How can Israel's history help our relationship with God today?

Everyone experiences envy. No one enjoys what that feels like. But how do we overcome our tendency to envy the good things other people enjoy? This psalm helps us see that envy always comes from overvaluing what other people have, and from undervaluing what it is to have God's presence in your life.

This praise psalm celebrates the irreplaceable goodness of knowing God from personal experience. But how can we experience God as the psalmist did?

This psalm is one of many that pray for the destruction of Israel's enemies. If you don't live with enemies close at hand, psalms like these can be hard to connect with. And given the brutal language, psalms like these can seem totally out of step with Jesus's call to love your enemies and pray for your persecutors. How should we respond to prayers like these? Should we rejoice in vengeance?

How can we learn to worship God with our wealth rather than worshipping wealth as our god? We need to see what death does to wealth, so that we can see what Jesus does to death. Then we can see more clearly what Jesus means for our wealth.

What should we do when God feels absent? This psalm models three crucial steps.

What does it look like to be honest with God about our sin? David offers a powerful model. He shows us what it looks like to genuinely recognize our sin, to repent of our sin, and to experience renewal after our sin.

You can try to cover your own sin, or you can let God cover it for you.

All relationships depend on communication. If God exists, our only hope for knowing anything about him, much less knowing and loving him, depends on his willingness to speak to us. So where can we hear from God?

This psalm belongs with a group known as thanksgiving psalms. It celebrates God as the one who hears and answers, the God who saves. But whom does God save?