A simple definition of the word lament is this: a strong expression of grief, sorrow or regret. The Bible is full of lament. At our church prayer meeting this week, one of our ministers gave a compelling teaching on lament, showing the deep expressions of grief of people in the Word.
That the Bible contains so many prayers of lament is obviously the Lord telling us they are permissible. Sometimes a lament can go too far, to a point of disrespecting the Lord, sure, but far too often we hold back our true feelings in our conversations with God. We come before Him well-behaved, polite, and offering the kinds of prayers that we think He wants. But often what comes out of our mouths in prayer does not match what is in our hearts. With our lips we are praising but in our hearts we are grieving.
Boiling point
It is good to praise God, of course, but the Lord wants us to be real with Him. He doesn’t want us to pretend everything is fine. He doesn’t want us to hide our feelings about things. If we are mad, disillusioned, confused, doubting, hurt—we should tell Him! The Lord is a very big God, and He can handle our lament. If we don’t talk to the Lord about these things, our relationship with Him will remain shallow. It seems like when we really start getting raw and real with God, He begins to make Himself known.
I confess that sometimes I go for long stretches in my walk with God, ignoring internal negative feelings. I’m really not sure why I do that. I’m not unaware of the negative feelings, but I just feel strange talking with God about them and feel a little guilty for having them.
Eventually, I come to a boiling point. The internal anguish becomes so intense that I explode in prayer. Finally, it all comes out. The interesting thing is every time that happens, my heart is transformed. God seems to meet us in our moments of unfiltered pouring out.
Unloading
Consider this lament of the psalmist:
Why, O LORD, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? (Psalm 10:1)
This almost seems accusatory. But again, the Lord can handle it. He’d rather have us be honest than pretend.
Those of you who are parents understand this perfectly. When your child unloads his or her heart in frustration, you realize it’s a sacred thing. Even if their unloading is mixed with irrational words and anger, you can take it. As parents, you would rather have messy honesty than tidy fakeness. When things come to the surface we can start making real progress in the relationship.
Isaiah lament
Here’s a lament from the prophet Isaiah:
O LORD, why do you make us wander from your ways and harden our heart, so that we fear you not? Return for the sake of your servants, the tribes of your heritage. (Isaiah 63:17)
This is almost brazen, isn’t it? The prophet is feeling like God Himself is making everything so hard that they cannot find righteousness. Isaiah doesn’t stay in this feeling; he clearly works it through; he brings it to the Lord. It’s always healthy to bring our most negative feelings directly to the Lord. If we keep them bottled inside they slowly poison us. But when we bring them to the Lord, He helps us to understand His ways.
Consider Job
Why did you bring me out from the womb? Would that I had died before any eye had seen me. (Job 10:18)
Job is essentially saying he wishes he was never born. I remember my youngest daughter when she was severely ill in the hospital saying a similar thing—“I wish Jesus never made me.” We didn’t scold her for saying that, and I’m sure the Lord heard this lament with compassion. The book of Job contains a very lengthy conversation between Job and the Lord. Job holds nothing back and, in the end, the Lord appears and speaks to Job. The Lord restores him. Job’s angst in prayer led to an encounter with God that changed his life.
A time to lament
Of all my 53 years of life I don’t think it’s ever felt so fitting to lament. The world is coming apart at the seams. The pandemic has not unified us, but it has torn us apart as Americans. The Church has been profoundly divided over political and racial issues. How can we not lament that Christians would even be divided about racism? The voice of the Church in our culture has been lost. The reputation of Christianity has been marred in recent years on account of scandals, arrogance and hypocrisy. How can we not weep over all this? The Church has lost her saltiness and potency. Most unbelievers think that Christianity is toxic. In many cases, they are right.
How are we to respond to the present state of things? I’ve wrestled over that question for years. There’s a strange pressure from within the Church to not get too worked up. Well-meaning Christians assure us—“the Lord is in control; He is at work accomplishing His purposes.”
But if the Lord is always working everything out just the way He wants it then why does Jesus lament over Jerusalem? And why does God lament in Genesis that every inclination of men’s hearts are only evil continually? Why does Jeremiah weep rivers of tears over the spiritual rottenness of the people? Why does David say, “Streams of tears flow from my eyes because men do not obey Your Word”?
God’s will?
This pandemic has wiped out 500,000 people in our country already. Hate fills the land. Children are sexually abused and forced into slavery all over the planet. Unborn children are killed. We are rapidly destroying the environment in ways that deeply affect the poorest people on the earth. Multitudes of people around us are perishing. People we know and love will die this year and, at this moment, they have zero interest in the gospel of Jesus. They are speeding downhill heading for a cliff into hell. Shall we just accept all this as “God’s will”?
Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the LORD, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. (Jeremiah 2:12-13)
But You promised!
Our lamenting is not merely whining and complaining. It’s not that we just don’t like the state of things because it’s making our nice little lives uncomfortable. No. The fact is that we believe that the Lord has promised in His Word to do something about all these ills and evils. It is our deep belief in these promises that drives us to lament. We know that it is the Lord’s will for the name of Jesus Christ to be famous and glorified on earth. So when it is not—we should absolutely be in anguish over it.
And Gideon said to him, “Please, my lord, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us, saying, ‘Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the LORD has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian.” (Judges 6:13)
I’m struggling
I’m having a little trouble articulating what’s on my heart today. I hope it’s coming through okay. I’m trying to encourage us to look at the present state of this world, and the Church, and lament. I know summer is coming, and the pandemic seems to be ending (sort of). I know we all want to have fun. I do! But let’s not bury our head in the sand at the beach and ignore what happens daily—the world falls apart; America implodes; hell swallows people; the upcoming generation flails in spiritual quicksand; shadows fall over the earth.
No one knows when Christ will return and when the end will come, but we are seeing birth pangs of the great coming wrath of the Lord. Things will not continue to just roll on and on. Read the book of Revelation. Things end. The earth is destroyed by fire and renewed.
Listen my dear brothers and sisters, listen to the sound of the trumpet. The Spirit is awakening His people in these times and drawing us into lament. He is pouring out a spirit of supplication upon His Church. He is raising up a people who will lament, and cry to Him day and night until He moves. The Lord wants us to weep, mourn and wail. To rend our hearts in anguish. To cry, “Where are you Lord? We need You!!!”
Fear and Hope
I really don’t know how this is all going to play out in the next couple decades. I fear that the Church will become more impotent in our nation, and that we will become a dead institution devoid of power. I fear that Christians will pray less and less. I fear that the upcoming generation will know nothing about encountering the Living God. I fear that pastors will continue to water down the truth and set forth a distorted portrait of Jesus to the world. I fear that the fear of the Lord will become extinct. I fear that we’ll be a generation with a legacy that the glory of the Lord departed from us.
But I hope this is not how it plays out at all. I hope that there is a mighty movement of prayer amongst God’s people. I hope that the Church will repent deeply for her consumerism, racism, tribalism and cynicism. I hope that we will get raw and real before the Creator. That we will rip open our hearts and call upon Him in truth. That we will stop acting like everything is okay and begin to pour our souls out to the Lord in anguish. I hope that the tide will turn, that power will be restored. I hope that this nation comes to their knees in dust and ashes. I hope that this upcoming generation gets utterly completely fed up with the status quo in the Church and almost demands that the Lord do a new thing. I hope that we see the greatest outpouring of the Holy Spirit this world has ever seen.
It is time for the LORD to act, for your law has been broken. (Psalm 119:126)
What we do matters!
My fear and hope are real. If what I fear ends up happening, we’re not without hope, of course. Eventually, the Lord will make all things new. We know that the day will come when Jesus brings perfect justice. Death and sin will be swept away forever. Our ultimate hope is in that future glory.
But that doesn’t mean we should glibly tune out the sufferings of our planet. This is our time; this is our watch. How things play out in the years ahead are not predetermined in such a way that what we do doesn’t matter. Oh my dear friends, don’t believe that for a single minute. That is the lie of the evil one. Yes, the Lord knows the beginning and the end. Yes, He’s sovereign over all the affairs of the planet. But what we do matters. In some mysterious way, our present actions are linked with the predestined purposes of the Lord.
Can you hear the Lord calling you? Can you hear the sound of the trumpet? The only way to turn the tide is through lament. Selah.
“Yet even now,” declares the LORD, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster. (Joel 2:12-13)