Psalms

The book of Psalms invites and challenges women to merge head and heart in encountering God and truths about Him. The psalmists speak to and about the Lord, revealing that He is purposefully involved in the world He created and particularly in the lives of His people. Women discover in reading and worshiping with the psalmists’ prayers that they, too, can call on the Lord with the certainty that He will hear and answer.

When you fear He is absent, you will find company in voicing your complaints. When you sense a need to reexamine and renew your commitment to love and obey the Lord, the rich language of worship can provide the template. When you are devastated by your own sin or by the betrayal of your trust, in the psalms you can discover that you are not alone, that God is listening to your heart’s cry and leading you to His way of looking at both your problems and those of the world. In the psalms the Lord meets you as your Creator, Protector, Provider, Sustainer, and Deliverer. Read, memorize, and sing the psalms in order to be equipped to glorify and praise God both for who He is and what He has done, is doing, and will do. The poetry will provide words for speaking about Him, praying to Him, encouraging others in their walk with Him, and in demonstrating that Jesus is the anticipated Messiah.

Biblical Womanhood: Being a Woman After God’s Own Heart

In Psalm 146, the psalmist exhorts his listeners to trust in God, not in people (vv. 1-4). God is the Creator who cares for the needy and helpless. As the psalmist calls on his soul (i.e., his entire being) to praise the Lord, so women who know Him can tell themselves, even in unhappy circumstances, to celebrate or glorify Christ the Lord, who identified Himself and His mission with the characteristic actions noted in verses 7-8 (cp. Is 61:1-3; Lk 4:16-20). As the psalmist determined to praise the Lord and sing to . . . God as long as he lived, so women who determine that they will actively recognize and make known the God who can be trusted completely will find in Him everything they need. To focus on the Lord requires a woman to disassociate herself from dependence on human beings to meet her needs—no man can meet every need of a woman’s heart, but God can (Ps 146:3). People in general will always disappoint you, but the Lord never fails. Even those you most love and trust eventually die; in a moment, all your dreams for your relationship or for your children or the good plans someone has for you can vanish.

The Lord, however, is eternal and will always be there—not only until the end of your life but also beyond your grave. Furthermore, though people can betray your trust, the Lord alone remains faithful forever (v. 6), and He is and always will be the true King. The righteous woman who entrusts her heart and life to this King can trust Him to execute justice when she has been wronged, to provide for her physical needs, to lead her out of bondage to sin or painful memories or addictions or oppressive circumstances into the freedom of belonging exclusively and primarily to Him (vv. 7-9). She can count on the Lord to love and protect and help her. In the process of finding the Lord faithful to be who He promises to be in Scripture, the woman in right relationship with Him will become a woman after His own heart, who extends to others the practical and unconditional love and service she has discovered in Him.