Lord, I Need YOU

 AUGUST 25, 2022

Psalm 42:1-6



As the deer longs for flowing streams,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.

When shall I come and behold
the face of God?

My tears have been my food
day and night,
while people say to me continually,
“Where is your God?”

These things I remember,
as I pour out my soul:
how I went with the throng,
and led them in procession to the house of God,
with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving,
a multitude keeping festival.

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God.





Lament is one way we bring our honest expression to God – expecting that he is big enough, good enough, loving enough to hear our cry – and respond. We believe that Jesus can do something with and about our suffering, for He was “a man of suffering and familiar with pain” (Is. 53:3) What we have been discovering is instead of hiding our pain or suffering or pretending we’re OK, we identify our experience and bring our pain, sadness, hostility, disappointment, irritation, trouble, and despair to him and ask him to change us, and change our circumstances. It is fundamentally a practice of trust and worship. In the Scriptures we find questions and statements of lament directed to God, they are honest wonderings concerning God’s presence or absence and activity or perceived inactivity, and sometimes cries of total desperation. We read these words alongside reminders of trust about who God is and what God has done or has promised to do.

Questions and statements of lament from Scripture:

• How long, O Lord?
• Why have you rejected us?
• How long will the enemy triumph?
• Help, O Lord.
• Restore us, O Lord.
• Lord, have mercy.
• Rise up, O Lord.
• I am desperate.


Remembering God’s goodness - statement of promise or trust

• The Lord has heard the sound of my weeping.
• I sought the LORD, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears.
• The Lord works vindication and justice for all who are oppressed.
• Your steadfast love endures forever.

The practice of lament reflects our human dependency on the Almighty God as we first recognize our need for help, and open ourselves to a conversation with the living God where we ask him to hear us, to help us, and to heal us.

TAKE AWAY

1. Reflect on one thing you are lamenting right now. Where do you most want to see God intervene, but are not seeing it?



2. Take a minute to write out your lament. This does not need to be long, just a sentence.

Example:

Why, Lord, must evil seem to get its way?

Why, Lord, did you abruptly take him home? Why must we feel the sting of death’s cruelty?

We/I lament the broken relationships that bring such pain to many people we know.

3. Consider some positive truths that you want to hang on to by faith. Write your expression of trust or statement about God that is important.

Examples:

“But for me, it is good to be near God; I have made the lord God my refuge…” Psalm 73:28

“Jesus is making all things new.”

“God’s Love is everlasting.”

4. Read your statement(s) of complaint again, and then read the affirmations of faith, by doing this you are creating the movement from complaint to confession that characterizes the lament psalms.