Psalms of Lament - Tim Horman

[SPEAKER_01]: Psalm thirteen.

[SPEAKER_01]: How long are Lord will you forget me forever?

[SPEAKER_01]: How long will you hide your face from me?

[SPEAKER_01]: How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart?

[SPEAKER_01]: All the day

[SPEAKER_01]: Consider and answer me.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh Lord, my God, let up my eyes, let stay sleep in death.

[SPEAKER_01]: Psalm twenty two, my God, my God, why?

[SPEAKER_01]: Have you forsaken me?

[SPEAKER_01]: Why are you so far from saving me?

[SPEAKER_01]: In the words of my groaning, oh my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer.

[SPEAKER_01]: And by night, but I find no rest, hear my prayer Lord, listen to my cry for help, do not be deaf to my weeping.

[SPEAKER_01]: I dwell with you as a foreigner.

[SPEAKER_01]: As a stranger, look away from me that I might enjoy my life again before I depart, and I am no more.

[SPEAKER_01]: My tears have been my food day and night.

[SPEAKER_01]: I say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me?

[SPEAKER_01]: Why do I go morning because of the oppression of my enemy as with a deadly wound in my bones?

[SPEAKER_01]: My adversaries taunt me.

[SPEAKER_01]: They say to me all day long, where is your God?

[SPEAKER_01]: awake.

[SPEAKER_01]: Why are you sleeping, Lord?

[SPEAKER_01]: Rouse yourself.

[SPEAKER_01]: Why do you hide your face?

[SPEAKER_01]: Why do you forget our affliction and our oppression?

[SPEAKER_01]: For our soul is bow down to the dust and our belly clings to the ground.

[SPEAKER_01]: Rise up!

[SPEAKER_01]: Come to our help.

[SPEAKER_01]: Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.

[SPEAKER_01]: for I cried out to God for help.

[SPEAKER_01]: I cried out to God to hear me.

[SPEAKER_01]: When I was in distress, I sought the Lord at night.

[SPEAKER_01]: I stretched out, untiring hands, and I would not be comforted.

[SPEAKER_01]: I remembered you, God, and I groaned.

[SPEAKER_01]: I meditated, and my spirit grew faint.

[SPEAKER_01]: I call to you, Lord.

[SPEAKER_01]: Every day, I spread out my hands to you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Do you show your wonders to the dead?

[SPEAKER_01]: Is your love declared in the grave?

[SPEAKER_01]: But I cry to you for help Lord in the morning.

[SPEAKER_01]: My prayer comes before you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Why, Lord, do you reject me?

[SPEAKER_01]: Why?

[SPEAKER_01]: Do you hide your face from me?

[SPEAKER_01]: Lord, as we

[SPEAKER_01]: deal with the topic that's ahead of us this morning I pray for your grace and mercy, for your spirit just to fill this room with your healing presence.

[SPEAKER_01]: Come Holy Spirit and lead us into all truth.

[SPEAKER_01]: in Jesus name.

[SPEAKER_01]: Amen.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you to those who shared on the video and the passages that I just read to you just a small sample.

[SPEAKER_01]: of the many prayers in the book of Psalms that are like this.

[SPEAKER_01]: And there's over fifty of them.

[SPEAKER_01]: And in the Psalms they are called the Psalms of lament.

[SPEAKER_01]: The Psalms of lament.

[SPEAKER_01]: To lament, according to the Oxford English dictionary, is a passionate expression of grief and sorrow, a passionate expression of grief and sorrow.

[SPEAKER_01]: In the Psalms, these take the form of

[SPEAKER_01]: carefully constructed songs or poems that put words to our grief, that put words to our sorrow, that give voice to our suffering and our pain.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, of course, we don't only find lament in the book of Psalms.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's all through the Bible.

[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, there is a whole book in the Bible devoted to lament, which is very hopefully called.

[SPEAKER_01]: Lamentations.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, but of course, it's in the book of Job.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's in Jeremiah, who is sometimes called the weeping prophet.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's in Ezekiel, Daniel, Ezra, Jonah, Isaiah, Amos, Habakkuk, and all through the New Testament, but especially in the Book of Revelation.

[SPEAKER_01]: But of course, Jesus himself was a man who used the form of lament prayer.

[SPEAKER_01]: He was called a man of sorrows who was acquainted with grief.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he famously quoted Psalm twenty-two, one of the best known Psalms of the meant when he was dying on the cross.

[SPEAKER_01]: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

[SPEAKER_01]: Eloi, Eloi, Lamasabakh, then Emoi, God, my God, why?

[SPEAKER_01]: Why?

[SPEAKER_01]: Why have you forsaken me?

[SPEAKER_01]: See, by lament, we're not talking about just a vague internal sadness, a kind of quiet desperation that we're talking here about something that is sometimes loud and raw and gut-wrenching.

[SPEAKER_01]: It can take the form of groaning and anguish of protest

[SPEAKER_01]: of weeping, of wailing, of complaints, or anger, or even rage.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we saw just last month, if you saw this in the news, Christians in Syria demonstrating what this looks like after their church was bombed, and a number of their members died.

[SPEAKER_01]: They whipped, and they wailed, and they walked through the streets, crying out to God for mercy.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now these may not be the ways that we would typically feel comfortable praying in our kind of white middle class, you know, Western context.

[SPEAKER_01]: We often feel very uncomfortable with these overt demonstrable displays of emotion.

[SPEAKER_01]: But according to the Psalms, these are not only acceptable forms of prayer, but in times they might be actually very necessary forms of prayer.

[SPEAKER_01]: Why?

[SPEAKER_01]: Because as you probably know, when we're in pain, when we are suffering, if we don't find healthy and healing ways to express that pain, to work out our grief, to get it out of our inner world and put it out into something that we can deal with, to give voice to it, it will usually be transferred into something that becomes destructive or even deadly.

[SPEAKER_01]: What isn't transformed will end up being transferred into forms that are deadly or destructive?

[SPEAKER_01]: The problem is that many of us have not been taught in our churches that we're allowed to pray this way.

[SPEAKER_01]: Is that not true?

[SPEAKER_01]: The Old Testament scholar Walter Brugman says that somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that for most evangelical Christians, that have not grown up in churches that regularly use the Psalms in worship.

[SPEAKER_01]: The only sum of lament they probably really know is Psalm twenty two because it's the one that Jesus used.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so we're allowed to use that one.

[SPEAKER_01]: But the rest we avoid.

[SPEAKER_01]: We don't know what to do with them.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're too real.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're too raw.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're too unsettling.

[SPEAKER_01]: But he goes on to say that by blanking out a third of the book of the Psalms and much else of the Bible, just invites people to great guilt.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this is I think an incredible insight because if something's wrong in their life and they don't know how to lament, then the only way to explain what is wrong is that it must be their fault.

[SPEAKER_01]: It must be my fault that I'm suffering.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've done something wrong and God is punishing me.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've not been a good enough Christian.

[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't prayed enough.

[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't had enough faith, and that's why I'm going through this.

[SPEAKER_01]: Or it invites people to great denial, he says, that I have to just keep on pretending that my life is working out, that everything's fine when in fact it's not working out, and nothing is fine.

[SPEAKER_01]: I might look okay on the outside, but on the inside, I am screaming.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm screaming.

[SPEAKER_01]: So what the sums of lament are what Brugaman actually calls the sums of disorientation.

[SPEAKER_01]: Do is they lift up and call attention to the reality of human loss and human pain without making moral judgments about them.

[SPEAKER_01]: Without trying to apportion blame for whose fault it is and without giving us easy answers.

[SPEAKER_01]: In the lament Psalms, it is simply a given of human life that life is often painful.

[SPEAKER_01]: That things don't go the way that we hope.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that needs to be processed, he says, theologically, that needs to be processed with God in God's presence.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have to process that disappointment, that disorientation, that pain, that loss, that grief with God.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have to do that theologically.

[SPEAKER_01]: The lament sums are so important then because they are models to us in the way that ancient Israel and the church throughout history has learned how to have faith again in the midst of disorientation in the midst of grief and loss and pain and has learned how to worship again in the midst of disorientation and grief and pain and loss.

[SPEAKER_01]: To lament is not to wellow in self-pity.

[SPEAKER_01]: or whatever, or to kind of just sit forever in your complaints.

[SPEAKER_01]: To lament is to give voice to your pain so that you can invite God into it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Knowing that even if you don't get the clear answers you are looking forward to your questions, kind of clear explanations for your pain, by inviting God into the experience.

[SPEAKER_01]: Even if that's just initially, something like, God, how could you let this happen?

[SPEAKER_01]: Why are you doing this?

[SPEAKER_01]: Where are you?

[SPEAKER_01]: Even if that's where we begin, that's okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: We've got to invite God into the process of our pain so that He can bring His healing into our souls.

[SPEAKER_01]: As Tish Harrison Warren says in her book on lament called prayers in the night, it is better to come to God with sharp words than to remain distant from him, never voicing our doubts and disappointments, better to rage at the creator than to smolder in polite devotion.

[SPEAKER_01]: God did not smite the Samus.

[SPEAKER_01]: Through the Psalms he dares us to speak to him bluntly.

[SPEAKER_01]: You see, friends, God cannot heal in us what we are not prepared to give Him access to.

[SPEAKER_01]: God will not heal in us what cannot heal in us what we are not prepared to give Him access to.

[SPEAKER_01]: If we shut him out,

[SPEAKER_01]: If we block him off, if we refuse to talk about it, refuse to acknowledge it, then God can't get in to bring the healing.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the only way we can get God into those places in us that are full of pain is by opening up the door to him, even if that means in the process of opening the door a whole bunch of really dark stuff initially flows out.

[SPEAKER_01]: But God's okay with that.

[SPEAKER_01]: He has big shoulders.

[SPEAKER_01]: He can deal with our emotions.

[SPEAKER_01]: After all, He created them.

[SPEAKER_01]: And lament is a way of letting God access our pain, enter our grief, and then begin to restore hope and trust, and maybe even joy.

[SPEAKER_01]: Even if friends and I know that cross-out church at the moment, there are a lot of people in pain.

[SPEAKER_01]: There is a lot of suffering across our community.

[SPEAKER_01]: Even if at this point in time, you might think that joy is just never going to be your reality ever again.

[SPEAKER_01]: The purpose of lament is to open the door so that God can come in and begin to restore us and heal us and enable us to maybe one day feel joy again.

[SPEAKER_01]: Henry Cloud, the Christian psychologist and author, and I read this this morning, and I just thought this was beautiful.

[SPEAKER_01]: He says that grief is not weakness.

[SPEAKER_01]: grief is not weakness.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is how we come to terms with what is real.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can't heal what you won't feel.

[SPEAKER_01]: So let the tears fall and let the truth in because that's where the healing begins.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the issue is that I think the lament sums invite us into the questions that they invite us into.

[SPEAKER_01]: Is it how do you pray when you are so overwhelmed with sorrow that you don't know how to pray?

[SPEAKER_01]: I mentioned that in her section in the video.

[SPEAKER_01]: She didn't know how to pray through what she was experiencing.

[SPEAKER_01]: She had no words.

[SPEAKER_01]: So when you're overwhelmed with sorrow, how do you pray when you don't have the words?

[SPEAKER_01]: How do you pray when you're no longer sure if you can even trust in the goodness of God?

[SPEAKER_01]: How do you pray when God no longer feels safe?

[SPEAKER_01]: How do you pray when everything within you wants to scream and rage at God?

[SPEAKER_01]: Because it feels like he's abandoned you and you're no longer sure if he cares.

[SPEAKER_01]: How do you pray when the things that you really want to say to God, you're not sure you're allowed to say?

[SPEAKER_01]: That's where the Psalms of lament come in because it is within them that we'll find the words for all of those questions.

[SPEAKER_01]: They cover just about every aspect.

[SPEAKER_01]: of suffering that humans can go through betrayals, persecution, injustice, abandonment, sickness, death, loneliness, confusion, grief, depression, fear, disappointment, failure, loss, it's all there.

[SPEAKER_01]: And all of it's raw and gory detail.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's there because as Brugaman says, biblical faith is honest, it's realistic.

[SPEAKER_01]: Scripture never promises to you that you won't suffer.

[SPEAKER_01]: or that life will always be easy.

[SPEAKER_01]: It certainly doesn't give neat answers to the many questions we have about why the world is the way it is.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not trying to sell you anything.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it never promises that if you live a good enough life, you have enough faith, if you pray enough that you'll never go through pain.

[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, the Bible is full of people who like many of us have faced profound seasons of grief and pain and loss.

[SPEAKER_01]: Despite, or maybe even in times because of, because of their faithfulness to God.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love what Paul said in the video, which is so true.

[SPEAKER_01]: We all feel this.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've been serving you faithfully.

[SPEAKER_01]: How could you do this to me?

[SPEAKER_01]: Theo Carson says there is no attempt in Scripture to whitewash the anguish of God's people when they undergo suffering.

[SPEAKER_01]: They argue with God, they complain to God, they weep before God, there's is not a faith that leads to dry eyed stoicism but a faith so robust.

[SPEAKER_01]: It wrestles with God and I just love that image of Jacob wrestling with God, you know, where he's just leaning in.

[SPEAKER_01]: pushing against the Lord, bringing all His frustration and pain as He wrestles with the Lord through the night.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we need to speak about this because when it comes to faith in Jesus, the pain, the suffering and the brokenness of our lives doesn't just disappear.

[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, in our relationship with Jesus, what often happens is that it actually brings to the surface all kinds of tensions

[SPEAKER_01]: Unresolvable tensions that we experience as men and women who are in the kingdom of God yet still in the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are redeemed yet still being redeemed.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are saved yet still being saved.

[SPEAKER_01]: There is an unresolvable tension to the Christian life because we are caught between two worlds.

[SPEAKER_01]: and in the book of Revelation chapter one it opens with this prayer there is the kingdom and the tribulation that word tribulation flips us in great means the pressure the pain that is experienced when to competing or opposing powers crash into one another and as men and women of the kingdom of God we kind of live in that space of tension

[SPEAKER_01]: So I believe with all my heart that Jesus is good and we've discovered in Christ a God who is good and who is gracious and who promises us abundant life.

[SPEAKER_01]: that we have encountered in Christ, a God who is just and merciful and loving.

[SPEAKER_01]: But at the same time, at some point in our lives, we will be confronted with the reality of suffering and loss and confusion, which shadows, neat assumptions about how life is supposed to go and how God is supposed to be at work in our lives, and if we haven't been through this yet, I'm really sorry to say, but it is only a matter of time.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's why we need to talk about this.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because otherwise, if it's all just, you know, happiness, rainbows and unicorns, when the hard stuff happens, people will not have the resources in Christ to deal with it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And they'll fall apart, they'll deconstruct, they'll explode, their lives will shatter into a million pieces.

[SPEAKER_01]: So as a church, we owe it to ourselves as disciples of Jesus to talk about these things and to prepare our hearts so that when the difficult days come, we have resources in Christ in the Spirit and in the Word to deal with these profound experiences of disorientation.

[SPEAKER_01]: So yes, we believe that Christ has won the victory.

[SPEAKER_01]: over sin and death and all the suffering that comes with it.

[SPEAKER_01]: But also we live in a world where we're surrounded by it and when we go through that ourselves we have to understand that the Bible never presents God as a genie in a bottle who just magics that stuff away.

[SPEAKER_01]: Instead he is over and over and over again presented as the God who enters into that pain with us.

[SPEAKER_01]: Who walks with us through it.

[SPEAKER_01]: who gives us resources in his presence and in prayer and in the Word, not just to endure it, but as we spoke about a few weeks ago when we were talking about this in our deeper series, not just to endure it, but to grow through it.

[SPEAKER_01]: to become stronger people, deeper people, more profoundly faithful people on the other side of those experiences of suffering.

[SPEAKER_01]: So Tishwaran says, we don't pray the way people use magic.

[SPEAKER_01]: Prayer is not an incantation to wake a sleeping God.

[SPEAKER_01]: We pray as an act of hope in God's goodness.

[SPEAKER_01]: We pray because we believe that God who makes no promises of our safety and comfort, nevertheless loves us and takes care of us.

[SPEAKER_01]: We pray because our lives are part of the big story of God's work of redemption and we pray to a creator who has himself tasted death.

[SPEAKER_01]: So when we go through these things,

[SPEAKER_01]: We have to work it out.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have to make sense of the gap between the kingdom that we are on our way to and the world that we live in now.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that is where lament comes in.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's where lament fits into the picture.

[SPEAKER_01]: Lament is the tool that God provides us to navigate the seasons when our lives experience or crashes against our beliefs and the character of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we believe that God is just

[SPEAKER_01]: But we experience injustice.

[SPEAKER_01]: We believe that God is merciful, yet we experience persecution.

[SPEAKER_01]: We believe God is present, yet we experience silence and loneliness.

[SPEAKER_01]: To lament is a prayer born in the painful friction between those two realities.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it can feel like when you're lamenting that it's not a particularly faithful act.

[SPEAKER_01]: How do I put this?

[SPEAKER_01]: It feels often when you are in the midst of lament that you are not exercising faith.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're complaining, you're bickering, you're fighting with God, you're raging, you're crying, you're weeping, you're in anguish.

[SPEAKER_01]: If the way we've been taught to pray, as always, that you must always give thanks in any and every situation.

[SPEAKER_01]: I believe that's ultimately what it takes us to.

[SPEAKER_01]: But when we're in the midst of struggle, we've first got to deal with our emotions.

[SPEAKER_01]: And actually, I think the opposite is true that lament is not a faithless act.

[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, lament is an incredibly powerful act of faith.

[SPEAKER_01]: because in the process of lamenting you are saying, God, I don't know if I trust you anymore, but I'm going to stick with you through this.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's an incredible act of faith.

[SPEAKER_01]: To say, God, I feel disappointed in the way my life is turning out.

[SPEAKER_01]: I feel angry at some of the things you've done or not done.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm going to stick this out.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to stay with you and I'm going to pray through this because I do trust that you're good.

[SPEAKER_01]: But this doesn't make sense.

[SPEAKER_01]: I do trust that you're gracious.

[SPEAKER_01]: But this doesn't fit.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I know that this is not the final word.

[SPEAKER_01]: My pain is not the final word, so I'm going to pray through this.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to stick with you.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to, no matter what, I'm going to keep on trying to trust you.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I mark, I've wrote a book on the practice of lament.

[SPEAKER_01]: He says this, the practice of lament is one of the most theologically informed actions a person can take.

[SPEAKER_01]: While crying is fundamental to humanity, Christians lament because they know God is sovereign and good.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right?

[SPEAKER_01]: We lament because we know God is sovereign and good.

[SPEAKER_01]: But our experience doesn't fit, so we lament, we cry out.

[SPEAKER_01]: Christians know His promises in the Scriptures.

[SPEAKER_01]: We believe in God's power to deliver.

[SPEAKER_01]: We know the tomb is empty and Jesus is alive and yet.

[SPEAKER_01]: We still experience pain and sorrow.

[SPEAKER_01]: Lament is the language for living between the poles of a hard life and trusting in God's sovereignty.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is a prayer form for people who are waiting for the day Jesus will return and make everything right Christians don't just mourn.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're not just well-oing in pity.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are longing.

[SPEAKER_01]: Lament is an act of longing for God to end this pain.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we can pray this way, because we're people of hope, not as I said a few weeks back in the deeper series.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're not people of optimism, but we are people of hope.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we can pray this way primarily because we believe in the resurrection of Christ from the dead.

[SPEAKER_01]: Tischwarren says, Jesus resurrection.

[SPEAKER_01]: No, that's not it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus Resurrection is the sole evidence that love triumphs over death, that beauty outlives horror, that the meek will inherit the earth, that those whom mourn will be comforted.

[SPEAKER_01]: The reason I can continue watching and waiting even as the world is shrouded in darkness, even when I am racked with pain is because the things I long for are not rooted in wishful thinking or religious ritual but are as solid

[SPEAKER_01]: as a stone rolled away.

[SPEAKER_01]: Don't you love that?

[SPEAKER_01]: As solid as a stone rolled away.

[SPEAKER_01]: The reason I can have hope in the midst of darkness is because I believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that is in the end my only hope.

[SPEAKER_01]: That is the hope of our salvation.

[SPEAKER_01]: That Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.

[SPEAKER_01]: I remember Peter Hitchens came on to Q&A in Australia.

[SPEAKER_01]: Peter Hitchens is the journalist, Christian brother of the famous atheist, Christopher Hitchens.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he was speaking on Q&A, and at the end, and they were talking about big ideas, and at the end of the session,

[SPEAKER_01]: each of the panelists were asked, what do you think is the most powerful and dangerous idea that has ever been spoken, or ever been thought of in human history?

[SPEAKER_01]: And they all went through various things.

[SPEAKER_01]: Peter Hitchens was last, and I just think this was a God orchestrated moment.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he spoke at the end, after all these other people, it's at all these other different things.

[SPEAKER_01]: He simply looked at the host of the panel and he said, the most dangerous and the most powerful idea in human history is very simple.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.

[SPEAKER_01]: That was amazing.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why we have hope because Christ has defeated death.

[SPEAKER_01]: He has risen from the grave.

[SPEAKER_01]: But if we don't know how to access the resources that are there for us in the Word of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: And as a pastor, I've seen this over and over and over again throughout the years.

[SPEAKER_01]: Many Christians, when hardship and tragedy strikes, because they don't have these resources.

[SPEAKER_01]: When they go through these things, they just don't know how to hold on to a belief in the goodness of God and the midst of their pain because where was God in my suffering?

[SPEAKER_01]: But like Mary, at the grave side of Lazarus, when she said to Jesus, teacher, if you had been here, this would not have happened.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you'd been here, Jesus, this would not have happened.

[SPEAKER_01]: My brother would not have died.

[SPEAKER_01]: And what's powerful about that moment is that Jesus doesn't review her for her lack of faith.

[SPEAKER_01]: He knows he's the resurrection in the life.

[SPEAKER_01]: But what does Jesus do in that mode?

[SPEAKER_01]: Does he rebuke Mary?

[SPEAKER_01]: Does he?

[SPEAKER_01]: Does he?

[SPEAKER_01]: Does this become a teaching moment?

[SPEAKER_01]: Does he give us some good advice?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, here's how you manage your grief, Mary.

[SPEAKER_01]: What does he do?

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus weeps.

[SPEAKER_01]: He enters into her grief.

[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't stand distant from it.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's not aloof to it.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's not untouched by it in that moment.

[SPEAKER_01]: We see something that I think is fundamental to the heart and character of God is that when we are suffering, he doesn't go off.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is a bit much.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure I can handle these emotions.

[SPEAKER_01]: There are a bit raw.

[SPEAKER_01]: Those words were a little bit pointed, a little bit blunt.

[SPEAKER_01]: bit disappointed by that person's lack of faith.

[SPEAKER_01]: No, he doesn't do any of those things.

[SPEAKER_01]: He enters into our grief and our sorrow and he weeps alongside us.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then in the process of us opening up our hearts and working out our pain and suffering with Jesus, he begins to lead us gently.

[SPEAKER_01]: Step by step, day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year, out of our pain and back into hope, out of our grief and back into joy.

[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't just magic it, make it go away, because think about it.

[SPEAKER_01]: If that's the way Jesus treated us, then we're just patients, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: And he's just a doctor, and he's just there to fix us.

[SPEAKER_01]: But that's not how it works.

[SPEAKER_01]: What Jesus wants to do is walk with us in relationship.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're not objects that he works on, where people, that he loves.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so he deals with us as people.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he helps us process what we've experienced in a way that is most healing.

[SPEAKER_01]: not just by taking it away, but actually helping us to learn how to continue to trust and love God, even despite what we have been through.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that we can then say, yes, the Lord is good.

[SPEAKER_01]: I have tasted of His goodness.

[SPEAKER_01]: So what you see, let me finish with this.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to invite the band to come on up.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've run out of time.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've got lots more here, but we'll just, we'll come back to this at another time.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yay, another sermon on lament.

[SPEAKER_01]: That'll be exciting.

[SPEAKER_01]: Look at what Psalm thirteen does.

[SPEAKER_01]: One of the shortest limits, so very helpful here.

[SPEAKER_01]: First of all, it starts with the lament.

[SPEAKER_01]: The first stanza is this act of anguish, of grief, lament, crying out to God.

[SPEAKER_01]: How long?

[SPEAKER_01]: Lord, will you forget me forever?

[SPEAKER_01]: And so the Psalmist starts there.

[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't start with thanksgiving.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh Lord, I love you for your goodness.

[SPEAKER_01]: I praise you for your kindness, your wonderful.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now he starts with this anguish, this cry of grief.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then as he's worked through that, he moves into petition.

[SPEAKER_01]: He begins to ask the Lord to meet him in the midst of his pain.

[SPEAKER_01]: This has come, Lord, come and help me as I'm drowning here.

[SPEAKER_01]: drowning here, God.

[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like my enemies are triumphs.

[SPEAKER_01]: Where are you?

[SPEAKER_01]: Help me.

[SPEAKER_01]: Consider my prayer.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then eventually it moves back into trust.

[SPEAKER_01]: But even though that's just six short verses, you all know if you've been through something like this that those six verses can take often times weeks or years to go through.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I'm saying?

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's not like it's a process that's linear.

[SPEAKER_01]: We might experience healing in a measure and we can rejoice in that.

[SPEAKER_01]: But then something else needs to be processed so we go back to grief and then we go through the process again.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not a linear thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: We jump around all over the place, but God meets us in each of those stages wherever we are out with what we need.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let me finish with

[SPEAKER_01]: Romans chapter eight.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I know as we think about this, this may have raised some things for you this morning.

[SPEAKER_01]: And as we've said already, there are a lot of people across our church community who are suffering

[SPEAKER_01]: a number of very profound ways right now.

[SPEAKER_01]: But here is what Paul says in Romans eight.

[SPEAKER_01]: For we know that the whole creation has been grown in, as in the pains of childbirth, right up to the present time.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's talking about what has happened since sin is entered the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: not only sober we ourselves see this is Paul the Apostle he's but one again he's filled with the Holy Spirit and yet he says and we ourselves we have the first roots of the Spirit we grown inwardly as we wait for our adoption as we wait for our healing the redemption of our bodies the redemption of our lives for in this hope we were saved

[SPEAKER_01]: In the same way, now this is the most profound thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: In the same way the Spirit helps us in our weakness because we don't know what we ought to pray for.

[SPEAKER_01]: But the Spirit Himself intercedes for us through wordless grotes.

[SPEAKER_01]: In other words, God is groaning within us as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are groaning, creation is groaning, and God is groaning too.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's with us in our pain.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have hope, but we need to sit with that sometimes.

[SPEAKER_01]: And not just move from our life as tough to, but thanks be to God I have the victory in Christ Jesus my Lord.

[SPEAKER_01]: We disclose our eyes for a minute and ask the Holy Spirit just to move through this room right now.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if you are in a season of lament, I pray that you could just bring that before the Lord right now.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you've been running from it, if you've been trying to hide, deny it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you could have just a little bit of courage this morning.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just a little bit of faith.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've been up that door to God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Tell Him how you're really feeling.

[SPEAKER_00]: Tell Him what you're really going through.

[SPEAKER_01]: We quickly jump to the petition stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: Lord help me.

[SPEAKER_01]: But lament doesn't work that way.

[SPEAKER_01]: Lament begins with us saying, God, this is how I'm feeling.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm angry with you.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm grieving.

[SPEAKER_01]: I feel lost.

[SPEAKER_01]: I feel afraid.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm hurting.

[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like you've abandoned me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Where are you, God?

[SPEAKER_01]: Holy Spirit, I pray that we might just feel your groaning within us for a moment.

[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now we did want to create some space for prayer and ministry this morning.

[SPEAKER_01]: So what I'm going to do is ask Elders, prayer team, members of the ministry team, if you could just come up and be ready to pray.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we're going to sing a song together.

[SPEAKER_01]: As we do, if you would like prayer this morning, I encourage you just to come up now and receive some ministry.

[SPEAKER_01]: Not finish the service just yet, but in this moment, I really feel like we should

[SPEAKER_01]: turn our hearts to God.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if you need prayer, just to come forward and receive that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if you're not in a space where you need prayer this morning, then let's stand and worship together.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to sing together for a few moments.