God’s Spirit Evident in David’s Psalms now Exists in My own Life

[Image by Erik Torner]

David’s Psalms often reflect Jesus’s experience

As I rewrite the Psalms as rhyming paraphrases for the Simple Bible project, I am starting to realize that many of David’s Psalms actually foreshadow emotional conditions that Jesus would later find himself in.

Even though the Psalms were written hundreds of years before Christ, they often depict emotions that Christ would have definitely felt during his time on earth. Some of David’s Psalms would fit Jesus’s experiences so perfectly that it’s uncanny.

Example: Psalm 13

Psalm 13 is an excellent example of a time where David’s Psalms reflect Christ’s experience. In verse 1 David writes:

“How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?”

This is really reminiscent of Jesus’s crucifixion when he asked his Father why he had forsaken him.

In verse 2 David writes:

“How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?”

I bet Jesus was asking God these kinds of questions when he was sweating drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane before his crucifixion.

In verse 3–4 David writes:

“Look on me and answer, Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall.”

This sounds a lot like what Jesus must have been thinking when he was facing his own death. “Give light to my eyes or I will sleep in death.” Jesus needed God to resurrect him or else he would remain sleeping in death and Satan would have rejoiced.

Those are just the first few verses of Psalm 13, but that entire Psalm can be read through Jesus’s eyes, and there are many more passages in the book of Psalms that can be read that same way.

God’s Spirit was with David

The only way that David’s psalms could so clearly depict the ways that Christ would feel was if the Holy Spirit had been with David and inspired him while he wrote his psalms.

It’s really cool to think about how God’s Spirit (which would later come as Christ) was right there with David hundreds of years earlier.

That same Spirit is with me

But as amazing as that is, it’s even more amazing that the same Spirit of God which inspired David’s Psalms and animated Christ also lives in me right here, right now.

Whenever I am going through an emotional time, my emotions might relate to something Christ experienced thousands of years ago. In the same way that God’s Spirit allowed DAVID relate to Christ through DAVID’S ups and downs, God’s spirit also allows ME to relate to Christ through MY ups and downs.

Maybe next time I am going through an emotional time, I can think back on Christ’s experience on Earth and find ways that my experience relates to his .

No matter what situation I am going through, it comforts me to know that God’s same Spirit that was with David and with Christ is now with me.