Lament Service

Introduction to Lament:

What is lament.

“Lament is the honest cry of a hurting heart wrestling with the paradox of pain and the promise of God’s goodness…. Christians affirm that the world is broken, God is powerful, and He will be faithful. Therefore lament stands in the gap between pain and promise.”

“Lament has been described as a loud cry, a howl, or a passionate expression of grief. However, in the Bible lament is more than sorrow or talking about sadness. It is more than walking through the stages of grief. Lament is a prayer in pain that leads to trust…. You might think lament is the opposite of praise. It isn’t. Instead, lament is a path to praise as we are led through our brokenness and disappointment. The space between brokenness and God’s mercy is where this song is sung… it is the path from heartbreak to hope.”

Lament is how Christians grieve. It is how to help hurting people. Lament is how we learn important truths about God and our world. My personal and pastoral experience has convinced me that biblical lament is not only a gift but also a neglected element of the life of today’s Christians.

Lament is how we bring our sorrow, our pain, our confusion to God and ending with the Christian rejoicing in their suffering and rejoicing in their God. Without lament, we won’t know how to process pain. Instead, silence, bitterness, and even anger dominate our spiritual lives. Without lament, we won’t know how to help people walking through sorrow. Instead, we’ll offer trite solutions, unhelpful comments, and impatient responses. What’s more, without this sacred song of sorrow, we’ll miss the lessons historic laments are intended to teach us.

So if we are to be a biblical church we must be ready to lament, we must be ready to instruct others to lament. If we are to be a biblical singing church. Our songs must be of lament.

It’s noteworthy that of the 150 psalms, 1/3 of them are lament. The largest category in the Psalms. What is the Psalms. Israel’s official and divinely written songbook. One out of 3 of the divine songbook wrestles with the truth of pain in this life and the sovereignty of God. Furthermore, one entire book of the Bible is given to corporate lament, Lamentations. Divinely inspired so that we may be guided in how to lament.

So church, we want you to be prepared. We want you to be equipped. It is human nature to want to avoid the hurt and the suffering and the pain and even to avoid talking about it. It is uncomfortable, but to avoid is it the absolute worst thing we can do. God in his rich mercy and kindness, did not leave us in this broken world to just figure things out. He provided us the necessary tools to heal our broken hearts and give us a gateway to understanding Him greater. Don’t neglect this this time. Use this time. Write down these verses, memorize these songs, pay attention to the model prayers we will pray, use the Biblical language employed today and be encouraged that God did not leave us alone in our misery. But gave us a way to work through the pain. It is lament.

A prayer in pain that leads to trust.

And we can see this process unfold in the Psalms through 4 steps of obedience. First.

Addressing God (Crying out to God)

To learn to lament, we must resolve to talk to God. To keep praying. Those that are in pain, need not remain silent, but must appropriately continue their plea to God.

To pray in pain is messy. It does ask tough questions, but yet even that is an act of faith because we continue to turn our struggles to a God we believe can answer. To stop our prayers is the sure sign of our lack of faith.

Silent despair lives under the hopeless resignation that God doesn’t care, he doesn’t hear, and nothing is ever going to change. People who believe this stop praying. They give up.

Praying also doesn’t mean that the burdens will automatically lift. As we will soon read in Psalm 77, the Psalmists prays and no resolution occurs. It feels like his prayers aren’t working. Yet, he still prays.

So lament is not this quick fix solution. Instead, lament is the song you sing believing that one day God will answer and restore. Lament invites us to pray through our struggles with a life that is far from perfect to a God that does listen, that does care, and that will answer in His omnipotent and omniscient grace.

So cry out to Jesus. Pray your struggles to Him. Prayer through the sorrow and the difficulty for doing so will anchor your souls in truth.

Complaint

“Compaint” isn’t a very positive word. We don’t like complainers. It seems like the wrong response to situations where we should be content or thankful. But is it always sinful. It can’t be for the Psalms are filled with complaints. Entire chapters are devoted to complaint and these were set to music for an entire congregation to sing their frustrations to God.

Don’t get me wrong. We are not saying that God is pleased with our self-centered rage at Him when life doesn’t turn out the way we think it should. We have no right to be angry with God. But through godly complaint, we are able to express our disappointment and confusion and move toward biblical resolution.

We are dealing with the emotions inside our hearts but also the truth in our heads. That God is good, but life is hard. And when it is hard, we wonder then where could God be if He is indeed good. We wrestle with the promises God has given us and bring them back to Him, asking if he will indeed fulfill them.

I’m sure many of you know the pain of suffering but also with the struggle of God’s seeming absence.

The lament psalms teach us that theses feelings should not be dismissed as invalid or sinful. They are part of the journey- an aspect of genuine faith.

As we read these Psalms, understand that they give us permission, even encouragement, to lay our our struggles before God, even if they are directed at God himself. But come with your pain, not your pride. And don’t end there.

It is a means to an end, but it is not the end itself...designed to move us along in our grief, very much like a surgeon’s cut is meant to heal. So don’t wallow in it, but be humble and be honest, and pray the godly complaints of that Bible so that God may heal you.

As we read these Psalms and are instructed in godly complaint, take comfort in the fact the our great high priest, in his humanity, seemed to model and exhibit this godly principle on earth when He cried out in pain on the cross....

My God My God why have you forsaken me...

Request

The next leg in our journey involves confidently calling upon God to act in accordance with his character. It is how lament moves from the why question to the who question of request. The writers of lament stake their claim on what God has promised to do.

Complaints in the Psalms are not cul-de-sacs of sorrows but bridges that lead him to God’s character… They lead us to the “yet God” of the scriptures. Revealing and remember again his character.

So what requests should we make. Bold requests.

In our pain and our desperation, we pray differently, for pain has a way of awakening us to our need of God’s help. It shines the spotlight on our powerlessness and ability to control everything.

We ask boldly because He (Jesus) understands deeply. Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief is how the scriptures tell of His earthly life. Jesus, the man of sorrows, met us first in our pain and suffering by coming to this earth and experiencing all of these firsthand, offering himself as the just sacrifice so that an end to pain can be achieved. But Jesus in his character, did not spend all of his care in that one act, no he bids us to continue to meet him in our pain and to bring our requests to Him boldly and confidently, because He can and will answer in his perfect timing. As we do this, our view of our self diminishes as we come to center our vision on the perfect, spotless, righteous, loving God who willing gave Himself for us in our darkest hour of need and will continue to do so.

So pray boldly and pray boldly for others and with others. Boldness begets boldness. Where their faith may be waning, your faith and confidence in approaching the throne of grace can be a great help.

Trust & Praise

Why does godly lament bring us to trust and praise? Because suffering refines what we trust in and how we talk about it. Pain actually can bring clarity. Loss affirms trust.

We say this alot, I would never want to go through that again, but I learned alot from it and for that I am grateful.

Lament then allows us to embrace an endurance that is not passive. We don’t passively endure trials. We should actively lament through trials. Lament is what God has given us to practice this patience that leads to trust. We call out to God, we share our complaints, we seek God’s help and ask our bold requests, and then we recommit ourselves to believe in who God is and what he has already done.

And that is what trust is. Believing what you already know and have seen to be true even though presently it seems like the facts don’t line up.

And one thing that we know to be true is that God’s ways are perfect. We don’t know how the dots line up, but we trust his gracious plan is being worked out in all the details.

I love these lyrics from the song I still believe...

Though the questions still fog up my mind,

With promises I still seem to bear

Well, even when answers slowly unwind

It’s my heart I see you prepare

Cause I still believe in your faithfulness

Cause i still believe in your truth

Cause I still believe in your holy word,

And even when I don’t see, I still believe.

If you feel that you will not be able to ever have faith and believe in God this way, “keep trusting the One who keeps you trusting.”