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Faithfullyliven:the podcast
Crying Out to God: Why Christians Need to Lament with Kelli Johnson
Show Notes
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Welcome to Faithfully Living, the Podcast, where we learn how to live for Christ in our daily lives. I am Dwan, your host, and I would like to invite you on a journey with me to explore and learn how to be a faithful follower of Christ. Follower of Christ. Hey everybody, welcome to Faithfully Living, the Podcast, where we strive to encourage you to live for Christ faithfully by offering guidance on how to study the Bible, how to understand the Bible better and how to remain faithful to historic Christianity in a contemporary society. And today I'm excited to have Kelly Johnson on the podcast again.
Speaker 1:And today we're going to dive into the topic of lament. It's a topic that Christians often overlook. You know, the world tells us to suppress our sorrow or to rush past our pain, but the Bible gives us a different perspective. We can see in Psalms and Lamentations. Even Jesus himself shows us and gives an example on how to to lament and show us that it's not a lack of faith but it's an expression of trust and hope in God. So what does it mean to lament biblically? How can we bring our grief to God in a way that strengthens our faith? So in this conversation I had with Kelly, we're going to kind of go over like the power of lament and how it can help us draw closer to God.
Speaker 1:But before we start our conversation, let me tell you a little bit about Kelly if you haven't heard her on the podcast before. She is a homeschool mom of three wonderful children. For over a decade, kelly has honed her writing skills and passion for making the difficult things in life more easily understood in a variety of applications. She is married to a very patient and godly man. For almost 20 years she has been supported, has been supported in all of her endeavors of learning, growing and sharing that knowledge with whoever God gives opportunity to Learning to walk with the Lord.
Speaker 1:While constantly plagued by undiagnosed medical issues, kelly has shifted her injuries to creating curriculum and Bible studies for women and youth in her local community. She teaches apologetics as well as a variety of topics such as covenants, lament and suffering, old Testament studies, the meta-narrative of the Bible and more. In her local church, women's Bible studies and two youth groups. You can occasionally find her on YouTube at Apologetically Female, and it also on. You can read some of her writings on her blog, apologeticfemaleblogspotcom. All right, let's dive into today's episode. Hi Kelly, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2:Hi, it's so good to be back.
Speaker 1:I'm excited about this topic of lament. I haven't delved in it a lot, but I'm excited to hear your take on it and what you've learned about it. So let's kind of dive in with like a definition what is biblical lament, and how would it be different from like complaining or despair?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think well. So if you look up lament, like I have the Oxford Dictionary definition and according to the dictionary they say it's a passionate expression of grief or sorrow. And then if you go into gotquestionsorg a really helpful website if you haven't been there before but they say to lament is to express deep regret, grief or sorrow. We can lament through words or actions, and my definition, after many years of studying and learning and reading about it through scripture, is kind of a little bit longer than that. So my personal definition is lament is a prayer of faith. Despite our pain and fear. Lament opens our eyes to the brokenness in the world around us and awakens our soul from apathy. It is a prayer in pain that leads to trust, and so that's kind of like my summary of lament. But basically lament is just a form of prayer and I love how Professor NT Wright says. He says when we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, then somehow God is praying within us for the pain around us. So it's not just like this, maybe what we would perceive as a passive thing. You know, when Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he wasn't just giving them something to pass the time, but he was inviting them and inviting us to participate in the arrival of the kingdom by his spirit. And lament is kind of how we do that. So it's basically like how Christians grieve biblically because we're in this tension of the already but not yet, and we have to live that out. Somehow we have to wrestle with the brokenness of the world and the promises that we know we have in Christ. And so you know, when we lament biblically, when we pray this form of prayer which we'll get into and how we do that and what it looks like, but we basically we name our pain, we question boldly and we protest passionately, but it's all within the covenantal relationship that we have with God. So really, only biblical lament is something that Christians can do because it's in the context of covenant, and so this differs from complaining or even despair, because complaint really stems from pride. We don't want to always admit that, but when we complain we presume that God somehow owes us an explanation. Whatever's happening, it murmurs against his character, often behind his back, so it's not usually to him but about him, and most of the time it's refusing to trust God's hand. When his ways are hidden from us, we can look at like the Israelites in the wilderness right. They're complaining about their provisions and, you know, grumbling about the manna and the quail, and then they're longing for the chains of Egypt. So that would be a good example of complaining. So we want to like, compare and contrast the two side by side. So we want to compare and contrast the two side by side.
Speaker 2:If lament is expressed to God, then complaint is just expressed about God, or lament points to God and gives us a testimony, but complaint hurts our witness about God. Lament is going to demonstrate faith in God's goodness and power and complaint demonstrates to the world our unbelief outward and then upward. So if we think of the progression me, god, others that's kind of the direction that lament will take us. Complaint always looks inward or it's very self-focused. Lament is a prayer, complaint is a gripe. Lament is a releasing of emotion, of mourning, that it's heard beyond human ears, kind of like the first point. It expresses it to God, where complaint and often turns into outbursts of selfishness, usually to other humans, so it's not typically to God. Lament is always going to stem from a biblical worldview, where complaint is from a secular worldview, and we I'll talk more in detail as we kind of build on the idea of how we lament from that.
Speaker 2:But then lament is also. It's a journey that we go from sorrow to joy or fear to trust. It's a process. But complaint kind of causes us to pit stop and stay stuck where we are and lament is always going to show our heart condition and it creates a restoration and a renewal and it's part of their redemption and the redemptive story that God's working out in history, where complaint is going to ignore the heart condition and it's going to turn bitter and destructive. So I mean, and if you want to take it further, you know you could have a complaint and then that can go into despair, which is darker even than complaint, because it's just the Easter I know this podcast will come out in a little bit, but we just celebrated Easter and what a beautiful picture of hope that we can cling to. But despair kind of releases that hope, it like cuts that cord of trust and it says that you know, I think of like Psalm three, where it's there is no help for me in God, but without adding the second part that David adds that you, o Lord, are a shield about me and so, like I said, because of Christ's resurrection we have eternal hope.
Speaker 2:You know, psalm 30 reminds us that weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.
Speaker 2:And so lament kind of holds these two seemingly opposing truths in tension. It acknowledges that we have deep suffering and evil, and it doesn't minimize that, but it maintains, kind of almost a stubborn face, that God hears us and sees us and he will act, even if it's not yet, or even if it's not in the way we would choose for him to act. I think of, you know, psalm 42, 11, and it says why are you cast down, oh my soul? Why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. And so lament is just this beautiful language that God gives us to wrestle this out, to recognize the hurt and the brokenness that everybody at some point in their life will experience, some more than others. But yet there's this crux of this is really hard, this is really hard, but christ is risen, you know, and so that's kind of the difference between biblical lament and complaining and then, um, even despair, if you want to go even further than that so I guess I can see how.
Speaker 1:Why is important for us, like in our Christian faith, to have that part of, like you said, it's a prayer that we give to God and that how we're wrestling with you know things that we're dealing with in the world today. So how do we see this practice in scripture?
Speaker 2:in scripture.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's really important and it's hard to remember, but it's really important that while, like, the circumstances of our life have a narrative to them, there's, like there's this biblical narrative that runs underneath all of it and we need to understand the story, or what some people call like the meta-narrative, the entire picture that scripture gives us from Eden to the new Jerusalem, because it's his story and we're woven into it. And Chad Bird says it this way he's a very, very smart theologian, but he says rehearsing the truth of the Bible reaches to your heart and it allows you to interpret pain through the lens of God's character. And so lament is so important for the Christian faith because it's the language of a people who know the whole story, which is the gospel story. And I think that if we don't have a language or we don't have words to give to our experience, to give to our pain or our hurt or our story, basically, then we're going to be stuck in kind of this stoic silence.
Speaker 2:And God, you know, even all the way back in the garden, god calls to Adam and Eve in their brokenness you know where are you? He's asking that not because he doesn't know where they are, because he wants them to respond. So it's this beautiful language that he gives us and he gives his people, to those of us who we know that this world is not as it should be, and only he can set it right. So it teaches us to kind of suffer towards God, not away from him, and I think that's a really important point is that suffering can do one of two things it can draw you away from him or it can press you deeper into him, and so lament is a language that helps us reach back out to him, and we see it in Job.
Speaker 2:You know Job's sitting in the ashes. He's demanding answers, but he's refusing to curse God, even though everyone around him, including his wife, is telling him to do so. We see it with David in the Psalms, while he's on the run from Saul, and then later, when he's even grieving his own sin. We see it in Jeremiah, who's known as the weeping prophet. In Jeremiah, who's known as the weeping prophet, and he's mourning the fall of Jerusalem and lamentations with very brutal honesty but unyielding hope, right. We even see it in like Habakkuk, when he's wrestling with confusion.
Speaker 2:And yet he still ends his prayer with, like this, this trembling trust, and and we see it, you know, with the barren women throughout scripture. We see it in church history. You know the saints lamenting because they know and we know that we're living in a story of redemption that's not yet complete. We're living in a story of redemption that's not yet complete, and so we are standing between the promise and its fulfillment and we're, you know, we're crying out kind of like in the Psalms, like how long, oh Lord? Not because maybe we necessarily doubt God, but because we trust him enough that we know that he's not just left us there, he's reaching out to us and we're reaching back. But it's this tension of already but not yet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we can see it like you said, kind of like all through scripture. But we can see it, like you said, kind of like all through scripture, but we can. I know you quoted Psalms and Lamentations. I think sometimes we see that a little bit more in those books. So what can Psalms and Lamentations teach us on how to lament in ways that are honoring to God?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I find it very helpful. So about I guess it's been eight years now when I got seriously ill and doctors still don't know what's wrong with me, and I didn't have my own words to pray because I was just in so much pain and I wasn't raised with lament as I think a lot of people in the church are not and so I didn't even know what lament was. I'd never heard that word. And so I didn't even know what lament was. I'd never heard that word. But I just started reading the Psalms and Lamentations because I deeply connected with them and they resonated with me.
Speaker 2:The words in them brought such like peace, was that? Uh, you see, that lament is not like this chaotic venting, right, there's actually like a structure to how lament is, is done, um and and. As you read through the psalms and even lamentations, and then job, and then Job and all these examples that we have, we see that there's always a God, is always addressed directly. So kind of, like I said in the beginning, right, lament is to God, not about God. So we see, you know, oh God, my God, right, even, even Christ, it's a, it's a direct address to.
Speaker 2:God himself, and then we see this kind of honest complaint brought to him, something to the effect of why have you hidden your face, or how long, o Lord? And then oftentimes we'll see a bold cry for help. You know, arise, o Lord. Or or David, you know, like like, take out my enemies, like he's. He's very bold in his, in his asking for help, his asking for help.
Speaker 2:But every lament is going to eventually maybe not right away, and, as we personally learn to lament, this part will take time but eventually there's going to be a choice to trust. And this is the yet in the laments that we see. So we can say, oh, oh God, you know, my God, why have you hidden your face? Arise, oh Lord. Or. But yet I will rejoice in the God of my salvation, or yet I will trust you.
Speaker 2:And so these prayers they're, you know, soaked with raw emotion, but they're never a godless rage or faithless despair. They're always going to cling to God's character, his steadfast love, faithfulness, justice, even when the circumstances seem to just scream the opposite. We can just go through these, what I call, I consider liturgies. So lately I've been kind of down a rabbit trail of liturgies, not in the like Catholic sense, or, although they do have many liturgies, but just more in the habit forming that liturgies create in our lives.
Speaker 2:So lament is, you know, one of those things, and we have to do it in spite of the circumstances and in spite of how maybe we're feeling, because it's still an act of faith to trust God and His promises, especially when we're in the middle of the hurt and it doesn't feel like he can hear us or he's near, but he tells us that he is near and he tells us that he does hear. And so you know, it's just, there's a kind of beautiful symmetry and cadence and structure to how we do this, and Psalms of Lamentations kind of outlines it for us us.
Speaker 1:I know, I know. I always a lot of times like if I'm going through something hard. I always turn to psalms as far as giving me, like you said, that language to express our like emotions to the lord, to let him know, even though he already, but just to voice them to him and let him know how we feel. But, I have never I guess I never thought about turning to lamentation, so I'll have to do that in my, in my reading of Psalms too.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, and interesting with lamentations is it doesn't really end with a ton of hope. It ends sadly, uh, but but like, that's why the, the meta narrative is so important, because scripture doesn't end right at the end of lamentations, right, we have to keep going um and uh.
Speaker 2:And so, although the the structure that we see for a lament, there might be more space between. You know step three of asking help boldly to the choosing to trust. You know there can be time and space between that and that's okay because we serve a very patient and loving God who, as long as we are not pulling away from him or growing bitter in our silence, you know he will give us that time to process.
Speaker 2:Um, because there's deep hurt in the world and people are suffering greatly, um, and, and we have a God that doesn't minimize that right. He doesn't say get over it it, or, you know, go through this four step process and everything will be fine. Right, like it's a journey and it's.
Speaker 2:it's messy sometimes because it gives us structure and it gives us um uh like a steadiness, kind of like god's character, right it, let's um, this uh, predictable um pattern in our hearts and our minds that we can just go over and over and over again, however many times we need to. It's not a one prayer and done, it's the constant. You know speaking after him, learning his character, being honest with him. You know I think of, you know, covenantal relationship. I've been married almost 20 years and it's kind of the same right Other than you know we're both sinners and you know God's perfect. But this kind of coming back together, coming back together, coming back together working it out, you know allowing the Lord to work on your heart. As more time passes, heart, as more time passes, as you learn who he is, more and more about his love and his plan and his purpose, not just for you but for all creation. There's no real arrival right. It's a continual sanctification and process of a relationship and that's what he desires from us anyways.
Speaker 1:So you know, when Jesus was on the earth, you know he's fully God and fully man. He taught us a lot of things and he modeled a lot of things. So did Jesus model like lament in his earthly ministry, maybe like in the garden of Gethsemane or on the cross?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, he was a great um image of lament, um, you know, in in the garden he I mean, he sweat blood and he prayed like if there's any other way, lord, you know, you know. Please let this pass Um, and this wasn't rebellion, this wasn't um like he had somehow a different will than God's.
Speaker 2:But um, but this is just a surrender, through the agony, of what he had to walk through, um, which is what we're called to as well. And you know, on the cross he cries out the lament of Psalm 22,. You know, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And I think about you, know like, in his final breath, jesus bore the full weight of our abandonment. And yet even then, right that word yet again, you'll see it come up all the time. Yet even then he cried out to God, not away from God.
Speaker 2:And you know, if we ever wonder how we should be walking as humans through this broken world, he's our image, he's our picture of how to do it and how to do it well. And so even Christ laments. You know he weeps when his friend Lazarus dies. He knew he was going to raise him from the dead, and yet he still grieves the brokenness of the world. And so I just love that Jesus teaches us that, like lament and emotion and hurt is not a sign of weak faith, but it is a sign of faith that is willing to bleed.
Speaker 2:And you know, we see that back in the garden as he wrestled through the agony. So it's. I find Christ's laments incredibly powerful because, I mean, he's fully God and fully man and he leaves perfection and he comes down into the pain and the brokenness. You know, he's the man of sorrows, christ himself, like um. We do not have a God who doesn't know what it's like Um, and he shows us how to do this Um. But even on the cross, he reaches out to God with his final breath. He doesn't pull away from him, and I think that's something we need to really take note of and try to model as best we can in our suffering as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I know a lot of times, you know, as Christians we struggle with, you know, expressing our sorrow and grief to God, and why do you think that that's something that we often overlook, like lamenting? Why don't we do it more as believers today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's a couple. It takes effort and repetition. You know, prayer is kind of like a muscle, right, and hope springs from truth rehearsed, so it's kind of like that liturgy right. The things we do over and over again, those habit forming practices that form and shape not only our life but our worldview and and our understanding of God's character as well. And so, you know, the, the practice of lament, the kind that's like biblical and honest, it's not natural for us because it's prayer. It's not natural for us because it's prayer and and our prayer tends to be pretty shallow.
Speaker 2:Um, if we, if we're going to be honest, right, a lot of times it's, you know, bless my kids, bless my husband, bless my day you know, thank you for your salvation, um, but I, you know, I think of jacob wrestling with the angel and it was like all night wrestling and and even in that, you know, he was like no, I'm not letting go, and, um, and I think that that is I always tell my students like Old Testament, like physical Old Testament pictures typically point to a New Testament, spiritual truth, and so when we see like this wrestling in the Old Testament, we should wonder how then that translates to our life? Right, how then that translates to our life? Right, like in the spirit. And we don't wrestle very well spiritually, because it takes time, it takes effort and it takes practice. Yeah, and you know we have to, we have to ask ourselves like are we okay, or are we going to accept the invitation to suffering? And as Christians, especially when comfort is such an idol in our hearts and our lives, we don't, you know, we don't want to do that. I don't have this quote in front of me, but CS Lewis said it kind of this way, hopefully I'll get it right. He said we don't necessarily doubt God's best for our lives, but we do wonder how painful God's best will be for us, us, and I think that that is really kind of the crux of the issue with us, especially since comfort is such an idol for us.
Speaker 2:I think the second thing is that, you know, kind of building on that, is that modern Christianity, western modern Christianity we love this kind of triumphalism, right, like we love to rush to Easter Sunday but we kind of skip over a good Friday Right, or we think faith means smiling through the suffering, or we try to bottle up our grief and pretend at strength. Strength, we don't. You know, in our churches we don't sing songs of lament anymore. A lot of times from the pulpit we get a lot of sermons on victory without acknowledging the valleys. Yeah, and our culture, we prize control and lament is dangerous in that it admits that we're powerless to fix ourselves. Yeah, it acknowledges that we cannot do this and we're not doing it, and so, essentially, lament doesn't sell well, you know it's it doesn't. It doesn't sell well, it doesn't look fun. It's something that we have to be comfortable being uncomfortable and that takes practice and it takes a cultural shift in the church to lament together, to lament corporately, to lament individually, and it's hard, you know, people don't want to admit that things in their life are hard. They don't want people to see their weaknesses.
Speaker 2:And it's so interesting because Scripture tells us that when we're weak, christ is made strong, like, like he shows himself stronger in our weaknesses and so, um, but it just it doesn't look very good, right, I think. Finally, you know, it takes faith to lament and we it seeks understanding, but it's it understands that we are not dependent on that understanding. You know, job cried out for understanding and God responded with where were you when I created all things right? Like he points to his majesty and his glory and his understanding. And God responded with where were you when I created all things right? Like he points to to his majesty and his glory and his? You know, it don't never really get an answer, yeah, and that's that's really hard for us, but we do know that it leads us back to a place of hope.
Speaker 2:You know we are longing for the shalom of God, which was vandalized back in Genesis 3. Shalom, that peace, and shalom is kind of a bigger word than just peace, as most Hebrew words are, but it encompasses this kind of wholeness that we lost in the garden. This kind of wholeness that we lost in the garden but that's being renewed. We know that God is working out the renewal and restoration of all of that, and we see even nature lamenting or groaning with hopeful expectation, because we're all looking forward to that Revelation 21 promise of he will wipe away every tear and there will no longer be death or sorrow, or anguish, crying or pain. But we're not quite there yet, and so in the meantime, it takes practice, it takes work, it takes faith and it takes community to work through lament. It's just something, it's a skill we have to get better at.
Speaker 1:So what encouragement can you offer? You know us when we're you, you know we want to have that control, even though you know basically we're not. But we, we have an idea that we are. So what encouragement can you like give us that sometimes we see it may be a lack of faith or we can't do things ourselves yeah, um, I think that's such an important question.
Speaker 2:I would say this God invites your lament. He, excuse me, he goes to an orphanage in Russia. As they were in the process of pursuing adoption and he said the silence from the nursery was almost eerie. The babies in the cribs they never cried.
Speaker 2:Not because they never needed anything, but because they had learned that no one cared enough to answer their cries Makes me kind of emotional thinking about that. So children who are confident of the love of a caregiver cry. So for the Christian, our lament when taken to our heavenly creator, our father, this is proof of our relationship with god. Um, and I just think that paints such a powerful picture um, god invites your lament.
Speaker 2:He wants us to cry out to him quite the opposite of what adam did in the garden. Right, where are you? He hid himself Because you know, god's throne of grace is not reserved for the victorious, it's for the weary, it's for the brokenhearted, it's for the doubting. To cry before God is not to have a lack of faith, but it's to live out your faith. Psalm 56.8 tells us that the Lord keeps every tear in a bottle, so he doesn't despise our sorrows, he gathers them up. Gathers them up. I think that's a very compelling picture of the care that God gives our pain. You know that he's capturing them all in a bottle. So maybe, instead of viewing crying out or bringing your pain before God as a lack of faith, maybe view it as an offering, you know, a sacrifice of brokenness that God sees as precious, because, unlike the babies in the cribs, we have a father who cares. You know, god himself lamented our brokenness and then he did something about it, right.
Speaker 2:He hurt us and he became so stirred that he came in the flesh and he experienced lament intimately. I mean, he was broken and bruised and crushed and rejected and then he became lament for us. And in doing this, god not only permits lament, but he gives us its very language right. He lives it out and I think that if we think of it as a sacrifice, you know or as an offering.
Speaker 2:Then you know it's like this is what I have, god, this is where I'm at, this is all I have. God, this is this is where I'm at, this is this is all I can muster up, um. And then he gathers that and puts it in a bottle and, you know, shows us like I'm with you, always very compelling, um and comforting. And as someone who's suffered for many, many years physically, which leads to other kinds of suffering, I find that very personal and very tangible in a way, because he's not some distant. You know force. He is a father and a creator and deeply loves us enough to experience what we are experiencing as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess it kind of helps us to trust his like, his character of, like we offer him our, our, our pain, our grief, because we know that we can trust him. Like over time in in the Bible we can see how he's shown that he can take care of us, like, like you said in Job, how God took care of him even in spite of us. Like, like you said in joe, how god took care of him even in spite of his like suffering yeah, the theme of remembering is very um prominent throughout scripture.
Speaker 2:Right, he's always telling his people to remember. Yeah, I think that's because we're very forgetful. We forget you know how fast and how um forgiving and how loving he actually is. So many times, you know, we get caught up in our bubble of of the moment and so we're called to remember and it's all written down for us to remember.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Like we can remember the things that he has done. But how does that, how does limit help us? You know, when we processing like unanswered prayers, like what kind of biblical framework can it give us?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So you know it's so hard because I never want to give like a formulaic kind of answer to this question, because if you're in the middle of suffering and grief, loss, and you feel that your prayers have been unanswered thus far, or you haven't received an answer you were hoping for, I never want to say well, follow these steps and everything will be great, right, right. But I do think that you know the prayer of lament. It anchors us to the cross. It anchors us to the cross, and the cross is the picture of where suffering and hope meet. It teaches us that the night can be long, but dawn is coming.
Speaker 2:But I guess I would just say, like, don't be quiet, you know, I think the enemy is going to want you to be quiet and to retreat, like Adam and Eve did in the garden. Um, and? And God doesn't want you to do that. So you know, turn your face to him. You know, address God directly, like, name him, like cry out, even through the tears oh Lord, my God, right, um, you're not shouting into a void, uh, you're speaking to the living God. Um. Psalm 63, one says oh God, you are my God. 331 says oh God, you are my God, earnestly, I seek you, um, and you know, bring, like you know I kind of said this already, but bring your honest complaint like, lay your sorrow, like for, for you know, just bear all your sorrow, like you know, name the grief, the injustice, the fear, ask the hard questions. God's not threatened by your honesty, he can take it.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:He knows already anyway, yes, yeah. But yet he bids you to come and speak freely, right, he's he, he is um. By doing that, you know you are, your relationship with him is actually becoming deeper and more intimate. So, like Psalm 10, one a third of the Psalms are laments, and so let's just go to the Psalms, right? So if you don't even have your own words, you can just pray the words from the Psalms and use them as your own until you have your own.
Speaker 2:But it says why, oh Lord, do you stand so far away? Why do you hide yourself in time of trouble, like? We know that God is not actually hiding from us in trouble, but sometimes it feels that way and that's okay to say that to him. You know, like I feel like you're not around, I feel, you know, like I've been left, I feel like I'm drowning, and and you know you can, you can go to God with those things, like that's not Shameful, that's not wrong.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of people maybe think it's wrong to say those things to god, like um. But men and women of the faith, you know we see it all through scripture, that's how they. They talk to god and and he's okay with it. He doesn't you strike them down for doing that. If anything, he responds in kindness and you know you also can ask for justice. You can ask for mercy, you can ask for healing. You can dare to expect that God can and will act according to his promises.
Speaker 2:We might not see it right away and it might feel like he's not answering those, but we're still told to ask. You know, to come boldly into the throne room and ask for those things. That's okay. Um, I uh. There was a time in my life where I thought it was wrong to request those things of god. The scripture also tells us that you have not because you asked not, so there's no harm in asking for it, right, um, that's okay now. He might not answer the way you would like, but you can still ask him yeah, and he can.
Speaker 1:He can, he can help you with the, with the answer that you you don't want, because he's still faithful. Yeah, this is we're all. We're just in a temporary place. You know.
Speaker 2:This is, this is not our final destination, but right and and a lot of times, you know, suffering uh shows us what we're clinging to tighter than than him, yeah, kind of shake up the idols in our hearts and in our lives. That can be really hard sometimes, especially when those are when they're good things. You know, I I struggle with secondary infertility and I always wanted a lot of kids. I have three beautiful children and I love them so much. But I was always, you know, desiring and praying for a very large family and I it took Years probably for me to let go of that.
Speaker 2:I don't trust that God knew best and trust that. Trust that um, that that his plan was was better than my plan, um, but it took time and and it took um, you know, kind of relinquishing of that. But for so long I had really, um, desired that and I was very angry at God for not giving me what I was requesting and that's not a bad thing to request, right, like we love children and we love life and we love family and it's all good things. But I was coveting it and I was desiring it more than I was desiring God's will for my life, and it took years for me to recognize that and to let that go.
Speaker 1:And it was very.
Speaker 2:There was so much freedom in it when it finally happened, but yet it was a journey. It was a journey of faith and lament and there was suffering in there, because any woman that desires children, whether for the first time or, like in my case, with secondary infertility, it's a very painful process and journey and, however, that cannot be the desire for that cannot be greater than him in our life.
Speaker 2:And so many times through lament. Well, through suffering and then by lament, we discover what we're clinging to too tightly. You know what? We're placing our hope or our joy or happiness in other than him, and that's okay. It's hard to wrestle that out sometimes, but he is the ultimate gift and he is the ultimate source, and so anything that we are choosing over him. You know, um is an idol, and suffering is, suffering through it is one thing, but then learning to lament it helps us become aware of that idol. So with so if you're suffering and you don't lament, it's hard to recognize those things, because lament gives words to what our heart condition is as we do this, and so it's very revealing and it's very helpful. So I just would encourage you that if you're suffering with something like that, that you're not discouraged but you look at lament as a way of working through the suffering. We never want to stay there, and the Lord doesn't want us to stay there either.
Speaker 2:You know, suffering is sanctifying, and it's it's not sanctifying just for self-improvement, but ultimately for the glory of god right, yeah but you know, the life of a discipleship is not about getting stronger, it's growing more aware of our weakness and the lord's strength.
Speaker 2:Discipleship is dying to self, and when we bear the cross that we are called to bear, it will kill us, but in death there's life. I read one time an uncrucified disciple is a contradiction of terms that's hard to wrestle with, that's a. That's a tough pill to swallow sometimes, but it is. You know, our hearts are either active in bringing glory to God or to ourselves, and so in that sense, being the image of God is like a verb, right, it's an action. It's not just who we are, but it's what we do. Right, and people are most similar to god when he is the object of their affection, and suffering helps kind of shake that up right. It helps us hold the things of this world with looser hands right, with more open hands, and as we seek to follow christ in our lives and to make him known the truth of his resurrection and his romance, it becomes the universal yet to every broken fact of our existence.
Speaker 2:so you know, um, you have a loss in your life, yet christ is risen. When physical pain feels like impossible to bear, yet christ is risen. And even when the brokenness around you seems to overwhelm which if you watch the news, that's overwhelming as well yes, so, yet christ is risen. So jesus died, yet he was raised. And um, you know, the word of god has to trump all other words and we have to believe it and know it and then live it and um of it, and um, it's, it's not, um, not easy you know, heft our cross and bear our cross, but the spirit labors with us.
Speaker 2:We have a God, who, who enters into it with us. Um, and so if you don't feel like your prayers are being answered or you're not getting the answers you want, maybe focus on Christ and who he is and what he's promised. But if we keep our eyes on Christ, you know, the cares of this world they don't go away, but they definitely become dim. Cares of this world they don't go away, but they definitely become dim. And uh, and he, he is what we put our faith in, not in our desires or dreams or anything like that, because our greatest need is to be right with Christ, right, John 3.30 tells us he must become greater and greater, and I must become less and less. So in lament, we learn that God is not merely the giver of good gifts, he's the gift himself.
Speaker 2:And so if that's all we have, we have more than enough and we have to really work on getting to a place and trusting like surrendering. And we have to really work on getting to a place and trusting like surrendering that that is true, because we want to find that his presence and his covenantal relationship is sweeter than any potential absence of pain. And it's a hard place to get to and, again, it's not this kind of arrival moment, it's this constant back and forth and two steps forward, one step back, one step forward, two steps back.
Speaker 2:It's an ongoing journey, but it trains us right, it trains us and it forges our faith, if that makes sense yeah, it definitely.
Speaker 1:I can see how limit um helps deepen our you know, our relationship with god, especially when we're constantly going to him asking for, like his help, doing those, doing those times of suffering and difficulties that we're experiencing.
Speaker 2:Go ahead, sir.
Speaker 1:No, go ahead.
Speaker 2:Well, I was just thinking. One of my pastors once said God plus anything equals nothing, and that one phrase. I mean, it was years ago that he said that, but that one phrase has stuck with me. So I think if we just like ask ourselves you know, what are we clinging to as our hope?
Speaker 2:Is it him, something else, or even God plus something else? Right, like in my case, it was God plus more kids, or God plus health. And, as my pastor said, god plus anything equals nothing. It's what Adam and Eve did in the garden it was God plus the fruit, and I just think that's such a powerful reminder that he should be our all in all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, god plus anything equals nothing. Yeah Well, to kind of wrap up, what encouragement can you offer to believers who want to incorporate limit in their lives to live faithfully for Christ?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So what's so interesting is our lives are kind of sprinkled with reminders of the already arriving but not yet in completion. And his kingdom is all around us. These reminders, they allow us to seek light to our hearts when it feels dark and hopeless. Tolkien coined a phrase eucatastrophe. I just love that he made up words, love to make up words like that, but he coined this phrase. Eucatastrophe, and in essence, a eucatastrophe is a massive turn in fortune from a seemingly unconquerable situation to an unforeseen victory, usually brought by grace rather than heroic effort. So he said quote it is the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears. So for you know, practical, practical purposes. The resurrection is the you catastrophe, right it's.
Speaker 2:you know in, in death there was life yeah and, uh, you know, maybe there's a sin or an idol or brokenness that's. You know that that just happened because we live in a in a broken world in your life and you think this is how it is. But the resurrection says that's not how it's going to be Right, there is hope and redemption and, even though it feels painfully slow, it is coming. And so we lament in the space between the suffering and the restoration, because God always has the final word. And I find this very encouraging because, again, this is a process, this is a journey. It takes time, so you're not just going to go one, two, three, four done, but eventually your private lament with God. It has potential to bring healing to your soul and strength to your heart. And in this individual practice, lament is where our deep sadness meets the world's deep wounds.
Speaker 2:Miscarriage can minister much better to other people who have had miscarriages, versus if you have never walked that you know lonely road. Or people who have experienced the loss of a spouse or a child can walk alongside someone who is then doing it after them and walk alongside someone who is then doing it after them and ministering and loving them. Well, right, and so Nicholas Wolterstorff I hope I said his name right he's a theologian. He says it this way and I thought it was so beautiful. He says Jesus blesses those who mourn because they are aching visionaries seeking genuine goods that escape their grasp. Who are the mourners? They are those who have caught a glimpse of God's new day, who act with all of their being for the day's coming and who break out into tears when confronted with its absence. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm of peace there is no one blind, and who ache whenever they see someone unseen. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm of peace there is neither death nor tears, and who ache whenever they see someone crying tears over death. The mourners are aching visionaries. Mark 2, 17 says when Jesus heard it, he said to them those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick I came to call the right, not to call the righteous, but sinners. And so the church, especially. We are to be for the suffering and the broken, because that's who christ was for, and to lament is so long for that shalom of god right that we saw back in the garden and we see again in the new creation. But it's not just for ourselves, because that's too small for god. So big, yeah.
Speaker 2:But to lament with and on behalf of others, I believe, is one of the highest columns of the church. The you are not alone is one of the most healing things you can offer a hurting person, and as someone who is hurt and continues to hurt, I can personally attest to that. Like you are not alone, right? Personally attest to that. Like you are not alone, right? Um, it's the same reminder that Christ gave us when he showed his disciples his hands with the scars. Like you are not alone.
Speaker 2:And so I think you know, at the very beginning of our conversation I mentioned that lament goes from me to God, to others. Right, yes, we are to lament our hurt and our pain and the evil that affects us directly, but that pain, through lament, points us to God. And when our eyes are on Christ, we are pointed to the dying and broken world that he died for and loves so much. And so the degree that we are willing to enter into the suffering of another person, I think, really reveals our love for them. And you know, I think of like the cross. It's, you know, I think of, like the cross. It's a powerful love lament. It asks us to sit in our grief and to sit with others and in their pain and suffering, no matter how uncomfortable is of suffering.
Speaker 2:Turned to mission is that we think less of ourselves and each individual who lives and suffers, because everybody at some point will suffer and then eventually dies for Christ.
Speaker 2:That is a small seed planted in the harvest field of potential believers, because our testimony, no matter how small, is fertile soil. We don't have to do more than what we're able to be faithful with, but it's enough, because God's grace fills in the rest the the suffering of God on the cross. It shows us that we can trust that God has done and will do everything he can for us. He demonstrated that he considered this world, despite all the evil and all of our hiding, to be worth the greatest cost to himself. And I think that you know, when the curse is gone from the whole creation and the earth is filled with the glory of god and all humanity will walk in his light. This is like such a glorious climax to the Bible's grand metanarrative and this is the triumph in the mission of God, like this is our joy and this is our mission. This is what we invite people into when we suffer.
Speaker 2:Well, this is what we invite people into when we suffer well because we're the only ones, as Christians, who do not suffer in vain. This is how our pain is turned into praise, because no one else. You know, god promises that. He doesn't promise that he'll take away all suffering now, but he does promise that Right, and so I think that that's a really beautiful promise. When we can look at the fulfilled Promise in the end of the book, right, it's. It's this beautiful picture of peace and of joy and of light. And so you know, as much as we don't want to suffer personally, if we can get to a place, like I said, with time, that our eyes are turned upward and then outward, it gives great meaning and purpose to what you might be walking through right now. And you know, until all things are made new, this is our mission is to walk this broken path and to show other people like through us, being able to suffer well, to suffer with hope, that we point others to him who is making all things new.
Speaker 2:And who does have an answer for their pain and who entered into their pain, for them, you know, so that it can be redeemed into something beautiful and life giving. Um, I, I think that's. It's a beautiful witness to the world and I, just I think of you know, philippians 3.14. I press towards the goal to win the supreme and heavenly prize to which God in Christ Jesus, is calling us upward, calling us upward, so suffering wisely, born through lament, will yield meaning. But it will win little applause in the western culture. Right, they don't understand it, especially when they're grounded comfort. But in the end, we know that this is not our circumstance and not even the pain is going to have the final word, because the end result will prove worth the cost. This is the gospel promise and I, just you know this is our hope. Your kingdom come Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think that's very helpful. Now I do have a couple of practical things that maybe would be helpful. Okay, that'll be good, this is great, but you know now what? So, um, because I um, I've taught lament many times. Um, because, as someone who suffers, I've had to learn it all you know, kind of on my own.
Speaker 1:But, um.
Speaker 2:So I have found that, um, the first thing we should do is just establish a daily tradition of growing in the knowledge of God, right? We? Um, we have to know his character, we have to know the story, um, pray the Psalms. Know the story, pray the Psalms, write your own laments, sing powerful songs and also weep with those who weep. I think you know community lament is not something we do and it needs to be part of church culture because we never want to force anybody into like premature celebration. Right, we don't want to skip good friday right to sunday.
Speaker 2:But if we want an acronym like how to suffer, well, I have the word trust, t-r-u-s-t. So the first T would be either train or teach yourself and your family what a biblical worldview says about life, about suffering, about God, about evil, right? So T, train or teach. And then the R would be to read and study the stories of the heroes of the Christian faith. So I love, like Voice of the Martyrs, or you know, just all the amazing men and women who have counted the costs and found it worth it to suffer. Well, One of my favorite stories is of Perpetua. Just a young girl, just incredible courage.
Speaker 2:I, just I'm so inspired by her and reading those stories right. This is part of that remembering theme Reading through scripture and reading the stories of people who suffered well and who ended well. You know, race run well fills our hearts with courage and encouragement, and so I think that that is a really important practice to have. So train and teach, read the stories of christian heroes. Um the? U would be understand that there is suffering in this life, but keep your focus on eternity, uh s t-r-u-s. So study god's truth and character through his word and hide it deep in your heart. And I think this would be where you know the habit forming. Liturgies are important, like prayer. You know wrestling in prayer and quoting scripture, memorizing scripture, and then the final T would be testimony. Live your life as a testimony and a reflection, as an image bearer. So trust T-R-U-S-T. Train and teach yourself, read and study, understand, study God's word and live your life as a testimony. So hopefully that's helpful.
Speaker 2:I always find acronyms helpful testimony, so hopefully that's helpful. I I always find acronyms helpful, um, but but yeah, suffering is. There's no one on this planet untouched by suffering, so this is something that we all are wrestling with and it needs to be. I'm so glad that you we are talking about this today, because it needs to be a regular conversation we're having in the church. Yeah, it's something we're encouraging one another in as well, so I'm so grateful that we're having this conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Thank you for having the conversation I think, like you were talking about. I love the practical tips that you gave, but I think the one thing that kind of resonates is like lament. It gives us hope. You know, in this life, you know, when you're talking about the, we're in the yet part and it gives us something to like look forward to. In our suffering we're looking to God and then it's not about us, it's about us giving that comfort and hope to others yeah yeah yeah, and it's a, it's just, you know, it's the gospel lived out.
Speaker 2:It's.
Speaker 2:It's the story of redemption and recreation and of hope, and it was for the hopes that before him or the joys that before him, that Christ endured the cross, and so if our God did it for us, we can do it for him and for others as well. And I think that that allows us to, like you said, have hope in the middle of when it's hard and messy, and we are not alone, and we are. We just, we should be just so grateful that we have a God who cares so much that he enters in and then he also gives us the language of lament. Very, very blessed to to have such a caring and personal God.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, thank you, kelly, for sharing limit with us, and even also like sharing your personal stories and struggles with us to make it come alive a little bit more. So thanks for being on the show.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's always great to talk to you so I hope you enjoyed this episode with my conversation with kelly about limit, as I was talking with Kelly and learning more and more about LEMIT I think you kind of heard it. Lemit is kind of it's not synonymous, but LEMIT can give us a sense of hope, like we're taking our sorrows and our struggles to a god that we know, because we read in his word that he is faithful to hear our cries, because we see it time and time again in in scriptures how he hears the cries of the brokenhearted, those that are in sorrow or in pain, and because we know that, because we know this character of God, we have the freedom to go to him at his invitation, to come before him and express our sorrow. But even in our sorrows and pain and grief, we have hope, and I think that that's one of the things that most resonates with me as we, as we talked about this practice, our prayer of lament that we should be incorporating in our lives. Lament is going to lead us into a deeper relationship with God, a deeper trust in him, and then that trust is going to help us have hope in the future. As we know, this world is not our final destination, it's just a that, yet our we're passing through and Jesus is coming back and we have hope that we will one day live with God forever and he's going to make all things new.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for listening to this episode. I hope it encouraged you. If you know someone who is struggling in a season of suffering or grief or pain, please share this episode with them. Hopefully it will give them some encouragement. Well, until next time, remember God is always good and he's always faithful. I look forward to hearing from you.
