Ever Been Betrayed by a Friend? [Psalm 55]
Remember: the Psalms teach us to pray through our emotions. When we do so, we hand our emotions over to God and thereby we can learn to control our emotions and not be controlled by them.
The Psalms speak to the whole variety of experience, including the experience of being stabbed in the back by someone you trusted.
From today’s psalm:
12 For it is not an enemy who taunts me—
then I could bear it;
it is not an adversary who deals insolently with me—
then I could hide from him.
13 But it is you, a man, my equal,
my companion, my familiar friend.
14 We used to take sweet counsel together;
within God's house we walked in the throng.
If the psalmist keeps that bitterness inside, it will kill him!
If we keep the bitterness inside when we are stabbed in the back, it will also kill us!
But, when we give our anger and bitterness at our friends over to the Lord, eventually we will be able to say:
16 But I call to God,
and the Lord will save me.
What do you need to hand over to God today?