A. I like the story told about the great Christian reformer, Martin Luther, who once spent three days in a black depression over something that had gone wrong.
1. On the third day his wife came downstairs dressed in her funeral clothes.
2. Martin Luther asked her, “Who died?”
3. His wife replied, “God died.”
4. Luther rebuked her, saying, “What do you mean, God died? God cannot die.”
5. “Well,” she replied, “the way you’ve been acting I was sure He must have!”
B. When things go wrong, like in the case of Martin Luther, or when we experience great loss, like in the case of Mark and Sarah Vroegop, our reactions can reveal what or whom we are trusting in or what or whom we are not trusting in.
1. Corrie Ten Boom, who suffered much and lost much in a Nazi concentration camp, said: “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”
2. This is the essence of what I want us to talk about today, and what I hope we will grow in our ability to do – trust our unknown future to our known God.
C. The words of the English poet William Cowper (pronounced Cooper) are so full of meaning and depth.
1. Cowper struggled with debilitating bouts of depression, even landing him in an insane asylum for a time.
2. Throughout most of his life, he wrestled with how to turn his sorrow into trust.
3. Cowper wrote many hymns, including “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood” and “O for a Closer Walk with God.”
4. But the hymn that is believed to be the last hymn he wrote, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way,” has many important lessons for our topic today – Choosing to Trust in the Lord.
5. Let’s spend a minute looking at the words of the hymn:
a. God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm.
b. Deep in unfathomable mines, Of never failing skill. He treasures up His bright designs, And works His sov’reign will.
c. Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take; The clouds ye so much dread, Are big with mercy and shall break, In blessings on your head.
d. Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, But trust Him for His grace; Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face.
e. His purposes will ripen fast, Unfolding every hour; The bud may have a bitter taste, But sweet will be the flow’r.
f. Blind unbelief is sure to err, And scan His work in vain; God is His own interpreter, And He will make it plain.
6. This is a great hymn for us to turn to in our times of suffering and loss.
7. I appreciate Cowper’s candid statements about dreaded clouds, frowning providence, and bitter taste.
a. Cowper clearly lived in the real world of human sorrow and pain.
8. Yet in the midst of his honest suffering, Cowper is able to express hope and trust in God.
a. The dreaded clouds are full of mercy, the frowning providence hides a smiling face, and the bitter bud becomes a sweet flower.
D. In the midst of suffering all kinds of hardships, we can learn how to choose to trust in the Lord.
1. Lament, as we have been learning, is the language for this transition.
2. Through lament, songs of sorrow are meant to move us from complaint to confidence in God.
E. From the very beginning of this “Good Grief” series, our goal has been to be able to use lament to envision and move toward trust.
1. In our series so far, we have learned about the importance of turning toward God, not away.
2. We have learned about the importance of bringing our complaints to God with humility and honesty.
3. Last week, we learned about the important next step of bringing our requests to God.
F. Now we are ready for the final step of lament – trust.
1. The final step of trusting is a choice – a decision.
2. Many people never take the first step of turning to God.
3. Some people get stuck in the complaint stage and never move beyond it.
4. Other people bring their requests to God, but they really don’t bring them to God with faith and confidence in God.
5. This last step is not easy, but it is vital.
G. Choosing to trust in the Lord is not a one and done decision, rather it is a decision we have to make each day of the week, and each moment of the day.
1. When we face suffering, grief and loss, we will have to do more than make a single, initial decision to trust God.
2. We won’t pray one lament prayer and then never have to lament again.
3. Instead, we will have to enter into lament over and over so that it will keep leading us to trust.
4. Lament provides a way to practice active patience as we trust in the Lord and wait for His assistance.
5. Our trust is expressed in our actions of turning to God, of pouring out our complaints, of asking for God’s help, and of enduring with patience and trust in the midst of the trial.
6. As we wait for God’s future deliverance, our spiritual posture is not passive, but is active in trusting prayers of lament - we keep trusting by lamenting.
H. Let’s turn out attention to Psalm 13 which is a great example of a lament that clearly moves into trust.
1. Psalm 13 is only six verses, which makes it easy for us to examine and even to memorize.
2. As we have been learning, laments are designed to lead us toward decisive, faith-filled trust and worship.
I. Let’s look at how David’s lament moves through the four steps we have been learning about.
1. The first two steps of turning and complaint are made up of four “how long” questions and as you would expect, they are pointed and direct.
a. 1 How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2 How long will I store up anxious concerns within me, agony in my mind every day? How long will my enemy dominate me? (Ps. 13:1-2)
2. In the next two verses, David brings his requests to God as he boldly asks for deliverance.
a. 3 Consider me and answer, Lord my God. Restore brightness to my eyes; otherwise, I will sleep in death. 4 My enemy will say, “I have triumphed over him,” and my foes will rejoice because I am shaken (Psalm 13:3-4).
3. Hopefully, this pattern and progression is becoming more familiar to us: turning, complaining, and asking.
a. And hopefully, this pattern and progression can become part of our own prayer language.
4. But let’s not leave out the last step, David didn’t, and so in verses 5 and 6 David turns to a series of trust-laden statements that are rooted in God’s character and actions.
a. 5 But I have trusted in your faithful love; my heart will rejoice in your deliverance. 6 I will sing to the Lord because he has treated me generously (Ps. 13:5-6).
5. Last week, we emphasized the importance of the “but God.”
a. Words like “but” and “however” are found in every lament because lamenting trust is not merely belief or conviction; it is trusting despite the circumstances that might make it hard for a person to believe.
b. Words like “but,” “however,” and “yet” mark the intentional shift from the cause of the lament to trusting in who God is, what God has done, and the promises God has made.
c. Trust is believing what we know to be true even though the facts of suffering might call that belief into question.
J. Let’s look more closely at the three affirmations of trust in verses 5 and 6.
1. I hope these affirmations can become personal to us, giving us language to express our trust in the Lord.
2. And as we personally pray these affirmations, I hope they will help our hearts turn toward trust.
K. The first affirmation of trust is: “I have trusted in your faithful love.”
1. The Bible contains the record of God’s faithful, steadfast love for His people.
a. Over and over, God proves himself to be faithful and trust-worthy.
b. Michael Jinkins notes: “The psalmist clings to trust in God’s steadfast love on the basis of what God has done in the past, a confidence that made it possible to pray in the first place” (p. 86).
c. As David connects his painful experience with what he knows to be true about God, his statement of trust anticipates a blessing that has not yet arrived.
2. All of us who know God and have been walking with God have a personal record of God’s steadfast love toward us as well.
a. In times of loss and suffering, we need to remind ourselves about God’s faithful love and trust-worthiness.
3. Faith was a critical part of our initial conversion and the salvation we received, but Christians don’t leave behind trusting God after coming to faith.
a. Rather, being a follower of Jesus requires that we walk through life in continual trust.
b. This is true whether we are experiencing seasons of gain and trouble-free ease, or seasons of loss and intense suffering.
4. Trusting in God’s steadfast love is the way we must learn to live.
a. Using the words of this lament psalm and making them our own can lead us toward the trust we need and desire.
b. We can pray this short phrase as a kind of chant to reinforce it in our minds and hearts.
c. We can list and rehearse the ways of God’s faithfulness toward us in the Gospel and in many personal ways.
d. Choosing to trust requires reinforcing what we know to be true.
5. Prayers of lament are designed to remind us that God is worthy to be trusted, even in the midst of what we are going through.
L. The second affirmation of trust is: “My heart will rejoice in your deliverance.”
1. Looking back on God’s history, we see that time and time again God rescues His people.
2. Suffering does not mean that God has forgotten or rejected His people completely.
3. The long arc of God’s plan for deliverance and salvation is always at work even though we cannot fully see the trajectory.
a. A verse in Cowper’s song gets to the heart of this issue: “Blind unbelief is sure to err, And scan His work in vain; God is His own interpreter, And He will make it plain.”
b. The illustration of a tapestry is always helpful to me, God sees the top and understands the design, while we only see the underside with its’ seeming chaos and ugliness.
4. Choosing to trust through lament requires that we rejoice without knowing how all the dots connect.
5. We must decide to allow God to be His own interpreter, trusting that somehow His gracious plan is being worked out, even if we can’t see it or understand it.
6. On this side of the cross we have a real advantage that we need to embrace.
a. Those who stood at the cross didn’t understand what we know.
b. They didn’t know that the lament of Jesus – “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” was leading toward the greatest moment of deliverance and salvation.
c. Mark Vroegop rightly wrote: “The darkness of the sixth hour led to the dawn of the empty tomb.”
M. In Romans 8, the apostle Paul shows the connection between suffering and the promises of God’s redemptive plan.
1. Paul lists some of the trials that Christians face: 35 Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? (Rom. 8:35).
2. Then Paul quotes a complaint of a lament psalm: 36 As it is written: Because of you we are being put to death all day long; we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered (Rom. 8:36; Ps. 44:22).
3. On either side of the trials and laments stand sweeping promises connected to God’s eternal plan.
4. These promises of God don’t necessarily end the pain, but they do give it purpose.
5. Paul concludes: 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. 8:37-39).
6. Like David, Paul rejoices in salvation – he takes the reality of suffering and the pain of lament and combines them to highlight the glory and promise of God’s love.
7. This is what choosing to trust can do for us if we will enter into the joy of our salvation.
N. The final affirmation of trust is: “I will sing to the Lord because he has treated me generously.”
1. In this short psalm, we notice that David moved from direct questions to grateful worship.
2. David has allowed lament to reorient his heart as he makes the choice to praise God for His grace and mercy.
3. David’s complaints and requests have now reached their intended destination, they have led him to faith-filled worship.
4. As we have discovered, the psalms of lament have this consistent destination of trust.
5. The ancient church father, Augustine offered this helpful summary about the way that lament psalms teach us to trust: “The psalms are given to us as a divine pedagogy for our affections – God’s way of reshaping our desires and perceptions so that they learn to lament the right things and take joy in the right things” (found in book by Todd Billings, Rejoicing in Lament).
6. Lament helps to tune the heart so it can sing about trusting in the Lord.
7. A hymnal or a book of contemporary worship choruses can be a great encouragement for our confidence in God.
8. Whenever we are battling falsehoods in our thinking and feelings, sometimes singing has the power to change our thoughts and emotions as we are reminded about God and His power and His faithfulness.
9. A simple song like “Be still and know that I am God” can be just the right prescription for our weary and doubt-filled heart.
O. Ultimately, lament leads to trust, but the path is not always easy or straight, but if we keep turning to God, keep laying out our complaints, and keep boldly asking for God’s help, I trust that God will bring us to a place of growing trust in Him.
1. We must not get hung up in trying to be perfect in our lamenting.
2. In the end it isn’t our ability to perfectly follow the lament protocol that makes the difference; rather, it’s about us connecting with our loving, powerful and merciful heavenly Father.
3. The really cool thing about all this is that no one wants us to benefit more from lament than God, so don’t you think God is going to help us along the way?
4. Mark Vroegop tells about receiving a powerful short note of encouragement from the well-known pastor, Dr. John Piper at the time of his daughter’s death.
a. Dr. Piper’s brief note ended with these words: “Keep trusting the One who keeps you trusting.”
b. Perhaps that is a good and helpful way to end this step of the lament, by simply saying: “Lord, I’m trusting you to keep me trusting.”
c. This reminds me of the man who, with desperation, said to Jesus, “I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief.”
d. “Lord, please help me to keep trusting the one who keeps me trusting.”
5. As we employ the process of turning to God in lament, God gives us the grace to keep trusting.
P. I want to end with an illustration that comes from Tino Wallenda, the famous tightrope walker.
1. Wallenda said, “At one time or another I have taken each of my four children on my shoulders as I have walked across the wire. In those situations the children really can’t do any balancing: I’m the one who has to balance and support them.”
People have asked my children, ‘Aren’t you scared?’
My children said, ‘No.’
And when they were asked why they weren’t scared, they answered, ‘Because that’s my daddy.’ They aren’t afraid because they have confidence in me, their daddy.”
2. Tino Wallenda concludes: “And I have confidence in my heavenly Father. I know that He will take me all the way across this chasm of life until I meet Him face to face.”
Q. The better we know our heavenly daddy, then the more confidence we should have in His ability to carry us on His shoulders across the tightropes of life, even when the wind is blowing, and even when the rain is falling and even when it doesn’t seem we will ever get across it and through it.
1. Let’s choose to trust in the Lord and learning to lament will help us do that.
2. Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus – let’s stand and sing that song together.
Resources:
Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy by Mark Vroegop, Crossway, 2019.
Michael Jinkins, In the House of the Lord: Inhabiting the Psalms of Lament (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1989), 84.
Tino Wallenda in Decision, April 1999, p. 7.
