple and
complex, comforting and harsh, triumphant and defeated, rejoicing in
righteousness and despondent in sin… words from the heart to God,
to people in the presence of God, from people who had learned that
when all is said and done, what remains is what is said to God, what is
heard from God, what is done by God and what is done in response to
God.
There are so many ways to enter into this wonderful book, and the
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particular approach we’ve chosen during Lent is to see the Psalms as
our framework of expressive worship through the changing seasons of
life. The Psalms keep us engaged with God at a heart level through
every up and down that life brings our way.
We begin a simple life in God, our shelter in the storm. He is our safe
place, the one in whom we hope, the one we seek to follow, the one
who promises to satisfy our soul.
To our grief, we are sometimes drawn to find satisfaction elsewhere,

and that is the essence of sin.
There are times when we pray, and trust, and petition, and keep
seeking him, and he lets us down – he does not meet our expectations
nor does he fulfill our hopes. We are disappointed, discouraged,
depressed.
And there are times when he comes through for us in a time when we
had all but given up. We celebrate his goodness to us.
We look back on a life of journeying with him, and realize that he has
been faithful to us in good times and bad. He’s been with us when we
sensed him and when we didn’t. And he has been faithful… and we
find within our hearts a deep trust in this God we love & worship.
And in the end, as life draws to a close, we find a confident hope

within us, for our times are in his hand.
In all these seasons, God is the one we are called to listen to, to sense,
to be aware of, to speak to, to pour out our hearts to… If the Psalms
show us anything, it is that the people of God are always seeking to be
in communion with God, turning to him in every season of life, in good
times and bad. The depth of faith that the Psalms show us isn’t
reflected in how well the psalmists handled the vicissitudes of life – it is
seen simply in that they are always talking with God, crying out to him,
celebrating with him, proclaiming his praises, grieving their sin,
lamenting their tragedies, remembering his steadfast love &
faithfulness. He is the context of their lives, and he is the context of
ours. It is in God that we live and move and have our being, and to the
extent we live in that awareness, and express that awareness to our
God with utter honesty, speaking, waiting, listening, responding… to
that extent we bring him true worship.
Our reflection & meditation through the season of Lent will take us
through these six selected seasons of our heart – Simplicity, Sin,
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Disappointment, Celebration, Faithfulness, and Hope. We will learn
with the psalmists to live life in honesty in God’s presence, pouring out
the depths of our heart to him, finding in that catharsis the healing
and trust and restoration that we need.
Most of all, God seeks to be in simple, honest and constant

relationship with us – and when we learn to be in real relationship with
him & with others in his presence – through every season of life, we
find ourselves being transformed, changed, healed, renewed.
These themes will guide our communal life as a church through our
journey together during Lent. The weekend messages will explore
these themes as they emerge from the text. And our weekday
disciplines as a church will focus on spiritual practices that guide us
into studying these themes, reflecting upon them, praying through
them, learning to live them out - as individuals and in community,
pursuing God in the company of friends.
Spiritual Disciplines
Richard Foster, in his book The Celebration of Discipline, writes:

“Superficiality is the curse of our age... The desperate need today is not for
a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep
people.” The pathway to being deep people, deeply immersed in the
life of Jesus and living life from that place is the pathway of regular
disciplined practices of engaging with God, his Word, his people and
his world: practices that we commonly term spiritual disciplines. As
Dallas Willard puts it, the spiritual disciplines are "simply a matter of
following Jesus into his own practices, appropriately modified to suit our
own condition." During this season of Lent, we at Heritage are going to
focus on a particular set of disciplines around the Psalms, and practice
these disciplines in a weekly cycle.
These disciplines will take time. We suggest an undistracted period of

15 minutes daily, a time where your heart and mind and soul are
genuinely able to enter into the discipline.
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The Week
We’ll begin the week on Sunday with reading the Psalm that we’re
focusing on that week. We’ll read the text, and pick out a verse or
passage that catches our attention. We’ll set ourselves the goal of
memorizing that verse or passage by the end of the week.
On Monday we’ll read a reflection on the psalms, with the intent of

being equipped to study the Psalms with attention and care. The
reflections are chosen from a range of writers whose work we
recommend highly. If you find a particular reflection of singular
interest to you, get the book from which it’s taken. We hope that the
writers, books and reflections chosen encourage you to read their
work on the Psalms.
On Tuesday we’ll spend our time reflecting on what we’ve read in the
text, what we heard in the weekend message at the service and what
we read on Monday. This will be a period of being quiet in our hearts
before God and his word, asking him to speak to us, listening to him,
waiting on him.
On Wednesday we’ll journal & pray. We’ll write down whatever we

sense God speaking to us from the text, from the message, from our
reading. Our prayer will simply be a reflection back to God of all that
has entered our hearts and minds as we’ve engaged with the text, as
we’ve reflected upon it. The more adventurous among us are
encouraged to actually re-write the Psalm of the week, speaking to
God from our own contexts & circumstances.
On Thursday we’ll share all that God has been showing us to one or
two trusted friends, companions on the journey. We’ll pray for each
other.
On Friday we’ll make commitments. We’ll take all that God has
spoken to us about, and translate that into specific commitments that
we will practice. We’ll share those commitments with our friends, our
companions on the journey, for help and support in staying obedient.
Our hope is that through the few weeks that we practice these
disciplines, God will transform us as individuals and as a community of
faith (as we discuss these things in our life-groups), that he would
draw us closer to his heart and to each other. Our hope is that these
disciplined practices will form us into becoming a true offering of
worship to our Lord Jesus.
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Resources
We’ve selected a range of resources that you will find helpful for
further study and reflection on the Psalms.
Sermon
You may listen to each week’s message online at
http://www.heritagecc.org/message-archive/
Commentaries
Tremper Longman III & David Garland, “The Expositor’s Bible
Commentary : Psalms”, 2008
John Goldingay, “Psalms”, volumes 1-3, 2006-08
James L. Mays, “Psalms”, 1994
Books
Patrick Henry Reardon, “Christ in the Psalms”, 2000
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible”, 1970
John D. Witvliet, “The Biblical Psalms in Christian Worship”, 2007
Nahum M. Sarna, “On the Book of Psalms: Exploring the Prayers of

Ancient Israel”, 1993
C.S. Lewis, “Reflections on the Psalms”, 1958
Walter Brueggemann, “The Message of the Psalms”, 1984
Audio
Bruce Waltke, “The Psalms”, available at
http://tinyurl.com/6lwp29
Eugene Peterson, “The Psalms”, available at

http://tinyurl.com/6l5dc6
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Preparation Week: The Psalms
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Sermon Notes
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Sunday, February 22, 2009
Read : Psalm 86
Hear me, LORD, and answer me,

for I am poor and needy.
Guard my life, for I am faithful to you;
save your servant who trusts in you.
You are my God;
have mercy on me, Lord,
for I call to you all day long.
Bring joy to your servant, Lord,
for I put my trust in you.
You, Lord, are forgiving and good,

abounding in love to all who call to you.
Hear my prayer, LORD;
listen to my cry for mercy.
When I am in distress, I call to you,
because you answer me.
Among the gods there is none like you, Lord;

no deeds can compare with yours.
All the nations you have made
will come and worship before you, Lord;
they will bring glory to your name.
For you are great and do marvelous deeds;
you alone are God.
Teach me your way, LORD,

that I may rely on your faithfulness;
give me an undivided heart,
that I may fear your name.
I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart;
I will glorify your name forever.
For great is your love toward me;
you have delivered me from the depths,
from the realm of the dead.
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Arrogant foes are attacking me, O God;
a band of ruthless people seeks my life—
they have no regard for you.
But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God,
slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.
Turn to me and have mercy on me;
show your strength in behalf of your servant
and save the son of a woman
who served you before me.
Give me a sign of your goodness,

that my enemies may see it and be put to shame,
for you, LORD, have helped me and comforted me.
Psalm 86, TNIV
Choose a passage to memorize. Write it down below.
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Monday, February 23, 2009
Study: You…
From Psalm 86:
You are my God (v2)
You, Lord, are forgiving and good,

abounding in love to all who call to you. (v5)
For you are great and do marvelous deeds;

you alone are God (v10)
But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God,

slow to anger, abounding in love
and faithfulness (v15)
…you, Lord, have helped me and comforted me. (v17)
The Psalms are addressed to a known, named, identifiable You.
This is not some remote God, or distant concept, or religious

abstraction.
The Psalmists are talking to someone familiar… someone with whom

they share a past. And they take on the past of the people of God who
have gone before them as their own past, their own story.
God has been faithful to those who have gone before them, and
therefore he will be faithful to them.
God has been merciful to those who have gone before them, and
therefore he will be merciful to them.
They are his people; he is their God – no matter what is going on

around them, among them, within them.
It is within this context, these memories, this story, that they speak…
And their speech is simple, not complex… no guarded phrases that

hide the heart. Everything is wide open, no hesitation, no reticence.
No practiced phrases that hide reality…
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Here is the rawness of the broken heart crying out in hurt and anger
toward God…
Here is the untrammeled exuberance of the one who thought it was all
over and it wasn’t – God came through…
Here is the unprocessed grief over sin…
Here is the deep and settled peace of the forgiven.
And they speak to God – to You. No complicated titles or labels that

distance – a simple You that is more real than anything else in their
experience.
From Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim: The Early Masters, 1947
Where I wander – You!

Where I ponder – You!
Only You, You again, always You!
You! You! You!
When I am gladdened – You!
When I am saddened – You!
You! You! You!
Sky is You! Earth is You!
You above! You below!
In every trend, at every end,
You! You! You!
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Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Reflect
Reflect on what you’ve read this week.
Here are some questions to guide you in reflection.
1. Describe one of your closest friends, or if you are married,

describe your spouse. Do you think you could anticipate what
they would think or say in a given circumstance?
2. Describe God. Do you think you could anticipate what he

would think or say in a given circumstance?
3. Would you describe your relationship with God as having a

comfortable & familiar aspect to it?
4. To what degree are you aware of God’s presence as you go

about your day?
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Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Journal
Today is Ash Wednesday, which marks the first day of Lent, the period
of forty days before Easter. It is so called because of the Church’s
tradition of making the sign of the cross on people’s foreheads with
ash, reflecting the ancient biblical sign of penitence and of Christian
witness (see, for instance, Job 42:5-6).
Write down your thoughts as you reflect on this week’s material.
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Thursday, February 26, 2009
Pray
What have you heard God speaking to you about? Respond to him, in
quietness or in speech. Tell him what is going on within you. Write it
down, if you find it helpful to focus your heart.
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Friday, February 27, 2009
Commit
As you’ve read, studied, reflected, journaled and prayed through this

week’s reading, what changes in your life do you sense Jesus leading
you into? What one commitment are you being led to make?
Write it down.
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Saturday, February 28, 2008
Act
What actions can you take today that will put your commitment into
practice?
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Week 1: Simplicity
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Sermon Notes
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Week 1: Simplicity
Read
Blessed are those

who do not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
but who delight in the law of the LORD

and meditate on his law day and night.
They are like a tree planted by streams of water,

which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.
Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff

that the wind blows away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,

but the way of the wicked will be destroyed.
Psalm 1, TNIV
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Week 1: Simplicity
Monday, March 2, 2009
Study
A text has texture. Words, woven into a fabric of meaning, have a

characteristic feel to them. When our fingers touch textiles, we know
what they are good for by their feel – silk for hair ribbons, denim for
bib overalls, wool for a ski sweater. When our eyes go over the words
of a text and our tongues and lips reproduce the sound of the words,
we get a feel for how they are being used and how to take them.
Getting the feel of the text is prerequisite to getting its meaning, for if
we don’t know how to take words, we will probably take them
incorrectly. When we hear words spoken, we pick this up easily
through tone and rhythm. Words spoken harshly and jerkily mean one
thing, softly and languidly another, and in measured monotone still
another – the dictionary meaning of the words is the same each time;
the intended and received meaning different. When we read words
that are written, we compensate for loss of voice by observing how the
words are arranged in the loom of the text. As we discern the texture,
we know how to take the text.
The Psalms are poetry and the Psalms are prayer: this is the texture of
the text.
Poetry is language used with personal intensity. It is not, as so many

suppose, decorative speech. Poets tell us what our eyes, blurred with
too much gawking, and our ears, dulled with too much chatter, miss
around and within us. Poets use words to drag us into the depth of
reality itself. They do it not by reporting on how life is, but by pushing-
pulling us into the middle of it. Poetry grabs for the jugular. Far from
being cosmetic language, it is intestinal. It is root language. Poetry
doesn’t so much tell us something we never knew as bring into
recognition what is latent, forgotten, overlooked or suppressed. The
Psalms text is almost entirely in this kind of language. Knowing this,
we will not be looking here primarily for ideas about God, or for
direction in moral conduct. We will expect, rather, to find the
experience of being human before God exposed and sharpened.
Prayer is language used in personal relation to God. It gives utterance

to what we sense or want or respond to before God. God speaks to us;
our answers are our prayers. The answers are not always articulate:
silence, sighs, groaning – these also constitute responses. The answers
are not always positive: anger, skepticism, curses – these also are
responses. But always God is involved, whether in darkness or light,
whether in faith or despair. This is hard to get used to. Our habit is to
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talk about God, not to him. We love discussing God. The Psalms resist
these discussions. They are not provided to teach us about God, but
to train us in responding to him. We don’t learn the Psalms until we
are praying them.
This texture, the poetry and the prayer, accounts for both the
excitement and difficulty in dealing with this text. The poetry requires
that we deal with our actual humanity – these words dive beneath the
surfaces of prose and pretense, straight into the depths. We are more
comfortable with prose, the laid-back language of arms-length
discourse. The prayer requires that we deal with God – this God who is
determined on nothing less than the total renovation of our lives.
Eugene Peterson, in Answering God, 1989
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Week 1: Simplicity
Tuesday, March 3, 2008
Reflect
1. If you could pick five words that describe your life today, what
would they be?
2. When you read Psalm 1, do you find that it matches your

experience of life so far?
3. Have you ever felt that your understanding of God and faith
are inadequate to deal with the realities of your life?
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Week 1: Simplicity
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Journal
Write down your thoughts as you reflect on this week’s material.
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Week 1: Simplicity
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Pray
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Week 1: Simplicity
Friday, March 6, 2009
Commit

week’s material, what changes in your life do you sense Jesus leading
Write it down.
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Week 1: Simplicity
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Act
practice?
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Week 2: Sin
Sermon Notes
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Week 2: Sin
Read
For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan
came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.
Have mercy on me, O God,

according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.
Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my transgressions,

and my sin is always before me.
Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight;
so you are right in your verdict
and justified when you judge.
Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb;
you taught me wisdom in that secret place.
Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;

wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
Hide your face from my sins
and blot out all my iniquity.
Create in me a pure heart, O God,

and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me from your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
Then I will teach transgressors your ways,

and sinners will turn back to you.
Deliver me from bloodguilt, O God,
you who are God my Savior,
and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.
Open my lips, Lord,
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and my mouth will declare your praise.
You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart
you, God, will not despise.
May it please you to prosper Zion,

to build up the walls of Jerusalem.
you will delight in the sacrifices of the righteous,
in burnt offerings offered whole;
then bulls will be offered on your altar.
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Week 2: Sin
Study
From James L. Mays, The Lord Reigns, 1994.
In his Confessions, Augustine tells how he used the psalms in a

period of retreat between his conversion and baptism. “What
utterances sent I unto Thee, my God, when I read the Psalms of
David, those faithful songs and sounds of devotion… What
utterances I used to send up unto Thee in those Psalms, and
how was I inflamed toward Thee by them” (IX, 4). For Augustine
it was a time of preparation for a different life, of initiation into a
new existence, a period in which habits of thought, customs of
practice, and feelings about self and others and the world had to
be reconstituted. As part of the transformation, he was learning
a new language. He spoke the psalms to and before the
Christian God, who was now source and subject of his faith and
life. He took their vocabulary and sentences as his own. He
identified himself with the speaker of the psalms. He said the
psalms as his words, let his feelings be evoked and led by their
language, spoke the words that resonated in his own
consciousness in concord with those of the psalms. He was
acquiring a language world that went with his new identity as a
Christian. It was the vocabulary of prayer and praise, the “first
order” language that expressed the sense of self and world that
comes with faith in the God to whom, of whom, and for whom
the psalms speak.
Augustine’s engagement with the psalms was not unique, but

was typical of early Christianity. In his use of them, he was
entering into a practice that went back to the first generations of
the church. What was true for him held for the church at large.
Of course, not with the same profundity and intensity.
Augustine was Augustine. But his experience was
representative.
From Eugene Peterson in Answering God, 1989
This is the testimony of someone who began to take seriously the

practice of praying through the Psalms regularly.
One of the key things that praying the Psalms has sensitized me
to is how much our individualistic and technological society
works against any inclinations we may have to engage in
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intimate gut-level dialogue with God.
Having spent more than half of my life in school being fed

information, and four years in college learning specifically how
to use motivational language to manipulate people into buying
things (I was a media/marketing major), learning that the Psalms
have been used throughout the church’s history as tools to train
the church in the conversion of language hit me with
revolutionary force. It makes sense, in our print-oriented society,
that the word of God should come to be seen as a static
collection of recorded words, rather than a dynamic oral
dialogue in which God continues to speak and we continue to
answer.
It has been exciting to discover that using the Psalms to pray

connects us with the struggles and responses of all of God’s
people throughout history. And how, in our fast-paced and
noisy society, praying the Psalms can slow us down and cause us
to tune into the softer rhythms of nature which are often snuffed
out in our frenzy of activity.
In my experience of praying the Psalms, I have felt as if I have

been suddenly been given the ears to hear the dialogue that has
been going on between God and man and to find myself as a
participant in the conversation. I have found that praying the
Psalms has taken the focus of my prayer off of my needs and
ability to do, and put it unto God’s power and activity. I have
come to see the Psalms as a guide to reciting the particularities
of the battle God is waging against the enemies of his people.
As I speak the words of the psalmist, my story merges with his

story, widening my perception of God and self beyond my own
subjective feelings. In the Psalms, I can see the transformation
of the psalmist’s anger and hostility as God gives him new hope
and strength. Although at the moment I am praying I may not
be experiencing the intensity of pain the psalmist is, reciting his
words lessen my fear about the prospects of being in a situation
of suffering because I am encouraged by how God has worked
in the psalmist’s life. Likewise when I find myself praying a
psalm of joy on a day when I feel sad, I am able to hold onto the
hope of the psalmist and remember the times God has done
great things in my life.
Although praying the Psalms every day over the past few weeks
has given me a real sense of the discipline which flows from
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seeing the Psalms as a way of connecting myself with God’s
historical community, I have not yet begun to speak the
language myself with deep emotion or let its rhythms flow
through my whole person. I must still mature in the area of
letting the Psalms become a means of praying out my anger and
hostility and slowing me down in the midst of the craziness of
life.
From Nahum Sarna, On the Book of Psalms, 1993
A Jew from Yemen once told me how he celebrated his bar

mitzvah back in the land of his birth. The family was desperately
poor; there were no parties, no gifts, no excitement, no
speeches. The boy simply went to the synagogue on the
designated Sabbath morning and read the appropriate portion
of the Torah with the traditional blessings before and after. But
what left an indelible impression on him, the experience that
continues to move him deeply even forty years later, was staying
up all the previous night with his grandfather, and together
reciting the entire Book of Psalms.
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Week 2: Sin
Reflect
1. What patterns of temptation to sin do you see in your life?
2. Why do you think that you are more prone to these

temptations than any others?
3. Imagine discussing these temptations with God. What do you

think he might say to you as a means to protect you from sin?
4. Now recollect a time when you’ve just fallen into temptation

and sinned. What do you think a genuine conversation with
God at this point might look like?
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Week 2: Sin
Journal
Write down your thoughts on this week’s reading.
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Week 2: Sin
Pray
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Week 2: Sin
Commit

Write it down.
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Week 2: Sin
Act
practice?
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Week 3: Disappointment
Sermon Notes
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Read
Surely God is good to Israel,

to those who are pure in heart.
But as for me, my feet had almost slipped;

I had nearly lost my foothold.
For I envied the arrogant
when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
They have no struggles;

their bodies are healthy and strong.a
They are free from common human burdens;
they are not plagued by human ills.
Therefore pride is their necklace;
they clothe themselves with violence.
From their callous hearts comes iniquityb;
the evil conceits of their minds know no limits.
They scoff, and speak with malice;
with arrogance they threaten oppression.
Their mouths lay claim to heaven,
and their tongues take possession of the earth.
Therefore their people turn to them
and drink up waters in abundance.c
They say, “How would God know?
Does the Most High know anything?”
This is what the wicked are like—

always free of care, they go on amassing wealth.
Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure

and have washed my hands in innocence.
All day long I have been afflicted,
and every morning brings new punishments.
If I had spoken out like that,

I would have betrayed your children.
When I tried to understand all this,
it troubled me deeply
till I entered the sanctuary of God;
then I understood their final destiny.
/40
Surely you place them on slippery ground;
you cast them down to ruin.
How suddenly are they destroyed,
completely swept away by terrors!
They are like a dream when one awakes;
when you arise, Lord,
you will despise them as fantasies.
When my heart was grieved

and my spirit embittered,
I was senseless and ignorant;
I was a brute beast before you.
Yet I am always with you;

you hold me by my right hand.
You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will take me into glory.
Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.
Those who are far from you will perish;

you destroy all who are unfaithful to you.
But as for me, it is good to be near God.
I have made the Sovereign LORD my refuge;
I will tell of all your deeds.
Psalm 73, TNIV
/41
Study : Orientation, Disorientation & New Orientation
The following discussion is organized around three quite general

themes, poems of orientation, poems of disorientation, and poems of
new orientation. It is suggested that the Psalms can be roughly
grouped this way, and the flow of human life characteristically is
located either in the actual experience of one of these settings or is in
movement from one to another. By organizing our discussion in this
way, we propose a correlation between the gains of critical study and
the realities of human life…
a) Human life consists in satisfied seasons of well-being that evoke

gratitude for the constancy of blessing. Matching this we will
consider “psalms of orientation,” which in a variety of ways
articulate the joy, delight, goodness, coherence and reliability
of God, God’s creation, God’s governing law.
b) Human life consists in anguished seasons of hurt, alienation,

suffering and death. These evoke rage, resentment, self-pity
and hatred. Matching this, we will consider “psalms of
disorientation,” poems and speech-forms that match the
season in its ragged, painful disarray. This speech, the lament,
has a recognizable shape that permits the extravagance,
hyperbole and abrasiveness needed for the experience.
c) Human life consists in turns of surprise when we are

overwhelmed by the new gifts of God, when joy breaks
through the despair. Where there has been only darkness,
there is light. Corresponding to this surprise of the gospel, we
will consider “psalms of new orientation,” which speak boldly
about a new gift from God, a fresh intrusion that makes all
things new. These psalms affirm a sovereign God who puts
humankind in a new situation. In this way it is proposed that
psalm forms correspond to seasons of human life and bring
these seasons to speech. The move of the seasons is
transformational and not developmental; that is, the move is
never obvious, easy or “natural”. It is always in pain and
surprise, and in each age it is thinkable that a different move
might have been made.
But human life is not simply an articulation of a place in which we find

ourselves. It is also a movement from one circumstance to another,
/42
changing and being changed, finding ourselves surprised by a new
circumstance we did not expect, resistant to a new place, clinging
desperately to the old circumstance.
So we will suggest that the life of faith expressed in the Psalms is

focused on the two decisive moves of faith that are always underway, by
which we are regularly surprised and which we regularly resist.
One move we make is out of a settled orientation into a season of

disorientation. This move is experienced partly as changed
circumstance, but it is much more a personal awareness and
acknowledgement of the changed circumstance. This may be an
abrupt or a slowly dawning acknowledgement. It constitutes a
dismantling of the old, known world and a relinquishment of safe,
reliable confidence in God’s good creation. The movement of
dismantling includes a rush of negativities, including rage, resentment,
guilt, shame, isolation, despair, hatred and hostility.
It is that move which characterizes much of the Psalms in the form of

complaint and lament. The lament psalm is a painful, anguished
articulation of a move into disarray and dislocation. The lament is a
candid, even if unwilling, embrace of a new situation of chaos, now
devoid of the coherence that marks God’s good creation. The sphere
of disorientation may be quite personal and intimate, or it may be
massive and public. Either way, it is experienced as a personal end of
the world, or it would not generate such passionate poetry.
That dismantling move is a characteristically Jewish move, one that

evokes robust resistance and one that does not doubt that even the
experience of disorientation has to do with God and must be
vigorously addressed to God. For Christian faith that characteristically
Jewish embrace of and articulation of disorientation is decisively
embodied in the crucifixion of Jesus. That event and memory become
the model for all “dying” that must be done in faith. That is why some
interpreters have found it possible to say that the voice of lamentation
in the book of Psalms is indeed the voice of the Crucified One. I do not
go so far, and prefer to say that the Christian use of the Psalms is
illuminated and required by the crucifixion, so that in the use of the
Psalms we are moving back and forth among reference to Jesus, the
voice of the Psalm itself, and our own experiences of dislocation,
suffering and death. There are, of course, important distinctions
among lament psalms. Thus psalms of the innocent sufferer more
directly apply to Jesus than do the psalms of penitence. Nonetheless,
taken as a whole, that dimension of the history of Jesus is a major
point of contact for lament psalms.
/43
The other move we make is a move from a context of disorientation to a
new orientation, surprised by a new gift from God, a new coherence
made present to us just when we thought all was lost. This move
entails a departure from the “pit” of chaos just when we had suspected
we would never escape. It is a departure inexplicable to us, to be
credited only to the intervention of God. This move of departure to
new life includes a rush of positive responses, including delight,
amazement, wonder, awe, gratitude, and thanksgiving.
The second move also characterizes many of the Psalms, in the form of
songs of thanksgiving and declarative hymns that tell a tale of a
decisive time, an inversion, a reversal of fortune, a rescue, deliverance,
saving, liberation, healing. The hymnic psalm is a surprising, buoyant
articulation of a move of the person or community into a new life-
permitting and life-enhancing context where God’s way and will
surprisingly prevail. Such hymns are a joyous assertion that God’s rule
is known, visible and effective just when we had lost hope.
That astonishing move is a characteristically Jewish move, one beyond

reasonable expectation, one that evokes strident doxology because
the new gift of life must be gladly and fully referred to God. For
Christian faith that characteristic Jewish articulation and reception of
new orientation is decisively embodied in the resurrection of Jesus.
That is why the church has found it appropriate to use such hymns
with particular reference to Easter. This means that the use of these
hymns and songs of thanksgiving moves back and forth among
references to Jesus’ new life, to the voice of Israel’s glad affirmation,
and to our own experiences of new life surprisingly granted.
Walter Brueggemann, in The Message of the Psalms, 1984
/44
Reflect
Reflect on what you’ve read this week, in silence.
1. Has there been a time in your life where you felt utterly
depressed? Despondent? Abandoned by God?
2. Have you ever experienced what appeared to you to be

inexplicable and unjust suffering?
3. Where was God in these times?
4. Have you talked this through with him? What resolution did
you find? Where does this conversation leave you in terms of
your relationship with God?
/45
Journal
/46
Pray
/47
Commit

Write it down.
/48
Act
practice?
/49
Week 4: Celebration
Sermon Notes
/50
Week 4: Celebration
Read
Sing to the LORD a new song,

for he has done marvelous things;
his right hand and his holy arm
have worked salvation for him.
The LORD has made his salvation known
and revealed his righteousness to the nations.
He has remembered his love
and his faithfulness to the house of Israel;
all the ends of the earth have seen
the salvation of our God.
Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth,
burst into jubilant song with music;
make music to the LORD with the harp,
with the harp and the sound of singing,
with trumpets and the blast of the ram’s horn—
shout for joy before the LORD, the King.
Let the sea resound, and everything in it,

the world, and all who live in it.
Let the rivers clap their hands,
let the mountains sing together for joy;
let them sing before the LORD,
for he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness
and the peoples with equity.
Psalm 98, TNIV
Choose a passage to memorize. Write it down below
/51
Week 4: Celebration
Study
Hallelujah!
Praise God in his holy house of worship,

praise him under the open skies;
Praise him for his acts of power,
praise him for his magnificent greatness;
Praise with a blast on the trumpet,
praise by strumming soft strings;
Praise him with castanets and dance,
praise him with banjo and flute;
Praise him with cymbals and a big bass drum,
praise him with fiddles and mandolin.
Let every living, breathing creature praise GOD!
Hallelujah!
Psalm 150, The Message
When I first began to draw near to belief in God (and even for some
time after) I found a stumbling block in the demand so clamorously
made by all religious people that we should “praise” God: still more in
the suggestion the God Himself demanded it. We all despise the
person who demands continued assurance of his own virtue,
intelligence, or delightfulness; we despise still more the crowd of
people round every dictator, every millionaire, every celebrity, who
gratify that demand. Worse still was the statement put into God’s own
mouth, “What I most want is to be told that I am good and great.”
It is perhaps easiest to begin to understand praise with inanimate

objects. What do we mean when we say that a picture is “admirable”?
The sense in which the picture “deserves” or “demands” admiration is
this: that admiration is the correct, adequate or appropriate response
to it; that is if we do not admire, we shall be stupid, insensible, and
great losers, we shall have missed something. Many objects both in
Nature and in Art may be said to deserve, or merit, or demand
admiration.
But the most obvious fact about praise—whether of God or

anything—strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of
compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that
all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise. The world rings
with praise—lovers praising their beloved, readers praising their
/52
favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their
favorite game—praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors,
horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers,
mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or
scholars. I had not noticed how the humblest, and at the same time
most balanced and spacious minds, praised most, while the cranks,
misfits, and malcontents praised least. The good critics found
something to praise in many imperfect works; the bad ones
continually narrowed the list of books we might be allowed to read.
Praise almost seems to be inner health made audible. The worthier the
object, the more intense this delight would be. Praise not merely
expresses, but completes the enjoyment. It is not out of compliment
that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the
delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have
discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good
she is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain
valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent
because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in
the ditch.
CS Lewis in Reflections on the Psalms, 1964
/53
Week 4: Celebration
Reflect
1. When was the last time God came through for you when you
had all but given up hope?
2. How would you recount your experience of it? Do you think

you could write a psalm of celebration and thanksgiving to
God that retells the story?
3. What can you do that will keep this experience of God’s

deliverance alive for you the next time you are tempted to
despair?
/54
Week 4: Celebration
Journal
/55
Week 4: Celebration
Pray
/56
Week 4: Celebration
Commit

Write it down.
/57
Week 4: Celebration
Act
practice?
/58
Week 5: Faithfulness
Sermon Notes
/59
Read
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good.

His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the God of gods.
Give thanks to the Lord of lords:
to him who alone does great wonders,
who by his understanding made the heavens,
who spread out the earth upon the waters,
who made the great lights—
the sun to govern the day,
the moon and stars to govern the night;
to him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt

and brought Israel out from among them
with a mighty hand and outstretched arm;
to him who divided the Red Seab asunder

and brought Israel through the midst of it,
but swept Pharaoh and his army into the Red Sea;
to him who led his people through the wilderness;

to him who struck down great kings,

and killed mighty kings—
Sihon king of the Amorites
/60
and Og king of Bashan—
and gave their land as an inheritance,
an inheritance to his servant Israel.
He remembered us in our low estate

and freed us from our enemies.
He gives food to every creature.
Give thanks to the God of heaven.

Psalm 136, TNIV
Choose a passage to memorize. Write it down below
/61
Study : Praying the Psalms
Most Christians for most of the Christian centuries have learned to

pray by praying the Psalms. The Hebrews, with several centuries of a
head start on us in matters of prayer and worship, provided us with
this prayer book that gives us a language adequate for responding to
the God who speaks to us
The stimulus to paraphrase the Psalms into a contemporary idiom
comes from my lifetime of work as a pastor. As a pastor I was charged
with, among other things, teaching people to pray, helping them to
give voice to the entire experience of being human, and to do it both
honestly and thoroughly. I found that it was not as easy as I expected.
Getting started is easy enough. The impulse to pray is deep within us,
at the very center of our created being, and so practically anything will
do to get us started - “help” and “thanks” are our basic prayers. But
honesty and thoroughness don’t come quite as spontaneously.
Faced with the prospect of conversation with a holy God who speaks
worlds into being, it is not surprising that we have trouble. We feel
awkward and out of place: “I’m not good enough for this. I’ll wait until I
clean up my act and prove that I am a decent person.” Or we excuse
ourselves on the grounds that our vocabulary is inadequate: “Give me
a few months - or years - to practice prayers that are polished enough
for such a sacred meeting. Then I won’t feel so stuttering and ill at
ease.”
My usual response when presented with these difficulties is to put the
Psalms in a person’s hand and say, “Go home and pray these. You’ve
got wrong ideas about prayer; the praying you find in these Psalms will
dispel the wrong ideas and introduce you to the real thing.” A
common response of those who do what I ask is surprise - they don’t
expect this kind of thing in the Bible. They’re shocked to read Psalms
6:1-2: “Please, God, no more yelling, no more trips to the woodshed.
Treat me nice for a change; I’m so starved for affection. Can’t you see
I’m black and blue, beat up badly in bones and soul? God, how long
will it take for you to let up?” or Psalm 71:12-14: “God, don’t just watch
from the sidelines. Come on! Run to my side! My accusers - make them
lose face. Those out to get me - make them look like idiots, while I
stretch out, reaching for you, and daily add praise to praise.” And then
I express surprise at their surprise: “Did you think these would be the
prayers of nice people? Did you think the psalmists’ language would
be polished and polite?”
/62
Untutored, we tend to think that prayer is what good people do when
they are doing their best. It is not. Inexperienced, we suppose that
there must be an insider language that must be acquired before God
takes us seriously in our prayer. There is not. Prayer is elemental, not
advanced, language. It is the means by which our language becomes
honest, true, and personal in response to God. It is the means by which
we get everything in our lives out in the open before God.
David wrote,
“God, investigate my life;
get all the facts firsthand.
I’m an open book to you;
even from a distance, you know what I’m thinking...
“Investigate my life, O God,
find out everything about me;
Cross-examine and test me,
get a clear picture of what I’m about;
See for yourself whether I’ve done anything wrong -
then guide me on the road to eternal life.
Psalm 139:1,23-24
But even with the Psalms in their hands and my pastoral

encouragement, people often tell me that they still don’t get it. In
English translation, the Psalms often sound smooth and polished,
sonorous with Elizabethan rhythms and diction. As literature, they are
beyond compare. But as prayer, as the utterances of men and women
passionate for God in moments of anger and praise and lament, these
translations miss something. Grammatically, they are accurate. The
scholarship undergirding the translations is superb and devout. But as
prayers they are not quite right. The Psalms in Hebrew are earthy and
rough. They are not genteel. They are not the prayers of nice people,
couched in cultured language.
And so in my pastoral work of teaching people to pray, I started
paraphrasing the Psalms into the rhythms and idiom of contemporary
English. I wanted to provide men and women access to the immense
range and the terrific energies of prayer in the kind of language that is
most immediate to them, which also happens to be the language in
which these psalm prayers were first expressed and written by David
and his successors.
I continue to want to do that, convinced that only as we develop raw
honesty and detailed thoroughness in our praying do we become
whole, truly human in Jesus Christ, who also prayed the Psalms.
/63
Eugene Peterson in The Invitation, 2008
/64
Reflect
1. Think back about your life, in five-year periods. Identify one

significant way in which God was faithful to you in each period.
2. Write a psalm that retells the story of your life from the
perspective of God’s faithfulness to you.
3. Are you able to “pray the psalms”, entering into the story of
those who have gone before us in the journey of faith? Does it
feel right? Or is it awkward?
4. What lies ahead of you that could prove difficult or

challenging? How can you ground yourself in God’s
faithfulness today to prepare for what you see coming?
/65
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Journal
/66
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Pray
/67
Friday, April 3, 2009
Commit

Write it down.
/68
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Act
practice?
/69
Week 6: Hope
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Sermon Notes
/70
Week 6: Hope
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Read
Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High

will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
They say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust.”
Surely he will save you

from the fowler’s snare
and from the deadly pestilence.
He will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
You will not fear the terror of night,
nor the arrow that flies by day,
nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,
nor the plague that destroys at midday.
A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you.
You will only observe with your eyes
and see the punishment of the wicked.
If you say, “The LORD is my refuge,”

and you make the Most High your dwelling,
no harm will overtake you,
no disaster will come near your tent.
For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways;
they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
You will tread on the lion and the cobra;
you will trample the great lion and the serpent.
“Because they love me,” says the LORD, “I will rescue them;
I will protect them, for they acknowledge my name.
They will call on me, and I will answer them;
I will be with them in trouble,
I will deliver them and honor them.
With long life I will satisfy them
and show them my salvation.”
Psalm 91, TNIV

/71
/72
Week 6: Hope
Monday, April 6, 2009
Study
The problem with worship that focuses on equilibrium, coherence and

symmetry is that it may deceive and cover over. Life is not like that.
Life is also savagely marked by disequilibrium, incoherence, and
unrelieved symmetry. In our time – perhaps in any time – that needs
no argument or documentation.
It is a curious fact that the church has, by and large, continued to sing
songs of orientation in a world increasingly experienced as
disoriented. That may be laudatory. It could be that such
relentlessness is an act of bold defiance in which these psalms of order
and reliability are flung in the face of the disorder. In that way, they
insist that nothing shall separate us from the love of God. Such a
“mismatch” between our life experience of disorientation and our faith
speech of orientation could be a great evangelical “nevertheless” (as in
Habakkuk 3:18). Such a counterstatement insists that God does in any
case govern, rule, and order, regardless of how the data seem to
appear. And therefore, songs of torah, wisdom, creation, and
retribution speak truly, even if the world is experienced as otherwise.
It is possible that the church uses the psalms of disorientation in this
way.
But at best, this is only partly true. It is my judgment that this action of
the church is less an evangelical defiance guided by faith, and much
more a frightened, numb denial and deception that does not want to
acknowledge the disorientation of life. The reason for such relentless
affirmation of orientation seems to come, not from faith, but from the
wishful optimism of our culture. Such a denial and cover-up, which I
take it to be, is an odd inclination for passionate Bible readers, given
the large number of psalms that are songs of lament, protest and
complaint about the incoherence that is experienced in the world. At
least, it is clear that a church that goes on singing “happy songs” in the
face of raw reality is doing something very different from what the
Bible itself does.
I think that serious religious use of the lament psalms has been
minimal because we have believed that faith does not mean to
acknowledge and embrace negativity. We have thought that
acknowledgement of negativity. We have thought that
acknowledgement of negativity was somehow an act of unfaith, as
though the very speech about it conceded too much about God’s “loss
of control”.
/73
The point to be urged here is this: the use of these “psalms of
darkness” may be judged by the world to be acts of unfaith and failure,
but for the trusting community, their use is an act of bold faith, albeit a
transformed faith. It is an act of bold faith on the one hand, because it
insists that the world must be experienced as it really is and not in
some pretended way. On the other hand, it is bold because it insists
that all such experiences of disorder are a proper subject for discourse
with God. There is nothing out of bounds, nothing precluded or
inappropriate. Everything properly belongs in this conversation of the
heart. To withhold parts of life from that conversation is in fact to
withhold part of life from the sovereignty of God. Thus these psalms
make the important connection: everything must be brought to speech,
and everything brought to speech must be addressed to God, who is
the final reference for all of life.
But such a faith is indeed a transformed faith, one that does not
conform (cf. Rim 12:2). The community that uses these psalms of
disorientation is not easily linked with civil religion, which goes “from
strength to strength”. It is, rather, faith in a very different God, one
who is present in, participating in, and attentive to the darkness,
weakness, and displacement of life. The God assumed by and
addressed in these psalms is a God “of sorrows, and acquainted with
grief.”
Life is now understood to be a pilgrimage or process through the

darkness that belongs properly to humanness. While none would
choose to be there, such seasons of life are not always experiences of
failure for which guilt is to be assigned, but may be a placement in life
for which the human person or community is not responsible and
therefore not blamed. The presupposition and affirmation of these
psalms is that precisely in such deathly places as presented in these
psalms, new life is given by God. We do not understand how that
could be so, or even why it is so. But we regularly learn and discern
that there – more than anywhere else – newness that is not of our own
making breaks upon us.
Walter Brueggemann, in The Message of the Psalms, 1984
/74
Week 6: Hope
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Reflect
1. Have you ever experienced the death of someone very close to

you? How did this shape you?
2. Do you ever find yourself contemplating your own death?

What thoughts and emotions do you experience in this
consideration?
3. Have you ever been in a life-threatening situation? A

dangerous accident, a serious illness? What thoughts and
emotions did you find within you afterward?
/75
Week 6: Hope
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Journal
/76
Week 6: Hope
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Pray
/77
Week 6: Hope
Friday, April 10, 2009
Commit
Today is Good Friday. The church remembers together the crucifixion

and death of Jesus.

Write it down.
/78
Week 6: Hope
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Act
practice?
/79

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Lent 2009

2/14-15 Marva Dawn will be speaking at Heritage.

2/21-22 The Psalms : An Overview

2/25 Ash Wednesday

2/28-3/1 Simplicity: When God is our shelter

3/7-8 Sin: When God does not satisfy

3/14-15 Disappointment: When God lets you down

3/21-22 Celebration: When God comes through

3/28-29 Trust: When God is faithful

4/4-5 Hope: When death comes near

4/10 Good Friday

4/12 Easter Sunday

The theme that we’re pursuing this year at Heritage is “Worship”.

The season of Lent has fallen into disregard in the contemporary

As we enter together into this Lenten journey this year, we come to

To our grief, we are sometimes drawn to find satisfaction elsewhere,

And in the end, as life draws to a close, we find a confident hope

Most of all, God seeks to be in simple, honest and constant

Richard Foster, in his book The Celebration of Discipline, writes:

These disciplines will take time. We suggest an undistracted period of

On Monday we’ll read a reflection on the psalms, with the intent of

On Wednesday we’ll journal & pray. We’ll write down whatever we

John Goldingay, “Psalms”, volumes 1-3, 2006-08

James L. Mays, “Psalms”, 1994

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible”, 1970

John D. Witvliet, “The Biblical Psalms in Christian Worship”, 2007

Nahum M. Sarna, “On the Book of Psalms: Exploring the Prayers of

C.S. Lewis, “Reflections on the Psalms”, 1958

Walter Brueggemann, “The Message of the Psalms”, 1984

Eugene Peterson, “The Psalms”, available at

Hear me, LORD, and answer me,

You, Lord, are forgiving and good,

Among the gods there is none like you, Lord;

Teach me your way, LORD,

Give me a sign of your goodness,

Psalm 86, TNIV

Choose a passage to memorize. Write it down below.

From Psalm 86:

You are my God (v2)

You, Lord, are forgiving and good,

For you are great and do marvelous deeds;

But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God,

…you, Lord, have helped me and comforted me. (v17)

The Psalms are addressed to a known, named, identifiable You.

This is not some remote God, or distant concept, or religious

The Psalmists are talking to someone familiar… someone with whom

They are his people; he is their God – no matter what is going on

And their speech is simple, not complex… no guarded phrases that

No practiced phrases that hide reality…

Here is the unprocessed grief over sin…

Here is the deep and settled peace of the forgiven.

And they speak to God – to You. No complicated titles or labels that

Where I wander – You!

Reflect on what you’ve read this week.

Here are some questions to guide you in reflection.

1. Describe one of your closest friends, or if you are married,

2. Describe God. Do you think you could anticipate what he

3. Would you describe your relationship with God as having a

4. To what degree are you aware of God’s presence as you go

Write down your thoughts as you reflect on this week’s material.

As you’ve read, studied, reflected, journaled and prayed through this

Blessed are those