“No Fear” might’ve been cool on that middle school t-shirt, but it’s borderline sociopath. There’s an impulse within you and me, I assume, that avoids rattlesnakes, for example. And that feeling––that fear––isn’t necessarily bad. When we say, “emotions” or “feelings” we often immediately think of the pejorative connotations of the word, “emotional,” meaning, someone driven by their feelings in an unhealthy way, swinging from mood to mood from moment to moment.[1] But, emotion, in essence, is not necessarily pure evil. In fact, we’re commanded to love certain things. We’re commanded to fear certain things. As we saw last week, we’re commanded to be angry about certain things.

The problem, of course, is total depravity. All of our feelings, emotions, and affections have been affected by sin. Sometimes we don’t fear what we should. Sometimes we fear things we ought not. Our loves are disordered. We love what we shouldn’t and don’t love what we should. We’re angry and we shouldn’t be. We’re not angry; and we should be.

Speaking of anger and fear, both are plastered on our screens and are maybe infiltrating our hearts. Day after day, we see many processing their emotions publicly. And, privately, maybe we wonder which feelings of our own are legitimate? What words should I use to process them?

In our text today, like the past few weeks, we’ve picked up someone else’s journal. We’re eavesdropping. Psalm 5 includes all kinds of emotion––fear, joy, love, and anger. But, different than our personal journals or our feeds, it’s authoritative and true. If we want direction, or guardrails for the emotional makeup God put within us, this is where we find it.

Note first,

1. The Psalmist groans and cries out

Verse 1: Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my groaning.

The Psalmist begins his prayer, his plea, by asking the Lord to hear what he’s said and what he’s about to say. But he also asks the Lord to discern something beyond what he voices. “Groaning” might be translated, “my inmost thoughts” or “my sighs.”[2]

Do you have anyone in your life that knows something’s wrong even when you don’t say it? You exhale over your salad; they ask what’s wrong. In some ways, God knowing our deepest thoughts is terrifying. I wouldn’t want this or that on the big screen. But, in other ways, might it be a comfort? As Pastor Phil mentioned last week, maybe the stiff upper lip will never acknowledge that burden to another. But you carry it late into the evening. God knows it.

When I was in my college dorm, I had no more than 10 books on my singular shelf. Three of them were my three volumes of Spurgeon’s Treasury of David. This week I opened to Psalm 5 and found that I’d underlined this sentence, most likely years ago: “Words are not the essence but the garments of prayer.”[3]

That means, I think, sometimes our prayer might not take the form––put on the garment––of actual words. It could be that if we’re carrying a weight throughout the day––and most of us are––and we can somehow regularly cast that weight upon Another––Someone with an infinitely stronger back––maybe we’re praying more than we thought. Or at least we’re being heard.

Have you ever asked the Lord to consider your sighs? Do you think He’s only concerned about the burdens you’ve vocally bracketed with “Dear Father” on one side and “Amen” on the other? This Psalmist’s prayer consists of spoken words––Give ear to my words––and broken ones––Consider my groaning.[4]

Many of us don’t even know how to express what we’re feeling currently. I heard a stadium–filling multiple Grammy–award winning songwriter talk last week about the current moment. He was in the middle of recording an album when COVID hit back in March. He has a studio in his house, tons of free time on his hands, but he’s not writing or recording any songs. Why? Because songs give expression to how we feel. A good song connects with how lots of people feel. But he can’t write because he doesn’t have any idea how we’re all going [...]