God, I Feel Disoriented

Good morning. My name is René. I'm one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church. The neighborhood is a dump, and I mean that quite literally. It's a community of about 2,500 families that was literally built on an active landfill in Paraguay. Hope is unknown to the people who live here. Nobody even knows they exist. Or at least that was true until just recently. Now the world knows about them because we've heard their music.

Here's the story. A man named Fabio Chavez works here and envisioned an alternative for the kids who have no hope in this neighborhood. The problem with his vision was that it was a music school and instruments were far, far, far too expensive. So he had an idea. He described instruments to a man named Don Gomez. He's a trash worker in this neighborhood who has never in his life seen a violin or a cello or any other kind of symphonic instrument. But when Fabio described one, Don took a paint can and an oven tray and made a violin out of it. His next instrument was a cello out of an oil barrel, a hair brush, the heel of a shoe, and a wooden spoon.

And with a few of these instruments, they started an orchestra, a music school for kids. They call themselves the Landfill Harmonic. And their story has even been made into a movie. Here's the trailer. A group of kids in Paraguay actually made all of the instruments out of trash. Look at this. That's a fort, people. Let the gift of music shine through tonight on that stage. Is that not awesome?

You know, I looked at that trailer and of course it brings a tear to your heart. But then it occurred to me, that's exactly what God does with our lives. I love the way writer Max Lucado puts it. He says, "The whole Bible is a picture of God taking people from the dumps and making them masterpieces." Peter, who was sure he had steered his life straight to the dumpster, denying Christ? Yeah, he's the concert master. That religious terrorist who tried to kill Christians? First chair trumpet. That's the Apostle Paul. The woman on the flute? Rahab, the prostitute. And look at the string section. Hey, there's you and me. The ones who thought we were trash, but God had other ideas.

And those people are not the heroes of Scripture, are they? God is. As he keeps doing his work, you could call it divine dumpster diving. Jesus, the junk man. And there's only one thing that you and I need to do for God to make our trash into a symphony. And it's this. We just have to give it to him. We just have to say, "God, here. Help." And that means you have to be honest with him and with yourself. And that's really the underlying truth to the series.

We start today authentic. Real prayers, real people. Grab the message notes that look like this, that are in your bulletins as we kick this off. In this summer series, we're going to look at actual prayers from the Bible that may surprise you. Because they're all prayers of people who in one way or another, when they pray, are sitting in the landfill and they're finally giving God their garbage.

And here's why we need this. People come up to me as a pastor all the time and they say things like this, "I don't know if I can still call myself a Christian anymore because I don't feel God anymore." Or sometimes I have doubts about some aspects of God or of the Bible. Or I don't sense God's leading. Or I have failed. I've fallen. And I think that we can imagine sometimes that the life of faith means do not have an ounce of doubt or a shade of discouragement or a moment of despair or even once sin. And so many people either leave as failures or stay as fakers.

And so I love to open my Bible and show them the real prayers of real people who said things like, "Well, like this, take out the card out of your bulletins that has an overview of this series on the other side." In this series, you will hear people like Moses saying, "God, I have had enough." Or King Asa saying, "God, help." That's next week. Or David saying, "God, please guide me. I just want to know which way to go. I want to get oriented." In fact, I want to start the series today with kind of an overview called, "God, I Feel Disoriented." You ever feel like that? Maybe you feel like that right now.

I'm going to be paraphrasing from a great chapter of a book I'm reading now by a man named Mike Arie. He's a pastor down in Southern California. And he wrote a book I've been loving for the last week called, "Astonished--Recapturing the Wonder, Awe, and Mystery of Life with God." And he points out there are three kinds of prayers in the Bible, but we only really focus on two of them. And we miss like a third of the prayers in the Bible. And we're going to be looking at that missing third in this series.

Now, this isn't a rigid definition, but generally speaking, first, there are prayers of orientation. Prayers of orientation. They celebrate the world. They celebrate God. They're about life being good. They express joy and creation. Like Psalm 145, "I exalt you, my God the King. I praise your name forever and ever. Every day I will praise you and extol your name." Well, forever and ever. Because great is the Lord and most worthy of praise. His greatness, no one can fathom. The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, rich in love. The Lord is good to all. He has compassion on all He has made.

Everybody loves the prayers of orientation. They laid down a foundation of God's grace and goodness for, number two, the prayers of disorientation. And prayers of disorientation are about grief and pain and hurt and anguish. They're songs of protest and doubt and feelings of unworthiness. And a lot of people are surprised to find this kind of honesty right in the pages of the Bible. What am I talking about? Well, like Psalm 88. Check this out. "I am overwhelmed with troubles and my life draws near to what? Death. You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths." He feels like, "God, you did this to me. Your wrath lies heavily on me. You have overwhelmed me with all your waves. Why, Lord, do you reject me? Hide your face from me. Your terrors have destroyed me. All day long they surround me like a flood. They've completely engulfed me. You have taken from me friend and neighbor and now only darkness is my closest friend." Wow.

You know, in my observation, a lot of modern Christians are not very comfortable with prayers like these. It just ends. This right here, this is the final verse of the prayer. There's no resolution. There's no explanation. There's no answers. No cliches. No red bow on top. These prayers often end in the dark, in the dumps. That's how they end. And that's authentic, too. An authentic faith doesn't just have prayers of orientation. It also has prayers of disorientation because faith is not a formula. Faith is a real relationship with God. And in real relationships, sometimes you argue, don't you? Sometimes you disagree. You do not see eyeball to eyeball. You're not on the same page in every single relationship in your life. You just never are.

And so if you're gonna have a real relationship with God, from time to time, you're going to have this kind of a feeling and you see that in the Bible all the time. Prayers of disorientation. God, why is this happening to me? But then third, there are prayers of reorientation. And prayers of reorientation celebrate what God does when he meets his people in the dump. And these prayers turn to spare and to hope. They turn from grief into joy. Now, prayers of reorientation are not about the absence of trouble, but they're about the presence of God down in the trash heap.

And this point is big. Reorientation is not a move back. You've got, you know, you've got orientation, disorientation, reorientation. Reorientation is not a move back to the old orientation. It's a move forward to a new reorientation. It's a new normal. It's a new healing. Like you see here in Psalm 30. Look at what he says. "I will exalt you, Lord, for you," what? "Lifted me out of the depths and did not let my enemies gloat over me. Lord my God, I called you for help and you healed me. Lord, you brought me up from the realm of the dead. You spared me from going down to the pit. So sing the praises of the Lord, you his faithful people. Praise his holy name for his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime. Weeping may stay for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning." That's reorientation.

In fact, I want you to look at the next few verses in the same Psalm, Psalm 30, because he shows all three kinds of prayers. And so I'm going to read you one of these prayers and then ask you to shout out which one this is. All right? Some audience participation here this morning. Watch this. He says, "When I felt secure, I said, 'I'll never be shaken. Lord, when you favored me, you made my royal mountain stand firm.'" What kind of prayer is that? That is orientation. That great feeling of, "Wow, I'm secure now. I'm saved now. I'm sober now. I will never be shaken again." And by the way, again, the prayers of orientation, these are not authentic prayers. These are not shallow prayers. Prayers of focus and joy and simplicity are good and biblical because you have to establish a foundation for the storms ahead.

But then look at this. "But when you hid your face, I was dismayed. To you, Lord, I called. To the Lord, I cried for mercy." Now that's a prayer of what? Disorientation. And then he says, "You turned my wailing into dancing. You removed my sackcloth, clothed me with joy that my heart may sing your praises and not be silent. Lord, my God, I'll praise you forever." And that's a prayer of what? Reorientation. What you see here is disorientation does not last forever. In fact, I hope you caught that verse. Did you see this? Let's read this verse out loud. Let me hear you say that. "Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning." That means if you're in that prayer of disorientation stage right now, you will get through this. That's what that verse means.

In fact, I want to say it again. Put it on the screen so that it gets tattooed on your mind. You will get through this. Now it will not be quick and it will not be easy and it will not be painless. But wherever you're at today, you will get through this. And some of you, this one sentence is why God wanted you here at church today. Don't give up. Don't despair. Lay a foundation for the storms ahead if you're in reorientation. Rejoice if you're in orientation. But if you're in disorientation, you will get through it. Don't give up.

See, here's the shape of faith. Draw a little diagram in that spot on your notes that looks like this, kind of a J, a J curve. You see that on screen? That movement is always happening in your life spiritually. What am I talking about? Well, it starts with orientation on the first part of the J, but it moves down into a season of disorientation, maybe because of illness or job loss or death of a loved one. Or it might just be kind of a growing awareness. Hey, you know, life isn't fair. Or just sort of an awareness that bad things happen in life for no apparent reason. And that can cause feelings of resentment and confusion and anguish. And it feels like this part of the curve is just gonna last forever. I'm spiraling downward forever. But you won't. There will be a move up into reorientation of new life and new understanding.

And you see all three kinds of prayers in the Bible and all three in the Psalms. And you know what? In church on any given Sunday morning, you will find all three groups right here in this room right now. Some of you are new to faith or you're just rediscovering God's grace. And you wish that the worship would go on for two and a half hours. Because, and that I would just shut up right now. Because you just love to sing songs about praise and God is good. And He's so awesome. That's probably like a third of you.

But there's another third. Any Sunday, any weekend that barely dragged themselves to church. And right now you are so sad or so angry or so disillusioned about God. And maybe this is your first time back at church after two months or two decades. And in my observation, those first two groups often think the other group is shallow and unspiritual. People in the second group, the disoriented group, can look at the people that are praising God and go, "Oh you're just the fakie happy happy joy joy people." Can't you be authentic about your spiritual life? Don't you know it's all just not roses and blue skies and rainbows? And the people in the first group look at the second group and say, "You know what? You guys are so gloomy. The Bible says rejoice in the Lord always. Come on." And they judge each other. And that's sad because they are both real. Happiness is real. And pain is real. The pain is never the last word. There is reorientation too.

So listen, if you find yourself at the bottom of the J-curve today, three things. First, just let go of any guilt and shame you may have from not being some kind of perfect Christian that you thought you'd be. And second, learn to pray bold, honest prayers. In fact, I'll say this, prayer is not a time to be good. Prayer is a time to be real. And God can handle your honesty. He really can. But then third, I would say your tendency is going to be to isolate down at the bottom of that curve. I would say you're doing exactly the right thing being here today to try to plug yourself into a community where there's also a third of us are oriented right now and happy and joyful and also a third of us have just come out of a season of disorientation and we're reoriented again.

And the reoriented people need to be honest about, "No, I don't always feel this way. In fact, I was just down in the dumps." Because when all three groups work together, that's when community happens. And that's when healing happens in a church. Let me just give you one example that I just heard about. Pastor named Scott Dudley says that a church he attended in Seattle, there was a woman appropriately named Grace because Grace found an interesting ministry. She decided that she would go to downtown Seattle and she would find women who were prostitutes and she would invite them to church on Sunday morning.

Well, she did this over a period of months and there were three women that consistently came with her weekend after weekend. Now they hadn't left their life yet. Most of them said some version of, "I've messed up my life. I've ruined it. I don't deserve to have this in my life, but it makes me feel happy just to come to church on Sunday mornings." And so Grace consistently invited these three. And by the way, the pastor said that some of the church people objected because they said that these women distracted them from worship. And the pastor said, "I cannot ask prostitutes not to come to church because that's exactly what Jesus did was invite them to come to his ministry."

And so he said, "I tell you what, why don't I get some of Grace's friends to kind of sit between you and these prostitutes as kind of a buffer zone for you?" And they said, "Thank you pastor, that would be very nice." And so he put up kind of a buffer zone of people who became such good friends of these ladies. In fact, they decided, "We're not just going to sit with them at church. Every single Sunday we're going to invite them out to lunch and not just at a restaurant to our homes." And so they started doing this week after week after week. And they said, "It's because we can relate when they say our life is worth nothing because there have been times when we felt like that too and we want them to see that you can come out on the other side."

Well, that was great, but the really life-changing thing happened one Sunday afternoon when these three ladies were at the home of one of one of their friends in the church and a six-year-old little girl who was part of that household comes skipping into the living room and she skits to a halt and she looks up at one of these middle-aged prostitutes and she just clambers up into her lap without an invitation. And she starts stroking her hair and patting her face and then she says, "You're pretty." And tears started rolling down this woman's cheeks as she said, "You know, I've been touched in all kinds of ways in my life, but I don't think I've ever been touched with love until this moment."

Years later she said, "That day, that afternoon, that moment was when she understood what Jesus does. When we think our lives are trash and we think there's no hope for us and he comes down and he's God with us through the hands of other people in his body, the church, and he reaches out and turns trash into treasure. But do you understand what was happening in that moment? You had all three together. You had the little six-year-old girl who was just in the joy of orientation. What she knew about faith was Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. And she reached out with that innocence and love.

And you had those women sitting there probably a little bit uncomfortable in that house completely disoriented and thinking their life was in the dumpster. And you had the women who'd invited them because they said, "We get it. We've been reoriented." And because they were together, church happened. And that's why all three of these things need to work together and why we need to understand that this is the shape of faith.

Now to be honest, we don't want this to be the shape of growth. We would like growth spiritually to look like this, just one steady line up. But it doesn't work that way. In fact, it's more like a series of J curves. The cycle repeats over and over and over because this is how you grow. And the sooner you realize this, the more hope you have when you're at the bottom of the J curve. Last year was a real bottom of the J curve year for me with mom's death and a lot of other things. But at the end of the year, it started turning around and this year with a new grand baby on the way. Don't know if you heard about that. That's been just an exciting J curve up. But I know this is not gonna go on indefinitely either.

When you see this is the shape of life, it takes the ups and the downs so much easier. You know, you get it. I can't cling to the ups, but I don't need to cling to the downs. It loops like this because that's life, that's spiritual growth. But this is why we need to recover, as Mike Arie puts it, "the lost art of lament." And that's what we're gonna do in this series. "Lament" is a great word that nobody talks about anymore. What is lament? Well, lament is prayers of disorientation. And they're not always bummer prayers. This isn't a series about a bunch of bummer prayers. Sometimes they're prayers like, "God, you know I love you, but I can't feel you anymore." Or, "God, I want to go your way, but I don't know which way to go. I'm at a crossroads. I'm disoriented. I need your direction." And those are the kinds of prayers we're going to explore in the authentic series.

Because lament is all through the Bible. In fact, there's a whole book of the Bible about lament. It's called "Lamentations." A third of the Psalms are Psalms of disorientation and lament. And here's something that shows me. First, lament is not only permitted, but necessary. You know, some people think that because Jesus conquered sin and is coming back, Christians should never be sad, but you never see that in the Bible. Lament's just part of that J-curve journey. You know why? Because lament breaks us of the temptation to denial. To denial. 12 step groups talk a lot about denial, right? "I'm fine, nothing wrong here. Got no problems. What's the problem with denial?" Well, when you don't name the problems, you can't solve the problems, right? When you don't ask for help, you usually don't get help.

And would you agree that American culture is a culture of denial? And let me just say, as a pastor, particularly when it comes to death, we don't even want to think about it. So often as a pastor, when I do funerals, it becomes painfully clear that the people with whom I'm talking about the death of their loved one, they have literally not even thought about death ever until that week. And what's really sad is when everybody wants an upbeat funeral, you know, and I want an upbeat funeral. I love upbeat funerals, but sometimes it gets taken to a ridiculous extreme where nobody at the entire funeral will even admit that they're sad or bummed that their friend passed away or their loved one did. It's like, it's almost crazy sometimes.

I did a large funeral several years ago now, and it was bizarre at first because everybody, for like the hour before the funeral, as they were coming to the memorial, was just acting like it was a high school reunion. Like, "Hey, good to see you. You know, give me five. Put it there." And it was a tragic double funeral. And then I thought, "Wow, this is strange." And then I met a friend of mine who doesn't even claim to be a believer coming out of the restroom. And I said, "How are you doing?" And he said, "You know what? This is messed up." Only he used more extreme language than that. And I said, "Yes, it is." And we talked a little bit more, and I thought, "All these people here who probably would claim to be believers and he doesn't even claim to have faith, I would say in some ways he's about a thousand steps closer to real faith than they were."

Because sometimes faith means saying, "God, I messed up." Or, "My life is messed up." Or, "Somebody messed up my life." And you're just honest about the way you feel, and you're honest about your sadness, and you're honest about your loneliness to God. Because God says, "That is how you find new life." And that's the next point. Lament leads to new life because it names what's wrong. And that's why God invites you to protest and to plead and to grieve and complain. In fact, I would say lament is not a lack of faith. Lament is what faith looks like in times of trouble because it's directed to God. And let me just assure you again, God can handle your honesty. He really, really can.

In fact, I don't know if you've ever noticed, but even Jesus lamented. Shortest verse of the Bible, John 11:35, "Jesus wept." Ever wonder why did he weep? Do you know the context for this verse in John 11? He's going to the funeral for his friend Lazarus. Lazarus has died. Jesus comes on the scene. He sees all the mourners, and it says, "Jesus wept." And the word used here doesn't just mean like he got choked up, like, "Oh." It means racking sobs. The kind of sadness you feel in the marrow of your bones. Now the strange thing is that Jesus is about to raise Lazarus from the dead. Knowing that, you ever wonder why did he weep? Why was he weeping? If you know that there was a happy ending to the story, well we know there's a happy ending to the story, our own resurrection. The resurrection of our loved ones. So why do we weep? Why do we lament?

Well, specifically for Jesus, I think Jesus wept because he knew three things better than anybody else in history. And there were these. Number one, the utter goodness of God. He knew having lived with the Father and the Spirit and perfect holiness and purity and peace. God is not the author of evil. God did not design death. God hates cancer. God hates sin. God hates death. He wants to rid the world of it. And so Jesus wept. He hates it. But the second thing Jesus knew better than anybody else, he knew the utter evilness of evil. That there is so much pain and agony because we live in a fallen world. All the bad headlines. We live in a world where there's a real spiritual adversary who opposes God's work and hates God's people and brings death. And in addition to that we all fail because we're human beings who are fallen. And sometimes we fail deliberately and sometimes we're deliberately evil. And that is not a small thing. It's a devastating thing to the world. It rips apart the beautiful world that God made. And so Jesus wept.

But I think Jesus was also weeping because he knew better than anyone the utter commitment of God toward bringing good from evil. God is so fully committed that he came to earth incarnated as Jesus Christ. He didn't stay up and away from us and our suffering. He came down and sat with us in the dump from day one born in a feeding trough to the last day hanging on a cross. He was with us and he touched us and lived with us through it all. And I think Jesus is weeping here because he's anticipating the brutality of the crucifixion but he knows this is the only way. He's gonna pay for the sins of the world on the cross so that those who trust in him can be redeemed and then he's going to be resurrected showing what he is going to do with his broken world one day.

Now listen carefully. This is important because our hope is not that when we become Christians God gives us a pain-free life. Or if we just learn the right way to praise him and the right way to look at life then we'll always be happy. Our hope is not that we resolve all this now. The bottom line is this. Our ultimate hope is in the complete reversal of death and sin and grief that was begun by Jesus on the cross. In fact you could cross out every word in that sentence except for Jesus and still get the gist. Our ultimate hope is in Jesus.

The biblical answer to the times of disorientation isn't learning some concept or some technique or some little trick to be happy again. It's a person, Jesus, who hung on a cross and now lives again and is with you. So the idea is when you're at the bottom of the J-curve you're not trying to pump yourself back up again. You're not trying to get happy and you're not reaching out to some concept. You're reaching out to a person who loves you. You don't have to know the answers. You just have to start talking to the one who does.

A man named Thomas Dorsey born in 1899. By the time he was in his teens and 20s he was playing piano in prohibition era speakeasies even though his dad was a pastor and his mom played piano for their church. He was not a believer but a relative saw him on the road and urged him to come to Christ and he did. And here's how he described his moment of conversion. Look at this. My inner being was thrilled. My soul was a deluge of divine rapture. My emotions were roused. My heart was inspired to become a great singer and worker in the kingdom of the Lord. What kind of feeling would you call that? That's orientation. Thank God is so good.

And so he poured his energy into a whole new genre of music, Christian gospel. He practically invented it. Worked with artists like Mahalia Jackson even in the 1920s when the race barrier was even higher than it is right now in our country. Thomas Dorsey decades ahead of his time crossed the color divide in American churches and his songs got into the hymnals of previously white only churches maybe because they didn't know he was an African-American man when they saw his name on the hymns I don't know but he became a popular writer of church songs in all kinds of churches all across America.

By 1932 everything was perfect. He had taken a job as a music director at a Chicago church. He got married but that year while on tour he was handed a telegram and it simply read "Your wife just died and she had died in childbirth." And so he rushed back to Chicago where his newborn son died the next day. He spiraled down deep into grief. Avoided people was furious with God and he wrote this "I wanted to go back to the jazz world I knew so well. I felt God had done me an injustice. I didn't want to serve him anymore. Didn't write anymore gospel songs." Now what would you call that feeling? Disorientation.

He secluded himself at the bottom of that jade curve nursing his anger and his grief but a friend who had previously been through some really tough times found him and without saying much drove him to a little music school in the neighborhood after hours and said Thomas I'm not gonna say anything to try to cheer you up I think you just need to sit down at one of these pianos and play. At first he folded his arms and said no way but eventually he sat down at the piano and as the sun was setting he started to play and then pray and he poured out his grief to God and on that spot that night wrote a song that became his best known. The lyrics "Precious Lord take my hand. Lead me on let me stand I am tired I am weak I am worn through the storm through the night lead me on to the light take my hand precious Lord take my hand and lead me home."

And for the rest of his life he said God healed him that night as he sat at the piano and he went on to write 3,000 more songs but his best known was the song he wrote deep in disorientation the night that he gave God his garbage and God made it into a masterpiece. Wouldn't you love for God to make music out of your trash? We're gonna take communion in a moment and in that moment I just want to invite you to say God here. Here's my heart it got crushed see somebody threw it out. Here's my hopes they've been smashed. Here's my faith it used to be something there's not much of it left do you want it? I don't want you to see the masterpiece he can make out of it.

Let's pray together God Lord Jesus we come to you today with all of our prayers but specifically this morning we want to think of the prayers of disorientation and I just want to pray for the people here who are down on the dumps for whatever reason may we pray God I am messed up or I have messed up or my life has got me all messed up please help you know what God I got a few complaints about my life I don't like it right now thank you that you weep about the same things I weep about and so I look to you Jesus and I understand that so I ask you to take my hand I don't even have the strength to reach out to you so would you take my hand that's that's here limp and lead me on out of this darkness this dump Lord thank you that we have reorientation to look forward to thank you that this is not the end thank you that the best is yet to come from death to resurrection and we anticipate that in Jesus name amen.