Psalm 4:1-8 For the director of music. With stringed instruments. A psalm of David. Answer me when I call to you, O my righteous God (lit God of my righteousness). Give me relief from my distress; be merciful to me and hear my prayer. 2 How long, O men, will you turn my glory into shame? How long will you love delusions and seek false gods? Selah 3 Know that the LORD has set apart the godly for himself; the LORD will hear when I call to him. 4 In your anger do not sin; when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent. Selah 5 Offer right sacrifices and trust in the LORD. 6 Many are asking, "Who can show us any good?" Let the light of your face shine upon us, O LORD. 7 You have filled my heart with greater joy than when their grain and new wine abound. 8 I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety.
Introduction
The most basic summary of the Christians life is this: knowing God. That is what Christianity is. Jeremiah 9:24 says the only thing that is worth boasting about in life is knowing God – nothing else matters. The term “know” in that context does not refer to mere information about God. It includes information, but it also involves personal experience.
Isaiah 59:8 They have made their roads crooked; no one who walks on them will know peace.
“They will not know peace” means they will not experience peace. So knowing someone means experiencing that person. And it is not just any experience with a person, but specifically an intimate exchange of love.
Genesis 4:1 Adam knew his wife Eve and she conceived.
Amos 3:2 [Israel:] You only have I known of all the families of the earth
On Judgment Day, if you have not had a personal, intimate mutual exchange of love with God He will say, “Depart from me; I never knew you.” (Matthew 7:23) So knowledge of God is a relational, personal, experience of the true God through a mutual exchange of intimacy and love.
Peter casts the entire Christian life in terms of knowing God.
2 Pe.1:2-8 Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. 3 His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
It is through knowing Him that we receive grace and peace (verse two) and all that we need for life and godliness (verse four), and we escape corruption and evil desires, and participate in the divine nature. If you have a problem with sin or anything else the solution is knowing God more. That is why Paul prayed the way he did:
Ephesians 1:17 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.
This is the chief thing God wants from us.
Hosea 6:3,7 Let us know him. Let us press on to know the LORD.
7…For I desire loyalty and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
So how do you increase and deepen your knowledge of God? Where can you go in the Bible to not only learn what the attributes of God are, but to also learn how to experience them? There is one particular place in the Bible that I believe is the densest concentration of truth about God. In this particular part of the Bible that I have in mind there are more direct statements about what God is like than in any other place. In fact, I can not think of any truth that is known about God the Father that isn’t taught in this one part of the Bible.
And not only that, but in this particular part of Scripture those truths about God are taught in the most practical of ways. Instead of a list of abstractions like you might read in a theology textbook, this part of Scripture I am talking about presents hundreds and hundreds of attributes of God in contexts that teach us exactly how those attributes are experienced in day to day life. And that part is crucial, because that teaches us how the truth about God is experienced relationally. And without the relational part there is no knowledge of God.
You cannot know God without knowing the truth about God. If you think you can know God through your experiences, without doing the hard work of studying Scripture, you are very much mistaken. However, mere information about God is not enough. All that does is put you in the same category as the devil, who probably knows more true facts about God than any of us.
To know God we must have an accurate understanding of His attributes as well as a profound experience of His attributes. And the bringing of those two things together is hard. You walk into work on Monday morning, and you know the fact that God is eternal, but how does that piece of information help you deal with a boss who never keeps his word? You know the fact that God is the Creator, but how does that help you deal with the problem of your work piling up faster than you can do it? You know the fact that God is invisible, but how does that help you handle the fact that you and your spouse are growing further and further apart? What we really, really need is something that will not only teach us truth about God, but that will teach it in the context of real life situations so that we can clearly see how those truths about God can be experienced when we are doing laundry or driving to work or talking on the phone.
So it is no great surprise that the book of the Bible that gives us the most direct teaching about God’s attributes in the context of how they are experienced in daily life, also happens to be the longest book of the Bible – 150 chapters. And it is also no surprise that this same book is also the main book we use to learn how to worship God. Because what is more fundamental to worship than experiential knowledge of God?
The book I am talking about is the book of Psalms – right in the middle of your Bible. And I gave that long introduction to let you know why I am going to be preaching from Psalms today. The Psalms are so important that each time I finish a book or a topical series, before we move on to the next book I want to take the time to go through at least one psalm.
So let’s take a look at Psalm four. This is a very short psalm – just eight verses. And yet it displays for us at least 11 attributes of God and teaches us how those attributes are experienced in daily life. He is the God who listens to, cares about, and responds to the prayers of His people. (verses 1,3)
1. He is the God of my righteousness (v.1)
2. He is merciful (v.1)
3. He is the source of relief from distress (v.1)
4. He delights in His people (v.3)
5. He is worthy of worship (v.5)
6. He is worthy of trust (v.5)
7. His smile is the only source of good (v.6)
8. He is a source of greater joy than earthly pleasures (v.7)
9. He provides inner peace for His people (v.8)
10. He protects His people from danger (v.8)
My earnest prayer is that I will succeed in exposing and making clear to you some of the wonder and beauty of those eleven truths about God. Because even if those were the only eleven attributes about God that there were - so nothing else was true about God except those 11 things, it would be enough so that it would still be worth it to pay any price to know Him and receive His favor – any price. Even with just those eleven attributes in this one little psalm, God would still be the greatest treasure in the entire universe, greater than all the other treasures in the universe put together.
My first impulse was to spend 11 weeks on this psalm so we could really learn to love each attribute. But then I realized if we did that we would miss the point, because the real beauty of this psalm is not the details about each attribute, but rather how all of them fit together.
The reason there are 11 attributes in eight verses is because David was like a chef. He presents the attributes of God to us in wonderful combinations and packages. A good chef does not just bring you a bowl of flour for one course and a slab of raw meat for another course and a bowl of sugar for dessert. He mixes ingredients together to make a unique creation. An artist does not paint a portrait by covering one whole canvas with blue, then another one with yellow, etc. He mixes the primary colors and puts just the right combination of colors and shapes to bring out facial expression and skin tone and mood, etc, so you get a true picture of the person in the portrait. That is what the psalms do with the attributes of God.
And that is good for us, because that is how we experience the attributes of God in life – in wonderful bundles and unique combinations. So let’s examine how all eleven of these fit together, and what the application is for life, so we can have a greater knowledge of our God.
The life situation
First let’s consider what life situation this psalm is talking about. David gives us a fantastic view of God’s glory in this Psalm, what life situation especially calls for this particular portrait of God’s glory? In other words, when is it that you really need to study Psalm four?
It is a life situation that is very common – we all experience it, and some of you are in it right now. It is the experience of being in a tight place.
1 … Give me relief from my distress; be merciful to me
The word translated distress literally means “a narrow, tight place.” And the word translated relief literally means “a wide open place.” We use that same kind of language. We talk about being in a bind - a tight spot, or being boxed in to a corner, or in a dire strait (a strait is a narrow place). It refers to those times when you are overwhelmed with something and there’s just no way out. It seems like the walls are closing in on you and there is no escape.
And in this particular psalm the tight spot David was in was being caused by some other people. The solution David is going to give us in this psalm applies especially to those situations when you have a crisis in your life that is being caused by someone else. How do you deal with that? What grouping of the attributes of God will help you when some person in your life is causing you big time grief? Your spouse is making life miserable for you. Or your boss is creating a situation at work that is like torture all day long. Or you just have some impossible relationship where no matter what you do, you lose. Kids, what do you do when some mean kid at school is always making fun of you or pushing you around? Or someone tells a lie about you, and the teacher believes him and not you and there is nothing you can do about it? Or when your brother and sister are mean to you, or your mom and dad do something that is not fair?
That is the kind of time in your life when the meal in psalm four is really going to hit the spot. You can think of God as being like a magnificent diamond, with thousands of spectacular facets. And in Psalm four David is going to help us look from just the right angle so we see 11 of those facets all at once, and seeing God from that angle is going to be just what the doctor ordered for the situation of dealing with problems in your life caused by someone else. So let’s take a look in the kitchen and see this meal David put together under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. (And I am bouncing between metaphors here for a reason. Thinking of these attributes as a portrait or diamond that you look at is a helpful image, because you experience Him and His grace when you perceive His glory. But the meal illustration is also important, because experiencing God goes deeper than just looking at something. It also involves taking it in and being strengthened and nourished by it.)
So let’s sit back and take in the picture, and grab a fork and dig in to the meal. David serves up a three-course meal in this psalm. The first course is his prayer in verse one. Then the next course is David’s words to his opponents in verses two to five. And then we get some really delightful dessert in verses six to eight.
Course One: The Listening, righteousness-loving, relief giving, merciful God who delights in the godly.
The first course is the listening, righteousness-loving, relief-giving, merciful God who delights in the godly. The prayer of verse one rises up out of David’s delight in those four attributes of God.
1. God who listens
1 Answer me when I call to you…
3 Know that the LORD has set apart the godly for himself; the LORD will hear when I call to him.
When you have a conflict with someone, delight yourself in the fact that you have as a Father a God who listens. Probably 90% of the time when you have a conflict, a major part of your frustration is the fact that the person just will not listen to you. And if that makes you mad, being listened to must be important to you. It must be an especially delightful thing to you, otherwise it would not get you so upset when you are not listened to. So take delight in the fact that God listens. And He not only listens, but understands and cares. Have you ever just stopped for a moment in your prayer time and enjoyed the sensation of being listened to by God?
We all desire to be listened to by someone who cares about what we are saying; someone who is sympathetic to our plight; someone who understands. Pray, and when you pray enjoy the experience of being listened to by God. Psalm five says He considers – meditates on – your sighings. He already knows everything there is to know about them before you even pray, and yet when you pray the Bible says He considers them. He attends to you in a special way. And if you attend to Him when He is attending to you like that, there can be a deep communion and fellowship and enjoyment of His presence.
2. God who is your righteousness
1 Answer me when I call to you, O my righteous God.
The Hebrew phrase is, literally: God of my righteousness. Righteousness means “rightness” – when things are set right. So God is my righteousness in that all that is right in my life is from Him. And all that is not right will be set right by Him. God loves righteousness, and so when something is wrong - like when you are mistreated or unjustly accused or sinned against or unfairly treated, part of God’s nature is to set that right, because He loves righteousness. When you have a problem don’t you want to appeal to someone like that?
The great thing about going to God when you have a conflict is not only does He listen, but He is also the type who really, really cares about wrong things being set right. When someone mistreats you and you need someone to talk to, you would rather talk to a friend who has a strong passion for justice than to a friend who does not really care about justice and who will say something like, “Oh well, so what? That’s life.” You want someone who will say, “No way! He did that to you? That is horrible! We need to do something about that!”
The great thing about bringing your troubles to God is He not only listens and understands, but He really, really, really hates injustice and has a very strong passion to set wrong things right.
3. God who is merciful
1 be merciful to me and hear my prayer.
David turned to God for mercy because God is merciful. The Hebrew word means to show kindness and favor – especially to a person in great need. I am going to wait until we get down to verse six to develop this, so we will skip over it for right now, except to just say this – it is an especially wonderful experience to be listened to by someone who not only cares and understands, and not only has a zealous passion for wrong things to be set right, but who also highly favors you. When you go to someone with your conflict, it is great to talk to someone who really, strongly favors you and has a powerful bias in your favor.
And then David sprinkles in one more ingredient to really make this first course tasty.
4. God who is the source of relief
1 … Give me relief from my distress
David looks to God for relief, which means David regarded God as the source of His relief. That is not as simple as it may sound at first. Almost everyone who gets into a jam prays for help. Even atheists have been known to cry out to God from the foxhole. There is nothing special about having some painful ordeal and then saying, “God, make it stop!”
But there is something special and wonderful about actually considering God to be the one and only source of relief. We all claim to believe that, but sometimes our affections and anxieties expose some unbelief where we thought there was belief. We say, “God is absolutely the one who is in charge and the one who decides whether or not I have relief,” and then we turn around and put 95% of our energy seeking relief from some person, as though that person were ultimately the one who determines whether we get relief. We pray for all of 20 seconds and then spend an hour arguing with the person our heart really believes is the one who is in charge of our wellbeing. You affirm God is the one in control, and only God can grant relief from your conflict with your husband, but if someone could see into your heart they would see that over the course of a day, you spend an hour thinking about your husband for every five minutes you spend thinking about God. And deep down you really believe that unless your husband changes, there will be no relief. Unless your boss changes, there will be no relief. Unless certain people decide to do certain things, there will be no relief.
Who does your heart think is in charge of your wellbeing? I know how your mouth would answer the question, but I am asking what your heart believes. Think about it - where is all the worry and anxiety in your heart coming from? Is it coming from the fear that God might not be merciful or from the fear that some sinful person will not change? When you fret about your situation at work is it because you are afraid God will not help, or is it fear that the person at work will not change? Answering that question will help you discern where you really have your hope. And I am afraid much of the time we are putting our hope in people rather than God.
If you learn anything from verse one, learn that God is the source of relief. So when you have a conflict, go first to God – not last. First. Prayer is first. The fact that David started with prayer before addressing his opponents is an example for us. When you have a conflict with someone, go first to God, because He is the one who is in charge of your wellbeing. It is God alone who grants favor with men. But when God comes to your defense, He has the power to persuade people. It is within His ability to cause people to see the truth of your integrity.
This is not to say you do not work hard to solve your problem. I am not suggesting that you just sit back and do nothing and say, “I am waiting for God to fix everything.” That is a good response for things that you do not have any responsibility or power to do anything about. But the things that are within your realm of responsibility, you need to work hard to fix those things when they go wrong. You need to work hard to reconcile broken or strained relationships. So I am not saying that by looking to God as the only source of relief that means you do not do any hard work. What I am saying is you must first turn to God because He is the one who is in charge of whether your hard work will be successful. If it is within your area of responsibility then you have to do the hard work – the solution is not going to come without your hard work. But even with your hard work it is still not going to come unless you fervently and faithfully pray about it, because it is God who is in charge of whether your hard work will be successful.
So the summary of verse one is this – when you have a conflict with someone, find a way to peal your attention off that person and put it onto God. Stop focusing on the one causing the problem and start focusing on the one who is in charge of the problem. Stop looking to people as if they were in charge of your wellbeing, and focus most of your attention on the One who really is in charge of your wellbeing.
Don’t expect answers to unoffered prayers
If you cry out to God in prayer you can expect Him to listen. I should also add, if you do not cry out to God in prayer, you cannot expect Him to hear you. You would think that would be obvious enough, but how often do we walk through life fully expecting the blessing of God as though we had fervently, earnestly prayed for it – even though we have hardly prayed for it at all! So don’t count on a lot of answers to unoffered prayers. But when you do pray, God will listen.
So when you have trouble caused by some other person, transpose all the desires for relief that burn in your heart into desires for God. Fix your thoughts first on the one who listens, who is the source of relief, who is passionate about making things right, and who is merciful. If you want to know God in times of personal conflict, just enjoy those four attributes of His character - gaze upon those four rays of His glory - feast upon those four delicacies on His table.
Be satisfied with approval from God
That is the first course in this Psalm four meal. Space does not permit a full discussion of the second course in this lesson, but I do want to point out something from verse three that is related to this first course.
Caring mainly about God’s opinion
When David’s enemies accused him, not only did David go to God for help, but it was only God’s opinion that mattered to David. And approval from God, by itself, was all it took to fully satisfy David. When he addresses his adversaries in verse three note what he says:
3 Know that the LORD has set apart the godly for himself; the LORD will hear when I call to him.
His only boast was that God approved of him. That is what mattered to David.
Delighting in God’s vindication when slandered
It feels good to have the people you most respect be on your side in a conflict. And the more you respect them the happier you will be when they are on your side. There are some people whose opinion you so highly respect that if you have them on your side, that is enough for you even if the whole world is against you. That is how David felt about God.
He wanted a Job 42:7 experience. After 41 chapters of arguing with his best friends who think he is a hypocrite, finally God speaks to those friends in chapter 42. And God says to them, “Job was right. You were wrong. And if Job prays for you maybe I will forgive you. I am on Job’s side.” When people wrongly believe you to be guilty of some terrible sin, it is hard to take – especially if your best friends are even convinced. And for God to come and make it plain to everyone that you are innocent is a wonderful thing.
It is wonderful not because now you can say “I told you so” to your friends. That is a very childish desire (hopefully we have all progressed well beyond that ever since we made it out of kindergarten!). The reason it is wonderful is it feels so good to find out for sure that you have God’s approval – just because you treasure His approval. It is a wonderful thing to find out for sure from God that you were not self-deceived, and that on this particular point you are pleasing to Him and not displeasing.
The question to ask ourselves is this: Whose opinion matters most to me? As you walk through life you will either fear God or man. You will either care about what God thinks or about what man thinks. Fear of man is really a problem for a lot of Christians. And it is one of those sins that don’t seem all that scandalous, so we tend not to take it all that seriously. But it is a serious problem to be a man-pleaser – caring more about man’s opinion than God’s. It is a sin that is not only evil in itself, but it leads to a host of other sins. It penetrates way down to the level of your motivations. It pollutes the spring of your motivations at the source, so that you find yourself doing things that look good, like serving in ministry, giving of your money and resources, praying, reading your Bible, making comments in church - but it is all coming from an evil motive of wanting to impress people, which makes it all sin.
And it is also a very dangerous sin. It makes you vulnerable to the enemy, because if you treasure the applause and approval of men, Satan can use that to lead you into just about any sin. Once acceptance and approval from people become the priority in your life, you will lie to get it, you will make up stories, you will compromise your integrity at work, or you will become blind to the needs and feelings of others because you are working so hard at impressing people. In many cases people have fallen into sexual immorality with someone whose approval and acceptance they desperately wanted. There is virtually no end to the sins that can result from this one sin of fearing man.
So it is a serious sin because it causes so many other sins and because of how vulnerable it makes you, but worse than all that is the fact that fear of man is a supreme insult to God, because it belittles and despises His comfort. God is the only true source of comfort, and so when I care more about someone else’s favor than I do about obtaining God’s favor, I am acting as though real comfort is found from some other source.
Isa.51:12 "I, even I, am he who comforts you. Who are you that you fear mortal men, the sons of men, who are but grass
Do not fear them. You have no right to fear them. They cannot give you comfort nor can they deprive you of comfort. You fear the one who is in charge of your comfort. So fearing man is idolatry. It is lifting man up as the one who is in charge of our comfort.
If you are one of those people who struggles with this sin, it might help to begin with just realizing this - and this may come as a major shock, and it may seem impossible to believe – an intolerably horrible thought - but you need to know that not everyone is going to like you. No matter what you do, there are some people out there who will not like you. There are some people who like certain things and other people who hate those same things. And so the only way you are going to please both those people is by becoming two-faced and hypocritical, being one person some times and another person other times, constantly morphing yourself to impress people on the outside while never really being anything real on the inside.
Man pleasing is a horrible kind of bondage. It is an enslavement every bit as real as bondage to alcohol or drugs or sexual addiction or any other enslavement (Pr.29:25). And the only way out of it is to feast on course one of the meal in this psalm – especially the part we see in verse three. Delight your soul in the real food of God’s approval so that you do not have an appetite for the junk food of man’s approval.
Test: How does Job 42:7 hit you?
One important question to ask yourself is this - how does the thought of having a Job 42:7 experience hit you? The question of whether that is the main desire of your heart when you are in a dispute is a huge test for the health of your spiritual life. The person who fears God has an attitude that says, “If God approves of me, that is all I care about. If I know for sure God approves of me, then there could be an act of Congress unanimously approving an official resolution condemning my position signed by the President and endorsed by everyone in the world, but if God was happy with my view on this point, that is all I need to be happy.”
Whose approval do you seek in your life? Are you one of those people who are not satisfied until you get approval from your boss, or your husband, or certain individuals you highly esteem? The test is fairly simple. If you are a person who fears God, then the moment you find out for sure that God is pleased with you at some point, your soul is flooded with joy. If you are a person who fears man, then when people are opposing you and someone comes along and shows you from Scripture that God is pleased with your position, it does not really comfort you much. “I am glad God is on my side on this, but I just wish everyone else would see it!”
The issue is not their wrongness but your being approved by God
You know you are being controlled by he flesh and not the Spirit when you care more about proving the other guy wrong than about receiving God’s approval. Most of us, when we get into a conflict, will try to establish our rightness in this dispute by focusing on the wrongness of the other person. How do you know you are in the right? “I know I am in the right because of how sure I am that he is in the wrong.”
Just listen to the way people describe a dispute and you will see this. They spend all their energy pointing out how the other person is in the wrong, as though that in its self proved they were in the right. If we focus on our standing before God, rather than the wrongness of the other person, that is a lot harder. Because then the question is a lot broader than “Is your view correct or is my view correct?” Now the question is “Is my attitude pleasing to God? Are my words pleasing to God? Are my actions pleasing to God? Are my desires pleasing to God?” And just because the other person is wrong in his view does not necessarily mean I am pleasing to God in all those areas in the way I am handling this.
So when you find yourself saying, “He did this wrong, he broke his word, he messed me over, he was unfaithful, he was inconsiderate, instead you find yourself asking, “Do I have God’s approval in this matter?” “God has set apart the godly for Himself, am I in the category of godly in this matter?” David is such a great example of focusing on God rather than on the opponent. Remember when Shimei was walking along the ridge above where David and his men were walking and he was shouting curses and pelting David with rocks and raining dirt down on them? And Abishai said to David, “Let me go take his head off.”
2 Samuel 16:10 If he is cursing because the LORD said to him, 'Curse David,' who can ask, 'Why do you do this?'"
What he is doing is wrong – no question. But the big question in David’s mind was not so much whether Shimei was in the wrong. The big question was whether he was being used as a tool in God’s hands to rebuke David. The only thing David cared about is “Do I have God’s approval or not?”
That is the first question, and the second question, once you establish that you have God’s approval, is this: “Does that satisfy me?” Does that fulfill this ache in my heart for approval or is the ache still there? Is it enough for me that God is for me, or do I have to come out on top in the eyes of men in this dispute?
Spending prolonged periods meditating on, experiencing and enjoying these five attributes will be just what the doctor ordered for your man-pleasing sickness.
God who listens
Delight yourself in the fact that you have as a Father a God who listens to prayers. Spend time and effort enjoying being listened to by God.
God who is your righteousness
And this God who listens to your prayers is the type who is very concerned with righteousness – with wrong things being set right! Oh, what a marvelously wonderful thing it is that the God who is in charge of everything including this problem I am having is one who is really zealous about setting wrong things right! Spend some time and effort enjoying being a child of a God like that.
God who is merciful
On top of that, He is also full of mercy. It is part of His very nature to pour out mercy on someone who is in the midst of a problem. That is something He loves doing. Spend twenty minutes meditating on and enjoying that.
God who is the source of relief
And if all that were not enough He also happens to be the one who is the only source of relief from trouble. He is the only one who can widen this tight spot you are in. He is the only one who can overcome this opponent you have. This God who approves of me is the one who always wins!
God who delights in His people
And the icing on the cake is not only is God the type who listens to, cares about, and responds to the prayers of His people, and who is the type who is really passionate about making wrong things right, and who is extremely merciful, and who is the source of relief from distress but on top of all that, He is a God who delights in His people. He has set me apart for Himself. He is not going to forget about me or let me drown in this problem. He is not going to throw away someone who cost Him so much. He purchased me with His blood, which means I’m precious to Him, which means if any real threat comes along you better believe He is going to step in.
Spend extended time taking in those five attributes of God and you will find the power you need to break free from the trap of fear of man.
Benediction: 1 Pe.5:10,11 And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. 11 To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.
Youth group discussion questions:
1. How is knowing God different then knowing math or English?
2. Why do you think it is important to enjoy being listened to by God?
3. God is the only source of relief—so is it okay to seek relief from doctors? Medication?
4. With in conflict with a believer, should you consider God to be “on your side”? How do you know?
5. How do the attributes of course one relate to one another?
a. The God who listens
b. The God who is our righteousness
c. The God who is merciful
d. The God who is the Source of relief
e. The God who favors His people
6. We are not to be man pleasers, so does that mean it sin to dress up for people, or “dress to impress”? What about at formal gatherings or just at school?
7. Is there a big difference between the way you act at school vs. at home with siblings and parents? Or when you are alone?
8. Is it always wrong to care what other people think of us? Is wanting to please someone ever a form of love? How do you tell the difference?
9. Can you point to any opposition or persecution in your life that could prove you’re not a man-pleaser?
10. How many attributes can you remember from the psalm? Can you make up a way to remember them? (i.e. acrostic)
11. What attributes of God are most precious to you right now?
12. If God loves rightness and wants it, why doesn’t he make things right for you more often?
13. When that person continues to cause you grief even after you pray for relief how do you deal with that?
14. When are you just “man pleasing” and when are you preferring others, putting others first?
15. Is God really my only source of relief?
a. If no, why not? Because:
i. I don’t really believe
ii. God didn’t come through the last time I called upon Him
iii. Other things bring quicker relief
b. If yes, then what should I do with this relief that God sends me?
Trust more in God
Teach others to trust God more
Love God’s presence and work hard not to leave it.
