Latest / Dwelling Place: The Bible for Moms / #169. Turn, Tell, Trust God: You Don't Have to Pretend You're Okay | What Lamentations Teaches Us About Faith, Life, and Parenting

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#169. Turn, Tell, Trust God: You Don't Have to Pretend You're Okay | What Lamentations Teaches Us About Faith, Life, and Parenting · Dwelling Place: The Bible for Moms

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  This is The Dwelling Place from Entrusted Ministries.
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  I'm Stephanie Hickox, and today as we grieve with the Book of Lamentations, I want you to think what an honor it is that the God we serve asks us to cast all our cares upon Him and to bring
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  our pain into His presence.
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  The truths of the gospel transform our grief, but they don't remove our hurt or our humanity.
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  So what does it look like to acknowledge the truth of reality While living with the hope of heaven.
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  This summer, I had the opportunity to go to the Gospel Coalition's Women's Conference.
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  It was phenomenal, and I enjoyed all the speakers, but I was especially blessed by Pastor Mark Vroegop.
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  He's recently taken over as the president of The Gospel Coalition, but he was formerly pastor of my friend's church.
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  Her husband serves on staff, so she confidently assured me that Mark Vroegop is the real deal.
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  He is humble, and he lives out what he preaches.
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  And I believe that part of the mantle that God has given him to carry out to this generation is to return us to faithful lamenting before the Lord Sometimes in Christian circles today, when you share the hard you're
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  condemned for not having hope.
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  And if you're walking through a particularly difficult time or trial, this can produce a dissonance in your spirit where you desperately want to cling to the Word of God, but people around you are trying to wrap up your
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  testimony in a bow.
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  When God has asked you to patiently wait for his redemption in a situation, the world is shouting that authenticity is king and that they will embrace you for whoever you claim to be.
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  If we want to remind our kids that Jesus Christ is king, we need to ensure that they know there is a process by which they bring all of themselves to the Lord and lay it at his feet.
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  We don't want to stay there in our grief and our pain, but we can't endure well unless we dwell with God in the difficult Mark Vroegop would call these two tendencies the two ditches.
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  We have some walking in denial and some walking in despair But lament is right in the middle.
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  And before I begin discussing the Book of Lamentations that was written to be similar to a funeral address I thought it would be most helpful if I could share some highlights and notes that I took from Pastor Mark's
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  message.
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  It was entitled Turn to God in Suffering and was based on Psalm 102.
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  But the principles of lament that he shared are far-reaching and are truly applicable to the Christian walk If this is really resonating with you and you'd like to learn more, I'd recommend his book, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy He
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  wrote it, to try to encourage the church to lament well.
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  And the reason this message is so near and dear to Mark's heart is because he and his wife lost a child when she was very close to term And even after that heartbreaking situation, God allowed them to have
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  continued grief and trials in the process of growing their family.
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  After one particularly devastating doctor appointment, Mark got in the car with his wife, and he said, Do you think you can pray?"
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  All she could say was, I know you're not mean, God, but it feels like it today."
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  I was so inspired by Mark and his wife's example to share the deep valleys they've gone through because I know they didn't stay there.
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  They took their pain to Jesus Christ so that they could learn to praise Him regardless of their circumstances.
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  And that's exactly who I want to be.
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  That's who I know you wanna be And I hope that we can inspire our kids to have such a powerfully authentic walk that acknowledges difficult, but realizes that the hope of the gospel really does transform whatever comes our
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  way In his message, he said, "When it feels like you can't survive, lament.
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  Take it to the Lord."
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  He is a God that sees and hears, and He wants us to come to Him, and that doesn't mean that we just take our praise reports to Him I know I'm giving you a lengthy preamble, but what he
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  preached is pure gold And I think it's a message that needs to be preached And I think it's a message that can cause our spirits to give a deep sigh of relief And that reminds us to draw near
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  Which is obviously what we're all about here.
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  First, we need to be abundantly clear on what lament is.
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  Lament is a prayer made in pain that leads to trust Another way to say it is lament is a prayer made in pain that leads to praise.
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  Did you know that a third of the Psalms are laments?
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  That alone is evidence that we are allowed to take the difficult to the Lord.
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  Mark pointed out that a third of the Psalms will be irrelevant in heaven because there will be nothing to lament anymore He stated that the biblical language of lament is number one, turn to Jesus in your pain.
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  Number two, tell Jesus about your pain.
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  And finally, trust Jesus with your pain.
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  I'll say those again.
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  Turn to Jesus in your pain, tell Jesus about your pain, and trust Jesus with your pain.
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  Because suffering is a central aspect of the Christian life, we need a place to take it Mark says that most suffering is unexplained.
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  However, it is not meaningless.
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  Perplexing suffering does not mean pointless suffering.
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  And just because you don't know the plan doesn't mean it isn't a perfect plan.
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  He challenged us that laments are not intended to be cul-de-sacs.
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  They are meant to be conduits This means that you don't want to be stuck in the same circle of grief and despair., You want the lament to pull you forward, to be on the path of trust and obedience
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  with the Lord He said we should be able to say of our trials and experiences, That moment rocked us, but it didn't ruin us."
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  And it reminds me of the verse that says, "We are struck down but not destroyed Because we believe God is good, we insist on bringing our pain before Him Mark acknowledged that if we didn't believe that God was
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  sovereign, there would be no reason to lament.
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  And according to Romans 8, hard is not bad, but hard is still hard.
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  To lament is to stop giving Jesus the silent treatment, and it's one of the most costly praises we can offer to God.
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  It means that in your suffering, you reach the point of praising.
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  You may be wondering, is there a difference between a biblical complaint and a sinful complaint?
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  And there most certainly is.
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  Pastor Vergoop explained that a sinful complaint says, "God, you owe me Why did this happen?
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  And does not conclude in praise or trust, but a biblical complaint lays our pain before the Lord, acknowledging how hard it can be to live in a fallen world And it ends trusting in the good and sovereign God
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  of the universe.
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  I hope that all of that provides a really good foundation of why you shouldn't rush past these powerful five chapters of scripture in Lamentations This might be a book of the Bible that can train you of how to
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  bring those cares before the Lord In our brief time together today, I'll read a portion of it over you But it truly is worthy of your attention A lament is a loud cry, and that's why the book is
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  called Lamentations.
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  But the Hebrew title comes from the first word of the book, which is how or alas.
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  No other book of the Old Testament is filled only with lament.
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  And this book is a funeral address for the City of Zion, also known as Jerusalem, God's great city has fallen, and his people are grieving.
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  It was a shocking, heart-wrenching reality for the people The only thing I can compare it to for our generation is 9/11.
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  But that was much more a national disaster, The destruction of Jerusalem also seemed to take out their entire spiritual foundation of what they thought was unshakable.
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  It was a shocking, heart-wrenching reality for the people.
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  Lamentations is largely attributed to Jeremiah, both because of the evidence and phrasing within the book, but also outside of the book.
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  Jewish tradition And early Christian tradition unanimously attributed it to Jeremiah.
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  And early copies of the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation, even begin with referencing Jeremiah's weeping.
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  God had warned 900 years prior that this would happen if they didn't obey him.
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  You and I have been reading for months about His warnings.
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  And though we might think, "God, this judgment is so severe," what would you think of a God who has been warning for nine hundred years that something was going to happen and then chose to not follow through?
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  Even in his destruction, we can take comfort that he is a faithful God who keeps his word.
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  And as clearly as he laid out this path to destruction, he laid out the path to blessing and life.
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  So when we read about the faithfulness of God to discipline his people, we can also rejoice that he's a God that rewards his people, and that one day we will no longer need to bring our laments before him.
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  He will be the light and the joy that we dwell with There are a couple literary devices enacted here as they follow patterns of an acrostic poem, and the Jewish people read this every year on the anniversary of
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  Jerusalem's destruction.
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  It falls on July or August on our calendar, and my attention was certainly arrested when I read that this is the exact date that Herod's temple was destroyed by the Romans after the time of Christ in AD seventy,
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  the exact same calendar day.
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  Jeremiah would have written this book after the fall of Jerusalem, but before those faithless men carried him away to Egypt.
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  Chapters one and five mirror each other, and then chapters two and four, while chapter three contains the main theme of the message.
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  Although there is much to meditate on, that's where I'll focus our time today.
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  Beginning in three one: I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of His wrath.
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  He has driven and brought me into darkness without any light.
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  Surely against me He turns His hand again and again the whole day long.
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  He has made my flesh and my skin waste away.
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  He has broken my bones.
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  He has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation.
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  He has made me dwell in darkness like the dead of long ago.
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  He has walled me about so that I cannot escape.
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  He has made my chains heavy.
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  Though I call and cry for help, He shuts out my prayer.
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  He has blocked my ways with blocks of stones.
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  He has made my paths crooked.
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  He is a bear lying in wait for me, a lion in hiding.
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  He turned aside my steps and tore me to pieces.
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  He has made me desolate.
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  He bent His bow and set me as a target for His arrow He drove into my kidneys the arrows of his quiver.
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  I have become the laughingstock of all peoples, the object of their taunts all day long.
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  He has filled me with bitterness; he has sated me with wormwood.
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  He has made my teeth grind on gravel and made me cower in ashes.
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  My soul is bereft of peace.
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  I have forgotten what happiness is.
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  So I say, My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the Lord."
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  Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall.
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  My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me.
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  But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.
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  The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.
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  His mercies never come to an end.
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  They are new every morning.
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  Great is your faithfulness.
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  The Lord is my portion, says my soul.
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  Therefore, I will hope in him.
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  The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.
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  It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.
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  It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth Let him sit alone in silence when it is laid on him.
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  Let him put his mouth in the dust.
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  There may yet be hope.
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  Let him give his cheek to the one who strikes, and let him be filled with insults.
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  For the Lord will not cast off forever.
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  But though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love, for he does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of man.
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  We studied in Jeremiah the extent of his pain and rejection on this earth So we can understand why he writes what he does in chapter three.
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  But even in the midst of all that, he focuses, he focuses on the character of our great God Let me read those central verses once again.
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  Lamentations three twenty-two and twenty-three.
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  The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.
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  His mercies never come to an end.
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  They are new every morning.
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  Great is your faithfulness.
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  And because these verses so perfectly fit, I'll also share three fifty-five through sixty I called on your name, O Lord, from the depths of the pit; you heard my plea.
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  Do not close your ear to my cry for help.
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  You came near when I called on you; you said, "Do not fear."
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  You have taken up my cause, O Lord; you have redeemed my life.
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  You have seen the wrong done to me, O Lord.
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  Judge my cause.
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  You have seen all their vengeance, all their plots against me.
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  The book ends, Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored.
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  Renew our days as of old, unless you have utterly rejected us and you remain exceedingly angry with us."
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  When the book is read publicly, they repeat verse twenty-one to end on a word of hope, Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored.
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  Renew our days of old."
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  And I think that's a perfect thing for us to pray.
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  Heavenly Father, great is Your faithfulness.
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  Morning by morning, new mercies we see, but we confess that we are often far too shortsighted to see how merciful and gracious You are.
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  Fix our eyes on You and transform our perspective We know our attitudes need to be renewed, and our hope needs to be set on eternity And we're deeply aware that there are circumstances where it's too great of a
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  challenge for us to do this in our flesh.
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  We ask that you would teach us.
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  We ask that you would teach us to come to you in all of our pain and that we would not fall into the ditches of denial or despair Instead, help us to offer to you the most difficult prayers
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  of praise, especially in our pain, because we know you are still worthy.
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  We pray that our children would not fall prey to the counterfeit promises of the world that say, "We'll accept you for whoever you are."
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  We know true acceptance is found with the one who created us.
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  We pray we would teach our children holy humility, not authenticity for authenticity's sake, but honesty for the purpose of transformation and relationship with you Thank you for your faithfulness, Lord, for your mercies, and that you are our portion
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  and our hope.
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  Jesus, thank you that you, the source of all hope, even modeled for us how to lament And it's in your great name that we pray.
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  Amen