Recently a television reporter followed up on the people who survived that air travel incident in which a huge section of the plane simply tore off, somewhere near Hawaii. You may remember that there was some kind of metal fatigue and a whole section of the plane suddenly broke out and about nine people were sucked right out of the plane to their deaths.
The television reporter got together as many of the survivors as he could and asked them their feelings, asked them how their lives had changed since then.
Some said they felt guilty to be alive, that they did not deserve to be alive when others did not survive.
Still others said they felt that living was more precious, that they would live today for today and not worry as much as they used to about tomorrow.
Another reported that she now caught herself evaluating the way she treated her daughter. Whereas before the incident she had been awfully hard on her daughter and had insisted that this fifteen-year-old clean up, fix up, and shape up, now she would catch herself thinking, "Wait a minute; maybe that’s not so important. Just love her, just take joy in her. " More now on feelings, relationships.
As for the pilot of the plane, credited with heroism in getting what was left of the aircraft down to safety, he is now retired from flying and says that he goes out on the deck of his home every morning, a little surprised to find himself alive, and thanks the Lord for the privilege of another day. He has turned in his feelings to a profound relationship with God.
Various people have reacted in different ways, you see, but what is common to them all? What word did you hear me use to describe each one of them?
Feelings; feelings. All of them are living out of their feelings. All of them are living out of their emotions. All of them went through something that cannot be handled just by thinking about it or making decisions or rationalizing. For every one of them it is an experience that did something to the way they feel. They are living out of their feelings.
Our feelings are the trickiest part of our selves. They are tricky because we are halfway ashamed of having feelings, but on the other hand we are not in control of what we feel. We go to a funeral, we attend a wedding, we get into some very special circumstance, and we hear our voices choke and know that our eyes are tearing up, and what do we do? We apologize. We turn our feelings inward and virtually deny them, or at least apologize for them.
Our feelings are tricky, too, because they really unmask what we are at the very center of our beings. What we feel is what we are. Some of us are able to be very much in control of our professional selves; we hack the computer or dispense the medicine or apply the policy according to strict guidelines, without letting personal feelings intervene, and we call that professionalism. But then things happen that get to us personally, emotionally, and our feelings seem to play tricks on us.
Nurses working at D. C. General and other hospitals where the boarder babies are – those children born to mothers who are drug addicts and who are unable and unwilling to take their babies home – nurses attending these babies find themselves, against all the patterns of professional practice, wanting to mother the babies, give them names, bring them gifts, play with them, feel for them.
Feelings are tricky and will take you over. Feelings seem often to be out of control. But is that bad? Is that wrong? I don’t think so. Feelings represent who we are at the very core and center of our being.
I believe that our feelings are important to God. What we are feeling about ourselves and our lives at any given moment will have a profound effect on our relationship to God. And for most of us, that means our feelings will affect our prayers. What we feel, our emotional state, will show up in our prayers. And that matters to God.
Last week I introduced you to Hezekiah, King of Judah in the late eighth century before Christ. Last week we saw Hezekiah faced with a military and political crisis of tremendous proportions; we saw him faced with what I called destructive opposition. Outside his gates the army of the enemy stood, waiting to destroy; but even worse than the weapons of the Assyrian soldiers, as you will recall, were the tactics, the destructive, corrosive tactics of the Assyrian ambassadors.
That crisis led King Hezekiah to resort to prayer. You will remember that he first enlisted his good friend, Isaiah the prophet, to pray for him. And then a little later Hezekiah himself found the words and the trust to pray and gain victory.
Now as the Scripture reports more about this Judean king, we enter more deeply into Hezekiah’ s feelings. Hezekiah, we established last week, was a praying man. And the text for today reinforces that. But Hezekiah, we saw last week, was also a feeling man, feeling despair for the plight of the city, feeling anxious for his throne, yet feeling praise and trust for God. Today we get that confirmed too. Hezekiah was a feeling man, and like many of us, he was not always in complete control of his feelings. Yet his feelings affected his relationship to God and his prayer, his prayer on the way to victory.
I
Hezekiah ’s prayer as the chapter opens is a very natural one. Wouldn’t you have wanted to pray something like this, if you got the same kind of news that greeted the King?
Isaiah 38:1-3
The king is mortally ill; the prophet Isaiah, whose word he had always trusted, tells him that there is no chance for him to survive. And King Hezekiah’s emotions come tumbling out. Hezekiah "turned his face to the wall, offered his prayer, and wept bitterly"
What strikes me about this is that the King had the good sense to give his feelings plenty of room in which to work. He expressed himself, freely and honestly. What he felt, he felt, and there is no hint here that he tried to stave off his tears. There is no suggestion that he pretended to accept his fate. He felt. He suffered. He hid his face, he prayed, he wept bitterly. He felt.
And I believe that in his free and honest expression of feelings he was on the way to victory.
Many of us have a lesson to learn here. Many of us have learned from one source or another to keep our feelings in check. We have fallen for the notion that it is somehow undignified and tasteless to feel what we feel. And I believe that’s wrong. I believe that’s unhealthy.
The British speak of keeping a stiff upper lip. Certain Native American groups place a premium on showing no emotional responses. Males of a certain age and background are taught that big boys don’t dry. What garbage! What does that achieve!? It certainly has nothing to do with praying through to victory.
I have worked through any number of wakes and funerals here among you in these years. I have watched you grieve, and I have grieved along with you. I well remember that the first few funerals I did I could keep control very well; I didn’t know you, I didn’t know the deceased, it was easy to be professional. But then as time went on and our lives intertwined, I found I could not keep my emotions in complete control. I found I wanted to weep with those who weep. And I found my feelings creeping into my prayers.
Now I ask you, does that make me any less pastor? Does that make me any less competent or professional when I am trying to serve you under these circumstances? By no means! If anything, it enhances my praying for you and with you, if I can feel what you feel. Feelings, clearly expressed, help us to pray and get victory.
And then, too, I’ve watched some of you struggling with your own feelings at the time of the death of a loved one or at the time of your own serious illness. You have worked so hard to put on a good face. You have tried so hard to be dignified. And I wonder why? What does it achieve? What does it accomplish? What good does it do to be middle class and dignified and in control when you hurt so bad you want to scream?
No, let’s learn from Hezekiah, and begin the prayer that leads to victory by expressing fully, honestly, freely, what we feel. God is big enough to handle it, and if your friends are not big enough, then that’s their problem! You have a right to your feelings, and your Lord will honor that right.
It’s interesting, by the way, that Hezekiah even used body language to punctuate his prayer; he turned his face to the wall. Why not? Several weeks ago I reminded you that worship is a whole self experience: use not only your words to express your anguish. Use your body. If you want to beat on the table in anger at God, go to it. It’s all right. If you need to pound the pavement and walk off that frustration, go to it, and make it a part of your prayer. If you feel as though you could just curl up on your bed and go to sleep to escape what hurts, do that too, and see it all as part of your prayer.
Because, believe it, that kind of prayer is going to get you a victory.
II
Well, happily for Hezekiah, his prayer for health was answered. It was, in fact, answered very specifically.
Isaiah 38:4-5
Hezekiah got well, and the Lord even sealed the bargain, according to the next few verses, by turning back the shadows cast by the sun as a sign that this life would be lengthened. So now Hezekiah’s praying enters a new phase.
Hezekiah gave thanks. From the bottom of his heart he gave thanks. With profound feelings he gave praise to the God who had delivered him. And when you read Hezekiah’s psalm of praise and victory you cannot help but sense how deep the feelings go. Let me share just a few portions of it with you:
He begins by rehearsing how desperate he was for his life:
Isaiah 38:10-11, 13-14 – pretty clear about his negative feelings.
But then he becomes equally clear about his joy in the Lord’s deliverance:
Isaiah 38:16-17, 20
What do we learn from this? That when we receive an answer to our prayers, and when victory comes, and when the rejoicing starts, that too is to be directed toward the Lord. That too is prayer. That too is prayer toward victory.
You see, what happens with too many of us? We pray when we are in trouble and forget to pray when the trouble is all over. We pray when we have a need, and when the need is supplied, we shut up. But Hezekiah learned to get in touch not only with his feelings of desperation, but also with his feelings of thanksgiving and to express these too to Almighty God. That is the prayer of victory. The prayer of victory owns all our feelings, good as well as negative, joyful as well as needy, and gives all our feelings to God.
You know, our language gives us away sometimes. We get well from an illness, and we say, "Well, I had a real good doctor." And that’s fine. We need to give the doctor and the nurse and everybody else proper credit. But what about the one to whom the prayer of desperation was uttered? If to Him go the feelings of pain, why not to Him also the feelings of joy?
Several of us have been involved in automobile accidents recently. Everybody’s car has been totaled, it seems, but everybody’s body is all right. Looks like the only body work will be in the shop. And what do we say? "I was lucky!" "I was lucky!" Listen, "lucky" should not even be in the Christian’s vocabulary! No, you were not lucky; you were preserved by the hand of Almighty God, and now it is time to praise Him. When metal was crunching against metal, if you had even a split second to think, you probably prayed, "Lord help me". But now that it’s all over but the insurance man, what are you doing with your feelings of joy? What about prayer like Hezekiah’s prayer?
"Your love saved me from the pit of destruction … so let the music of our praises resound all our life long in the house of the Lord."
One member of this church, several years ago, had a serious accident. He hobbled around here for several months recovering from its effects. But during that same period of time I saw him working and working hard for the Kingdom, not only here in the church but also in one of our Baptist institutions and in other ways. And when I said to him one day, "You sure are giving a lot of yourself," he said, "Well, I could have been killed, but I wasn’t. The Lord spared me, and I just have to be grateful."
Now that’s prayer and victory. That’s translating feelings into prayer and into victory.
I have been thinking a good bit lately about who we are as a church, what kind of people of God we are. I had occasion to remember recently that several years ago one of your former pastors, Bill Scurlock, talked about the character of this congregation and about its personality. And Rev. Scurlock said, in his summary, that we are an introverted people and a thinking people – that we are not an extroverted, emotional, feeling, expressive people. He said that you were the kind of folks who would not find it natural to be very expressive of your feelings.
I’ve come to believe that he was right. Most of us protect our privacy. Most of us keep quiet about what is going on inside. Most of us cannot even bring ourselves to say "Amen" in worship. We’re just that private.
But something else is happening too. Something else is finding its way into our lives together, and I’m glad of it. One of our more recent members, as we visited together, told me that he too was introverted, he too was a thinking, rational creature, a scientist in fact – but that the older he grew the more he got in touch with his feelings. And. moreover, he said, he was finding among us the kind of blend of facts and feelings, thinking and emotions, that he needed.
I wonder if our God is not in the process in these days of giving us a great gift. The gift he is giving us, if I am on target, is the gift of breaking out of our innerness, breaking beyond our privacy, so that we can truly express our longings, our hopes, our fears, our desperations … and so that we can also truly and freely and openly and fully offer our praises, both of these things. Something is happening among us, and if I know at all what it is, it is feelings, it is prayer, and it will be victory.
It will be a people of God who can live out their lives, like Hezekiah did, unashamed of what they feel.
It will be a people of God who will instinctively turn to prayer in the tough times, as the King of Judah did. But it will also be a people of God who will seize every reason to praise Him, as this old king did.
It will also be a people of God who know that they may not always control their feelings, but that that’s all right, that they can channel those feelings, they can use those feelings, they can gain power from those feelings, and in that power can rejoice in the Lord, all their life long.
Feelings: we translate them into prayer. And prayer becomes the theme song of victory.
