The morning Manna will be provided at 6am. Thanks.

Studying Psalms in the SSnet.org series Lesson 2, may the Holy Spirit be the speaker to your heart.

The Topic today is: “How to use the Psalms to pray your heart out to God”.

The Opening Hymn will be 229 "Spirit of the Living God."

The Sabbath School Quarterly, downloadable from SSnet.org in the Teacher's Edition is on pages 18-19.

The SSnet.org site allows anyone, anywhere to read the lesson in their own language. Choose your own language to see God speaking also to your heart.

Why do you not click on this now?

https://www.adultbiblestudyguide.org/pdf.php?file=2024:1Q:TE:PDFs:ETQ124_02.pdf

---How to use the Psalms to pray unto God your heart out!

---Source: Paul Dugan, Learning to sing the blues praying the psalms of lament.

Online https://www.mycoastal.org/devotions/2020/5/14/learning-to-sing-the-blues-praying-the-psalms-of-lament

---Dugan said that the Psalms provides a “playlist” for all dimensions of human experience.

---Our lesson this week says that the Psalms provide a “prayerlist” for all dimensions of the human experience.

---Dugan says that the playlist includes a wide variety of genres that help us gather the whole of our lives in honest and grateful prayer before God. As it says, “helping God’s people traverse their life journey and grow in their relationship with God.”

---The lesson says this week that the prayerlist

---Dugan says that Psalms has changed his life. He says that it has become medicine to his soul. He focused on the laments. We are focusing this week on the prayers.

---There are also a wide variety of genres of prayers.

---Dugan said that he tries to re-define prayer for the contemporary believer.

---He read a book on Psalms in The Message, Eugene Peterson which helps acclimate him to the raw honesty of the psalms.

---Peterson said: “Faced with the prospect of conversation with a holy God who speaks worlds into being, it is not surprising that we have trouble (with prayer). We feel awkward and out of place: “I’m not good enough for this.”

---Peterson said then the person said: “I’ll wait until I clean up my act and prove that I am a decent person.”

---Or, Peterson said, 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 stuttery and ill at ease.”

---What Peterson does when members says this is to put the Psalms in a person’s hand and say, “Go home and pray these….”

--- Peterson says that “A common response of those who do what I ask is surprise—they don’t expect this kind of thing in the Bible.”

---He then express surprise at their surprise: “Did you think these would be the prayers of nice people?”

---He also asked “Did you think the psalmists’ language would be polished and polite?”

---Dugan says that prayer in the Psalms are elemental, not advanced language.

---It is simple words and simple feelings and simple passions.

---This is why a church father said that psalms is a kind of therapy for healing.

---In the USA, which is the largest genre of music listened to by Christians in the Evangelical world?

---Blues. It is lament genre in the Psalms. 40% of them are lament, says Dugan.

---So suffering, pain, rejection, loneliness, abandoned feelings, hated by enemies, scared, illnesses, and more and more are all part of Satan’s theater here where we are in this fishtank.

---We will stay in this fishtank and die here but going to be taken to the Big Ocean of Heaven when Christ comes!

---Dugan suggest the following for prayer: How to craft your own psalm of lament:

1.     Describe your trouble (or your community’s trouble) in detail to God

2.     Bring your honest questions to God: "Lord, why….?;  "How long, Lord, before you…?; "Where are you in…?

3.     Express your honest emotions to God: "Lord, I am feeling sad about…; "I am feeling angry…; “…afraid…

4.     Make your plea to God:   "Please, Lord…; "Remember back when you…

---Are you ready to join Christ? Can you pray from the Psalms? Better navigate this week to an Adventist Church nearest you at 9h30 for Sabbathschool when they discuss prayer from the Psalms.

---When? Check your navigation immediately.