On Sunday morning we looked at what the Apostle Paul had to say to the young church in Corinth about God working in our weakness. We are most comfortable talking about our strengths, our gifts, and our talents. We can imagine God at work in the best of who we are. It is harder to imagine that God is often best on display when working in our weaknesses.

We often try to hide our weaknesses. We try to compensate – even over compensate – for our perceived weaknesses. But Paul wanted to the church to understand that their pride they claimed in their spiritual gifts, influence, and affluence were of value, but that he had learned that God was best on display when God was at work in, and through, their weaknesses. God’s grace was sufficient to meet them in their places of pain. Paul brought a personal word of witness of a place of struggle that he had plead with God to remove from him. Instead, though the place of struggle remained, God’s work in Paul’s life was clear. Paul’s word is a good word for us as well. Where are the places of pain, struggle, brokenness, and vulnerability in our lives that we need to turn over to God? What are the weaknesses where God is ready to be at work in your life? And in mine?

This Sunday we look at another place where God is ready to be at work in our lives. The sermon is titled, “Pour Out Your Heart” from Psalm 62.   I think a lot of us can imagine pour out our hearts to a close friend.  We believe that the love and care for us enough to hears the cry of the depths of our heart.  But, I am not sure we fully understand and embrace what it can mean to pour our heart out to God.  Some many of us have been taught structured prayers with a religious sounding vocabulary. We are tempted to hurry into prayer and back out of it because the language we have learned somehow feels unnatural to us.

We have also heard people speak in admiration of those that pray “beautiful” prayers. Our prayers can sound and feel so pedestrian. So, we offer our prayers in quiet whispers, hoping that no one else can hear us. But, as the Psalmist helps us see that what God desires from us is for us to come, bringing the depth and breadth of the cry of our heart. The Psalmist imagines conversations with God that are so deep and so pure that the words we claim emerge from the core of who we are.  This kind of conversation with God is more focused on its honesty and sincerity than it is its vocabulary.  If we believe that our closest friend would care about the cry of our heart, how much more would God invite us to pour out our heart to Him?

I look forward to our time together on Sunday.

Grace and Peace, Tom