Attending the temple is not always easy or comfortable for me.
One day, I went to an endowment session, seeking relief and guidance about an ongoing personal trial. But as I sank into an armchair in the celestial room, I felt a soul-deep weariness. Exhausted and spiritually numb, I wondered if God saw my efforts or heard my pleas for comfort.
So, I turned to a book of scripture that never fails to help me feel His love: the Psalms.
These verses reflect the reality of reaching out to God while facing real, human struggles. As scholar John Goldingay puts it in The SBL Study Bible, they show both “the joy and challenges inherent to a relationship with God.”
The language is raw and real, capturing examples of people praying in many different emotional states—from grief and anguish to gratitude and praise. The psalmists remind me that I can express all my frustrations, hopes, and feelings to God, no matter how messy or shameful they may seem.
That day in the celestial room, my eyes landed on Psalm 18:6, which reads:
“In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried unto my God: he heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him, even into his ears.”
I felt a gentle sense of love and warmth spread over my heart. While my circumstances didn’t necessarily change, the verse made me feel seen and heard. It reminded me that my pain wasn’t too much for the Lord and that I could be real with Him about how I was feeling.
The moment connected me to King David, who many believe wrote Psalm 18. Earlier verses touch on the heart-wrenching trials and “sorrows of hell” that David experienced, from battles and suffering to betrayal and exile. While my challenges were not to that same level, I could relate to the vulnerability and desperation in his petition to the Lord.
When we feel overwhelmed by our emotions and struggle to find comfort in our faith, I believe that we can find special direction in the Psalms. As scholar Rosalynde F. Welch shared in an interview with LDS Living:
“There are times in our lives when prayer can become difficult. We might not know what to say or where to start, or we might feel too exhausted or overwhelmed to try. At those times, I think you can find something in these songs that expresses exactly what you need to say. … There’s a voice in the Old Testament that you can borrow as you get your strength to speak in your own voice to God.”
This voice is ideal to borrow when we worship in the temple—in fact, many scholars believe the Psalms served as a sort of hymnbook for ancient temple rituals. They were intended “to create a sacred time and space and to bring the soul into communion with God.”
To seek that same communion in the temple, I’ve started a personal ritual of turning to the Psalms in the celestial room. This tradition reassures me of God’s love and opens my mind to receive revelation. I’ve even started keeping a list of psalms that I can reflect on outside of the temple (like Psalm 31 and Psalm 107) when I need more sacredness and divine strength in my daily life.
If you’re looking for more comfort or answers next time that you’re in the celestial room, try opening the Psalms. You might find a verse that perfectly articulates the cry of your heart and reminds you of God’s limitless love.
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