Spiritual Disciplines - Lament
Notes
Transcript
Spiritual Disciplines - Lament
Spiritual Disciplines - Lament
In our culture lament is not something we seek. It is not something we desire to enter into but there is something powerful that can happen when we chose to embrace lament.
To lament is basically to mourn, or to have a passionate expression of grief. To lament is to acknowledge the pain you feel deep in your soul that often times words fail to express. As American Christians I don’t think we lament well. I don’t think we acknowledge grief or pain very well at all. We put on masks and talk about the bright side. We try to cover up pain with cliches or just be positive and think that it will help us.
I honestly believe that part of the reason we put on the happy face and look on the bright side is to help us. We do not want to face the pain, heartache, discomfort, or tragedy of the situation but that is not biblical. Lamenting is biblical. In fact one third of the Psalms are lament.
There are generally four aspects of lament, address, complaint, request, and an expression of trust.
We jump to the expression of trust but if do not acknowledge the complaint or the problem then we are missing an important part of the healing process.
Lament is a path to praise because it acknowledges our brokenness and the brokenness of the world and that God is supreme over it.
The Bible never glosses over the human condition. It never pretends everything is ok. Instead the Bible acknowledges that world is broken, people sin, bad things happen, and points to a future when it will finally be restored. The Bible starts with perfection and then proclaims a day when it will return to that state.
Lament is not avoiding the truth but acknowledging it and still choosing trust.
To Lament is to hold the pain, anguish, or frustration we feel in one hand and trust in God in the other hand.
What do we lament over?
Lament Over our Sin
Lament Over our Sin
I have spoken on this before so I will not spend too much time here. The first thing we should lament over is our sin. We can easily see and point out the sins of others, but to lament over our own sin is powerful.
My guilt overwhelms me— it is a burden too heavy to bear.
My wounds fester and stink because of my foolish sins.
When we sin we can see our own faults and failures and acknowledge that we fall short. Hard as we try we are not perfect and continue to fail. But we do not stay there.
Brother Lawrence said;
I shall never do otherwise, if You leave me to myself; ’tis You must hinder my falling, and mend what is amiss. - Brother Lawrence
If you confess Jesus as Lord and Savior then we can admit like the Apostle Paul that even though we are saved, that we belong to Christ and sit with Him in heaven but we still fall short on this earth.
Lamenting over our own sin helps us not be so focused on other peoples sins. Yes it is important in one sense but we should first remove the beam from our own eye.
Lament Over Personal Loss or Difficulty
Lament Over Personal Loss or Difficulty
Another area of lament is over personal loss or some personal difficulty. The death of a family member. If they follow the Messiah we can rejoice that they are home but we can also mourn their absence here. We can mourn over the loss of a marriage, the death of a dream, the loss after a disaster, health issues. In our personal lives, because we live in a broken world, there is no shortage of things to lament over. We can have conflicting emotions and feelings because we can read things like
Because you have made the Lord—my refuge,
the Most High—your dwelling place,
no harm will come to you;
no plague will come near your tent.
What do we do when bad things happen and we are trying to trust verses like this and not seeing the victory? What do we do when we know that we have placed our trust and faith in the Lord and still it does not work out?
We can lament.
Lament Over Corporate Issues
Lament Over Corporate Issues
We can lament over corporate issues. Something like a national tragedy or national failing. For example, if you are old enough to remember 9/11 then you remember there was a national lamenting that occurred afterwards. People gathered to cry, express fear, anger, and frustration. But it can also be things that shake (or should shake) us. The church as a whole can lament over the foster care crisis, or human trafficking. Local churches can lament over the issues in their body or cities.
We can chose to sit in lament over the brokenness of the world when the issue does not directly affect us but affects humanity.
We Can Lament with Others
We Can Lament with Others
You can lament for others you are close to. Romans 12:15 tells us to weep with those who weep. We can see the pain and hurt others feel and mourn, cry, and lament with them. This is an area that we often fall short in and where our look on the bright side help comes in. I think we do that to help. It often comes from a good place but if we learned to and leaned into the gift and Spiritual Discipline of Lamenting, we would be better off.
Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.
The only way to do this is to enter into relationships. We are called to rejoice and weep with others and the only way to do this is to enter into and give ourselves to relationships. It is hard, it is messy, and sometimes it does not work out. But that is still the call. If you want relationships with others you have to enter into them and give yourself over to those relationships. Then we can truly rejoice and weep with others.
There were those in Bible times that were professional mourners. They would mourn and give language to the ones who were in pain but could not express it on their own.
They came to the leader’s house, and he saw a commotion—people weeping and wailing loudly.
Lamenting and mourning with others who are in pain is just as powerful as rejoicing with those who rejoice.
We Must Look to Jesus
We Must Look to Jesus
Jesus is our example of lament. He both lamented and chose to enter others brokenness.
Jesus wept.
In the face of pain and death Jesus wept. When His friend Lazarus died Jesus wept. Not because He could not bring Him back, but because the sting of death is real and people were hurting. People were experiencing pain and Jesus experienced that pain with them. He saw their tears and it moved Him to tears. Never let someone tell you men don’t cry, Jesus Christ and King of Kings and Lord of Lords cried.
We have a Savior who not only comforts us when we cry but has wept as well.
In the Garden Jesus Himself weeps and laments the cup before Him but He ultimately accepts the cup and praises His Father.
Christ is our example of it means to enter into brokenness. He left the perfection of heaven to take on flesh and become like us.
Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus,
who, existing in the form of God,
did not consider equality with God
as something to be exploited.
Instead he emptied himself
by assuming the form of a servant,
taking on the likeness of humanity.
And when he had come as a man,
he humbled himself by becoming obedient
to the point of death—
even to death on a cross.
Jesus entered into brokenness for us. He chose to not look away and ignore our helpless state but took it upon Himself. We desire to be like Jesus and do what He did.
Little children, let us not love in word or speech, but in action and in truth.
This verse is talking about how we act towards believers but Galatians tells us,
Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us work for the good of all, especially for those who belong to the household of faith.
We do good to all. We care for all. We are willing to enter into brokenness for all!
Practicing Lament
Practicing Lament
For our remaining time I would like us to look at Psalm 42. Many suggest that Psalm 43 is an extension of Psalm 42 but for time sake we will not be able to pull that one in.
As a deer longs for flowing streams,
so I long for you, God.
I thirst for God, the living God.
When can I come and appear before God?
My tears have been my food day and night,
while all day long people say to me,
“Where is your God?”
This is an address and a complaint. This is about desperation. This is about being desperate for the situation to change. This is about being desperate for God. Desperate for His provision, desperate for Him to look at you.
Have you ever felt like God does not see you? Like He does not hear you? Like you are invisible to Him?
It is saying, “I see you seeing other people God why do you not see me? Why do I cry day and night? Why are you silent? Why do you avoid my pain? What have I done?”
Psalm 42:4 (CSB)
I remember this as I pour out my heart:
how I walked with many,
leading the festive procession to the house of God,
with joyful and thankful shouts.
This is more complaint. It was not always like this. There was a time when laughter occured. We can remember even when things are hard that not every time was hard. There were moments and days when things were good.
These times are probably referring to the three festivals of Exodus; Passover, Festival of First-fruits, and Booths.
I want to say something very important. As modern day Protestants we often cast a dark view on tradition and rituals but there is benefit in them. Now tradition is not good just because it is tradition, but it is not bad just because it is tradition either. There is something powerful that happens in us when we observe certain traditions and rituals that have biblical meaning and a biblical basis.
When we do the thing we do not feel like because it is right. There is also something important that happens in the memory. I wish I had learned this earlier in life. In some sense there is something to be said for going through the motions.
Things like going to church regularly, attending small group, serving, practicing spiritual disciplines. These things have value and in our times of lament they can give us a history to recall.
Why, my soul, are you so dejected?
Why are you in such turmoil?
Put your hope in God, for I will still praise him,
my Savior and my God.
We now have an expression of trust.
There is a line the book the Screwtape letters by CS lewis:
“Be not deceived, Wormwood, our cause is never more in jeopardy than when a human, no longer desiring but still intending to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe in which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
There is something to be said about telling yourself to trust God in the midst of your turmoil. In the dark night of the soul to tell yourself to put hope in God. Not for the outcome you desire but for the outcome that is good according to the plan and purpose of God. Faith is refined and made pure here.
I am deeply depressed;
therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan
and the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your breakers and your billows have swept over me.
We have more complaint. More remembering. Sometimes it just feels like everything is against us and the walls are falling down on us. We start to feel as if we will drown and we cannot get our heads above the water. One thing after another keeps coming at us.
Here is the thing I love about biblical lament. The components of address, complaint, request, and an expression of trust are not linear and they are not static. You can and often do go back and forth. You start to feel double minded, because you are, and in one breath you talk about how the world is crashing in around you, and in the next you say
The Lord will send his faithful love by day;
his song will be with me in the night—
a prayer to the God of my life.
We now have an expression of trust. When things are hard, when life is overwhelming, when we chose to lament for things that are beyond our control we feel this tension and the temptation is to stop and just sit in one. To ignore the pain or to give ourselves over to it. Instead I would challenge you to feel the tension.
I will say to God, my rock,
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about in sorrow
because of the enemy’s oppression?”
Here we have the tension of the fullness of lament. We have the address, the complaint, the request, and the expression of trust. There is something to be said about acknowledging the pain you feel, the disappointment that is real, and the hope you have in God. Again here is the tension in full form. We hold all of these things together and sometimes it feel paradoxical and maybe it is but we are the ones who have said they cannot coexist not God.
To say to God where are you says I know you are real and you are able. It is to say I know you could do something about this. I know you can change the situation.
My adversaries taunt me,
as if crushing my bones,
while all day long they say to me,
“Where is your God?”
We will have people around us, sometimes well meaning people, sometimes well meaning Christians who look at our situation from the outside and feel it is their place to judge, critique, and evaluate our situation based on nothing more than their feelings and life.
Who are you to judge another’s household servant? Before his own Lord he stands or falls. And he will stand, because the Lord is able to make him stand.
This verse is talking about food and festivals but it also speaks to the idea that we cannot know what someone else is going through. We do not always have the full picture.
Remember Job’s friends who came to comfort him and ended up condemning him. They held to a hyper-deuteronomic formula that says everything good or bad is because of something you have done. They took God’s words in Deuteronomy 8 and said it applies to everything. The disciples made this same mistake in John 9.
As he was passing by, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” Jesus answered. “This came about so that God’s works might be displayed in him. We must do the works of him who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
There is almost always more to the story than what we see.
Why, my soul, are you so dejected?
Why are you in such turmoil?
Put your hope in God, for I will still praise him,
my Savior and my God.
Prayer teams come up. Band Comes Up
Again we reach a place where we have to tell our soul, our very being to trust in God. That we have to take a stand and say I will trust that this is not the end.
“But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives,
and he will stand upon the earth at last.
Faith it about saying that just because I do not see the situation going the way I want I will trust in my God. I will walk it out even when I do not feel it or want to. I will tell my soul to have hope.
Faith, faith that makes a difference in your life is about saying even when I don’t see it I will trust.
There is a song we are going to sing that says,
Even when my strength is lost
I'll praise You
Even when I have no song
I'll praise You
Even when it's hard to find the words
Louder then I'll sing Your praise
I will only sing Your praise
Can we learn to lament? Can we express the pain and the trust?
If you do not know Jesus then this is hard. If you do not have a relationship with the Lord then now is the time.