Help Me God, I'm Sad Series

When we have to go through troubles, we need to remember this: no matter how we feel at the moment, we are never alone. Our loving Heavenly Father is always with us, even in times when we don’t feel His presence.

Peace comes from focusing on God’s faithfulness. In Lamentations 3:52-57, Jeremiah describes an experience that reminds him he can trust God. He wrote:

“52 Those who were my enemies without cause hunted me like a bird. 53 They tried to end my life in a pit and threw stones at me; 54 the waters closed over my head, and I thought I was about to perish.

55 I called on your name, Lord, from the depths of the pit. 56 You heard my plea: 'Do not close your ears to my cry for relief.”' 57 You came near when I called you, and you said, 'Do not fear.' You, Lord, took up my case; you redeemed my life.”

When we go though troubles, grief, and sorrow today, let this sad book, Lamentations, lift our spirits. There is HOPE to be found even in the middle of despair.

We can wait with confidence, if we put all our hope in our great God. His Mercies are new every morning and His love is never fails.

CLOSE:

I heard of a minister who was visiting a hospital when the nurse told him about a patient that had just been transferred from a nursing home because her condition was worsening.

The nurse said, "Someone really ought to visit her. She is very deformed and her body has been twisted since childhood. I think she really needs someone to go by and try to cheer her up."

So the minister went by to visit her. He always carried around a little booklet that he gave to people to read who were very depressed because it was such a cheerful and uplifting book.

Thinking that the woman needed this encouragement he told her, "I have something for you. It’s a happy book, an uplifting book, an encouraging book, it’s a good book. I want you to read it because I believe it can give you strength."

The woman looked at the book he gave her and she smiled and said, "I really ought not to take that book sir." He replied, "Why not? Have you already read it?" She said, "I not only have read it. I wrote it!"

This woman, her body twisted and deformed since childhood, wrote a book that spoke of encouragement and hope.

Friends, our happiness and joy are not dependent upon our physical condition, or the circumstances around us, but upon the Lord and his grace and mercy.

It is called “Lamentations” after the word “lament,” which means to cry. Jeremiah was crying, he was lamenting, because his country had just been destroyed by a foreign nation.

There is an oil painting done by Rembrandt in the year 1630 titled, “Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem.” In the background you see people running from a city that is in flames.

With Jeremiah being an eyewitness to the fall of Jerusalem, in Lamentations 1:16 he says, “For these things I weep; My eye, my eye overflows with water.”

This book does tell us about God’s faithfulness, but it doesn’t gloss over the evil and suffering that we have to endure here on earth.