It hasn't been a good week for our triathletes as we were confronted with the cries of Paula
Findlay, a medal contender going into
the triathlon for Canada only to finish last in the event and then Simon Whitfield crashing out today. We are all proud of them, but you can feel the disappointment knowing how hard they prepared and what it took to get them there.
Now, it is one thing to be angry or upset with
yourself; but how do you respond when someone is angry with God?
What creates a crisis of faith?
How do you respond to a crisis of faith?
There are times when you should say nothing, when you should
simply be a listening ear. It is an easy
thing to say, but a lot harder to do. It
is hard to hear someone who is visibly upset and angry and if their anger is
directed towards God, we want to defend Him naturally.
We want to say something positive and encouraging; however,
there are times when we should stay with the feeling that is being expressed
and simply be quiet and listen.
Like God did when Heman the Ezrahite poured out his anguish
to the Lord in Psalm 88.
Psalm 88 is a maskil = It means understanding. The verb form is to look at, to scrutinize,
to look well into anything. In the noun
form, it means understanding arising from deep consideration
The writer clearly identifies what kind of a prayer this
psalm is: It is a cry. More accurately, it is a wail, a sob expressing a pain
so deep and a despair so wide that it consumes him day and night
As a cry of lament it is unique among the 150 psalms in the
Bible “because of its gloom and unrelieved misery”. Unlike other psalms of lament (i.e. 22 and
31), there is no resolution, no turning point.
There is no trusting or praising God. That makes it hard to read and
even harder to appreciate.
This kind of wailing cry, however, has always had a place in
Israel as a legitimate expression of overwhelming pain, of deep, long-term
suffering for which there is no quick fix. That’s why the Old City of Jerusalem
has a wailing wall.
The western wall is still a place not only to mourn the
destruction of the Temple in the first century but also to grieve the
disintegration of their national and personal dreams and hopes. It was here that I stood and prayed three years ago while on a tour for the light of the glorious gospel to shine through all those crumpled up prayers that have been stuck in that wall. May they know that Jesus, you are the Messiah!
Take a moment and consider what has been your crisis of
faith? Maybe you have had a few and
possibly you are in one right now.
You may have been told that showing emotion or crying is a
form of weakness. You may have felt the need to apologize for
shedding tears when emotional or hurt. I
grew up in a family with four older brothers and we seldom displayed raw
emotion. It wouldn’t be until four
months after my father passed away, while on my honeymoon with Sharon that I
finally sobbed with Sharon at my side feeling the true weight of my loss.
Psalm 88 invites us
to lament, and encourages us to express our pain “when your soul is full of trouble.”v3 In
other words, permission granted to grieve.
Dealing With Loss v3-9
Why was his soul so full of trouble that he cried day and
night? He grieved two losses.
·
Death v3-5
First, he was convinced that he was dying, he spoke of “being near the grave’.
He could have been mortally wounded from battle, deathly
sick or possibly dying of old age.
He speaks of being confined and unable to escape in v8 as
well as having eyes that were dim with grief.
He is feeling the loss of his health.
If you have had a near death experience that has or been
close to someone near death, you know how confining an experience like that can
be. It’s a hard place to be and even
harder to visit especially for those to be reminded of their own mortality.
·
Lonliness v6-9
It had to just tear him apart inside knowing that his
closest friends stayed away, unwilling to be with him in the time of his
greatest need. He felt like God had made
him ‘repulsive’ to them. He was grieving
the loss of his friends.
These were his twin losses: health and friends. Certainly
one of these is bad enough, but the writer is clearly dealing with both
Loss equals grief and it was grief that made his eyes dim
(v.9).
The Stages of
Grief v6-18
We are aware of the stages of grief thanks to the famous
book by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross “On Death and Dying.”
It is her insights that almost everyone now knows the stages
of grief:
denial, anger,
bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance.
We can identify three of these stages here in Psalm 88
·
Anger v6-9,
aimed at God: “You have put me in the lowest pit” (v.6). “You have overwhelmed
me with all your waves” (v.7). “You have taken from me my closest friends”
(v.8). You, you, you! You put. You overwhelmed. You took. You can almost see
his finger shaking angrily at the heavens; feel his body shaking with
frustration at God? If this was a
message in our world, it would be all CAPS!
·
Bargaining.
Notice the desperate bargaining in verses 10-12: “Do those who are dead
rise up and praise you? Is your love declared in the grave, your faithfulness
in destruction? Are your wonders known in the place of darkness, or your
righteous deeds in the place of oblivion?” In other words: Come on, God. I’m
ready to praise you, to declare your wonders. But I can’t do that when I’m
dead. So let me live and I’ll show you what a life of worship looks like.
·
Depression.
Finally, notice the deep depression in verses 13-18, the final six
verses. It is all consuming – in the morning (v.13), all day long (v.17), in the
darkness (v.18). It is constant suffering - rejection (v.14), affliction
(v.15), terror (v.15), an engulfing flood (v.17). It is obsessively focused on
one question: “Why, O Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me?”
(v.14) Isn’t that the most essential human cry? The question “Why?”
When you read this psalm at home you expect it to do what
other psalms of laments do …you are looking for a shift to a note of
praise. It has been called a place of
redefinition or a perspective change.
However there are no
answers in Psalm 88; it doesn’t relent and its eighteen verses end with
sadness:
“The darkness is my
closest friend.” (Psalm 88:18).The writer of this psalm appeared to be light
years away from the final stage: acceptance.
So, what do we do with such a consistent and depressing
psalm? What are the takeaways that we
can take for our lives?
It reminds us that other people have been right where we are
or right where our friend is. They have
gone through the dark night of their soul.
"What is so
wonderful about the psalms is the kind of companionship they offer. There is a
rainbow of human emotion in the psalms. The psalms help you realize that no
matter what happens, other people have been through this. The psalms are an
incredible benefit to the human soul."
James Schaap
For those who are
depressed or dealing with long term illness, for those who feel like they are
dying on the inside, this psalm SPEAKS! This psalm tells you it is OK to lament, to
tell God exactly what you are feeling in this moment. Sometimes it can just suck the life right out of you!
God can handle it. He
will walk with you through it. Jesus has
been there.
It reminds us often that we just need to be heard or the
people in our lives just need us to listen.
Stop trying to fix it and just BE in that place, that moment, that
life. The Spirit will tell you when and
what to say if anything at all.
What do sad, grieving
people not need? They don’t need explanations for what we think is wrong in
their lives. They don’t need solutions for what we perceive to be their
problems. They don’t need condescending advice based on what worked for us in a
very different situation. They don’t need impatience with their slow progress
or even backsliding. And they don’t need relentless optimism, which only makes
their despair feel worse.
It is the honesty to say, “How are you REALLY doing?” and
being ready for whatever may come.
We also need to remember that while the writer is extremely
depressed by life, disappointed by people and even despairing of God, his faith
is shown in the realization that this psalm is a CRY. He is still a person of prayer. Heman and God are still talking and that
brings hope.
The psalm also begs us to hope. It may appear to be a tragic play that fails
to deliver a happy ending, but it desperately pursues it. As one writer wrote, ‘it pushes us to search
for what is missing’. We can’t stay
here. There must be a new beginning.
It is the same truth that Paul reminded us in 1
Thessalonians 4:13,14 that we do not grieve like the rest of men who have no
hope…NO, our hope is in the belief that Jesus died and rose again.
We shouldn’t skip a psalm like this even though it is tough
reading. It is a real authentic
expression of our broken world and it does have the power to drive us into the
loving arms of our Abba Father.
The Parallels
For Jesus, it was Psalm 22:1,2 from where he quoted from during his darkest moment close to the end of His earthly life when he
felt the excruciating absence of the presence of God as he cried out, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?
For the Israelites, their first crisis of faith following the
Exodus came in swift fashion.
Exodus 14:10-12 states that they were terrified. They were in despair and felt trapped between
the Rea Sea and the onslaught of the coming Egyptian army.
The complaints are rattled off:
·
Was it because there were no graves in Egypt
that we will not rot out and die.
·
You should have just left us alone, we were
better serving the Egyptians
However it is that moment when there is nowhere else to turn that
we experience the God of salvation.
Anne
Graham Lotz writes:
"We
may intellectually grasp the truth that God's power is adequate but we can
never know that by experience if we stay in our comfort zone. If all you ever attempt is what you know you
can do yourself, if all your needs seem to be met through someone or something
other than God, if you never have any difficulties that are greater than you
can bear - how will you know the awesome greatness and personal availability of
His infinite power? It's when the Red
Sea is before you, the mountains are on one side of you, the desert is on the
other side, and you feel the Egyptian army closing in from behind that you experience
His power to open up an escape route.
Power to do the supernatural, the unthinkable, the impossible."
God shows up, they are called to stand firm
V14 The LORD will fight for you, you need only to be still.
It is a promise that they would have to wait for with patient
endurance with the tenacity expressed in Hebrews 6:11We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end,
in order to make your hope sure. 12 We do not want you to become lazy, but to
imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.
Waiting is not sitting around hoping my circumstances will
change. It is not an escape from
reality, it doesn’t leave us idle, it will put us in gear! It will force us to make changes.
The
Takeaway
There
is a place OF LIVING HOPE where Psalm 88 ends and Psalm 89 begins. I t is a
new chapter and that is why another Ezrahite, Ethan, begins with v1 singing of
the LORD’s great love forever. It is the same place
where the Israelites despair turns to deliverance. It is that place where a lament gives birth
to a new song.
We were at The Cry last week with a van load that came with us from Grace and it was while we were there during a time of personal repentance that God moved powerfully. One lady began to weep and it brought many of us to our knees as we repented not only for ourselves, but for our nation. I really don't know how long it lasted, but it was awhile and then the heaviness lifted and it was time to "rise up" and we sang songs of victory to our Lord, let it rain, and for the moving of the Spirit to birth a new awakening in our land!
Never
give up in praying to God.
He can handle it. He can take
your most desperate and dark prayers better than anyone.
Pray with
a clean mind and with faith. When praying, always rejoice in hope that the
thing you are praying for be answered, patient in time of tribulation and never
stop praying to God.
There can be significant crisis of faith that we are called to
walk through and it in this moments that we truly understand the incredible
battle that we are in.
A living hope will change how you see ourselves, it reminds us
that we are aliens and strangers. 1
Peter 2:11 We aren’t living for and
chasing after this world.
It will change what we value.
Matthew 6:21; For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
It affects what we do with
our lives. 1 John 3:1-3 It purifies us
The Benefits.
A living hope gives us joy and peace that you may abound in peace by the HS –
Romans 15:13
A living hope protects us Psalm 33:18
It gives us strength, endurance and courage. Psalm 31:24
It gives us confidence in the face of death. 1 Thessalonians 4:13
It gives us motivation in ministry to others 1 Tim. 4:10… fixed our hope on the living
God, the Savior of all men.
Rise Up!
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