What sorts of trouble cause you to cry out to the Lord? Job’s friends assumed that the only people who suffer are those who are unfaithful to God, and the preachers of the false prosperity gospel would heartily agree. And Psalm 107 acknowledges that there is some truth to such…

In the absence of a clear prophetic word, it would be nothing short of theological malpractice to claim that any particular plague, tornado, or earthquake is sent as a direct punishment from God for any particular sin. Moreover, we can’t say that such disasters are signals of Christ’s imminent coming…

On this Independence Day, we Americans rightly pause to be thankful for our freedom – freedom not only from foreign domination and control, but freedom to govern ourselves in order to secure our rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, unalienable rights with which we have been endowed…

With all our modern technology, it’s easy for us human beings to imagine that we have everything under control. After all, we’ve banished the heat with our air conditioners, we’ve straightened the mighty Mississippi River, and we’ve made the desert bloom through our use of fertilizers and irrigation. And on…

Have you ever felt like you just couldn’t measure up to God’s expectations of you? Maybe your desires are pulling you in self-destructive directions, or maybe you just can’t make any of your relationships work out. Maybe you feel like so many parts of your life are just broken, and…

Suffering can be a lonely experience. When we’re sick or hurting or scared it’s easy for us to turn inward. Our frame of reference contracts, as our only concern is getting some relief. When the psalmist was in this kind of pain, he even forgot to eat (verse 4), and…

How do we praise God for His justice? This psalm makes it clear that we must not stop with the songs we sing in worship. Instead, David is determined to live out that same kind of justice in his own life by carrying out his royal responsibilities in a godly…

Why do you tend to give God thanks and praise? While we might start with our health or wealth or other sorts of material blessings, David has other ideas. In fact, he begins with giving thanks for God’s identity, for the fact that the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac,…

It seems like we are all facing more and more impossible situations every day, don’t we? Well, Psalm 99 encourages all of us to look at things from an eternal perspective. In fact, the best thing we can do is to turn our eyes away from our problems and take…

At first glance, this psalm seems to be a repeat of Psalm 96 – after all, both begin with a call to sing a new song of praise to the Lord, and both conclude with a summons to the forces of nature to praise God because “He is coming to…