God, Where Are You?

Well, good morning. My name is René, one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church. I want to invite you to grab your message notes, whether you're here live watching us in venue or on the internet. We love to have you with us. We are concluding our authentic series this morning.

Now I want to give you a heads up. Next weekend our new series Acts Odyssey kicks off. Acts is one of my favorite books of the entire Bible and here's what we did to help make it come alive. We actually traveled to Israel and to Turkey and to Greece. We interviewed local experts. We wrote a book. We filmed videos on location. We retraced the steps of the Apostles and we put all of this material together into a churchwide experience.

The preview weekend is next weekend and this morning I am very excited to announce that the Acts books are here. They are a week early. Let's give the whole team a big round of applause. They worked so hard to put this together. I think they look great. You can pick yours up this morning and small group signups actually start today. These begin the first week of October but if you've been looking for a way to plug in to grow spiritually, this is it.

And I want to remind you about another great opportunity during this series. This fall we're partnering with the Aromas Bible Church during the nine weeks of this series. If you live down in South County, this sounds like a fun idea to you. We're going to provide live worship, live or videotape messages. You can take part with them during the nine weeks of the series or part of that signup at the info desk this morning.

Now I want to start the message today by telling you a story about something we discovered during our Acts Odyssey video filming. We were in Jerusalem and we decided to go to an excavated ruin that many archaeologists believe is actually the remains of the high priest Caiaphas's house. This was the high priest who presided over the trial of Jesus Christ.

And archaeologists discovered that his house has a rather unusual feature, especially for religious leaders, a torture chamber, a dungeon. There's a hole right in the ceiling of the dungeon and judging by the rope marks in this hole, prisoners were probably chained up and then lowered through this into a pit that served as a dungeon. And you can actually visit it. There's no guard rails or anything. You can go right down inside of it with the lights off. It is pitch dark down there.

And so here is what we did. I gathered a group together for a devotional down there and I noticed that someone had put a Bible right on the pillar where prisoners were once tortured. It's very likely, scholars say, that Jesus Christ was held here or somewhere in these ruins. Well, when I got there, as you can see, there was a Bible that was already open. Now, I figured it would probably be open to one of the narratives in the gospel where Jesus is tortured at the high priest's house, but it wasn't.

Instead, it was opened to one of the strangest chapters of the Bible, Psalm 88. And I looked at that and realized how appropriate it was and I actually junked the devotional that I had prepared and instead I asked our group to turn the lights down a little bit and I just read with my flashlight Psalm 88 from that Bible that you see in this picture.

And I want you to imagine right now that you are with us in that dungeon and in a place of darkness. You are listening to this 3,000-year-old prayer of darkness. I want to read you the whole Psalm and just make some comments on it. It goes like this, "Lord, you are the God who saves me. I cry out to you day and night. May my prayer come before you. Turn your ear to my cry. I'm overwhelmed with troubles and my life draws near to death. I am counted among those who go down to the pit. I am like one without strength. I'm set apart with the dead like the slain who lie on the grave whom you remember no more, who are cut off from your care."

You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths. Your wrath lies heavily on me. You have overwhelmed me with all your waves. You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them. I'm confined and cannot escape. My eyes are dim with grief and I call out to you, Lord, every day. I spread out my hands to you. Do you show your miracles for the dead? Do they rise up and praise you? Will your love be told on the grave? Will your loyalty be told in the place of death? Will your miracles be known in the dark grave? Will your goodness be known in the land of forgetfulness?

Lord, I've called out to you for help. Every morning I pray to you. So why, Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me? From my youth I've suffered, been close to death. I've borne your terrors and I'm in despair. Your wrath has swept over me. Your terrors have destroyed me. All day long they surround me like a flood. They have completely engulfed me. You have taken from me my friend and my neighbor and darkness is my closest friend.

Wow. This whole authentic series has been about how what the Bible says about spirituality is so different than the stereotypical expectation. And this morning's Bible passage is a great example. This is about those times that you cry out, "God, where are you?" Here's how unusual this passage is. Psalm 88 is one of only two Psalms that end with no hope. The other one's Psalm 39. These Psalms, they don't go, "I felt like God abandoned me once and then I remembered the goodness of God and I skipped to church." It does not end that way.

Darkness is mentioned three times in the Psalm, in the beginning, the middle, and the end. And then in Hebrew the last word of this Psalm is darkness, the end. And so you kind of want to ask what's a Psalm like this even doing in the Bible? Well, Tim Keller, who I got a lot of ideas from for this message, says this and see if you agree with this quote. In our culture we are very naive about how to handle dark times. And if we're not prepared, they will overthrow us when they happen. Do you agree with that? I definitely agree.

And that is why you need to know that Psalms like this are in the Bible because you and I are going to go through days of darkness. Not because we're bad, not because God hates us, because that is just life. And if you learn the lessons in this Psalm you're gonna be better prepared. Three lessons, jot these down. First, days of darkness can last a long time. They can last a long time. In our modern sitcom culture we want everything to end within the span of one episode, you know, half an hour. But in real life that does not always happen.

Look at how this Psalm starts. He says, "You are the God who saves me." What does that tell you? This is a believer. This is somebody who believes in God, he trusts in God, and he prays and he prays and he prays and he prays and he prays. And yet he says, "Day and night I pray to you." That means this is dragging on and on and on. The tough message is you can trust in God and still go a long time when you don't feel him, when you feel you're in darkness.

Now some of you might go, "Wait a minute here, doesn't the Bible say that God is working all things out together for good?" Absolutely. And yet, listen, you may go your entire life without seeing what that is. Now how does that help us in suffering? Well it helps hugely. How you deal with life is all about your expectations. We talk about that a lot here at Twin Lakes Church. Tim Keller gives this example. Let's say that you go into a room and it's kind of a normal budget hotel room, like say a Motel 6 room.

And let's say you go into the room and you've been set up to expect that somebody told you, "This is our honeymoon suite!" And you walk in and you go, "Well this is kind of a disappointment." But let's say you walk into that same exact room and somebody told you, "This is your prison cell!" You're gonna walk in and go, "This is not half bad, right?" Life is all about what you expect. A lot of Christians think if you only trust God, then you can expect a life full of good luck. And that's actually never taught in the Bible.

The fact is, whether you're a Christian or not, we live in a broken world. We are imperfect people. We're surrounded by imperfect people. Accidents happen. And so you are going to go through tough times, days of darkness that can last a long time. Now some of you are going, "I am so glad I came to church today to hear this inspiring message!" Well, the goodness, this is the message, this psalm kind of shouts, but there's a couple of messages you gotta, you gotta listen for carefully better, sort of whispered. And they're the messages with some hope, and that's points two and three.

Number two, days of darkness can teach me about God's grace. They teach me about God's grace. How so? Look at this man. He is raging against God. He's not controlling his time. He's not controlling his temper. He's not controlling his emotions. Why are psalms like this even in the Bible? A man named Derek Kidner says, "The very presence of these prayers in Scripture are a witness to God's understanding." He knows how people speak when they're desperate. I love that. God knows how we are when we get like this.

And he says, "That's okay. I still love you. Look, I even put this in the Bible. It's, it's even, it's holy to talk to God like this, if this is what you really feel like." Remember verse one says, "It's God who saves, not you." And that means this. Listen, look up here for a second. God is saying, "I am still your God, not because you put on a happy face every morning, not because you say the right things, not because you do the right things, but because I am a God of grace." And that is so important for us all to hear.

And that is why this, this writer's best choice is to actually stay in prayer. This writer's best choice is to stay in prayer. He's screaming. He's yelling. He's shouting. But he's screaming and yelling and shouting to God. And those times in life when you say, "God, I am mad at you like that. You ever had a time in life like that? I have? God, I don't understand what you are doing right now in my life. God, to be honest, I don't even like you right now." I remember saying practically those exact things, standing on my porch a couple of years ago when mom's Alzheimer's really took a turn and I realized my mother was dying.

"God, I don't even like you right now, but I choose to trust you even though I don't understand you or like you or understand what's going on in my life. I'm gonna stay in relationship with you even if that means arguing with you." What happens is, that's a very biblical thing to do by the way. Every great character in the Bible did that at times. And what happens when you do that is you're keeping yourself in the mix and you're opening yourself up to God doing great things in and through you.

And that's number three, "Days of darkness can develop greatness in me." You know, the whole culture used to believe that. Ancient cultures all believe this, that dark times can ennoble you, can create heroes. But in our culture, we've come to understand dark times as just, they're just a drag and they're just traumatic. But actually, they can really produce some really great things in your life.

Now, I'm not saying that God like brings you cancer in order to teach you a lesson. I'm saying that God never wastes a hurt. And look at this, you see this in the lives of so many great people. Think of Abraham Lincoln, his days of darkness. Think of Mother Teresa. Think of Martin Luther King Jr. and I could go on and on. Almost all great people, when you think about it, had days of really pitch darkness in their lives. And they said that was part of what made them who they were.

At tough times, while they can produce something great in us, you might say, "Well, what about the guy who wrote this dark psalm? It doesn't seem like it ended very well for him." He just kind of ends us with a downer. Watch this. There's a very, there's a tiny little clue at the very start of the psalm that most people just read right past. The title, Psalm 88, a Psalm of the Sons of Korah, a Maskel of Haman the Ezraite. You're going, "Thank you for sharing that, René, that changes my life." Now listen, who was Haman? Not Keyman, by the way. Well, that would be a cool name. Haman.

Well, 1st Chronicles 6 says, "This was the guy who was the editor of the Psalms. He was the guy who was in charge of all the people who wrote the Psalms in the time of David." Now just think about this for a second. If this is the guy who was in charge of the Psalms, this man produced some of the greatest art in the history of mankind. Now do you think that 3,000 years ago when he was writing a psalm about this horrible time he was going through, that he ever suspected that today people on the other side of the planet would be studying his psalm to get inspiration from it? That never even dawned on him.

Yet that's how God has used his time of darkness. God has used it to inspire a billion people and more. My point is, God always is going to use the dark times and the lives of believers to do great things. We just have such limited perspective. In fact, the greatest darkness ever led to the greatest thing ever. Watch this. Let me come full circle. Do you remember the Bible in that dungeon where Jesus was held, which I found open to Psalm 88? As I read it down there, I realized every word of Psalm 88 emotionally is where Jesus was at on the night he was betrayed.

His agony was no act. Your Lord and Savior felt the emotion in verses like, "Why, Lord, do you reject me? Why do you hide your face from me?" And you know what that means? It means when you are in the dark, he gets it. You have a God who gets it. He doesn't just sympathize, he empathizes. He knows what it's like to be spat upon, to be mocked, and to be lied about, and to be slandered, and to be rejected, and to be left all alone in a torture chamber in the dark. That's powerful stuff.

And it gets better. Remember, Haman prayed, "Do you show your miracles for the dead? Do they rise up and praise you?" Well, the answer is yes, they do rise up and praise you. Because Jesus, after he felt these emotions in that dark place and died, he rose from the dead. And God's greatest miracle was known in the darkest place. And for those who trust in him, that is our future too. And that's the ultimate hope that sees you through the dark times.

Now you might be thinking, "I've heard this before, but hmm, is it just Sunday School propaganda, right? Does it work? Is it really possible to go through times of real darkness with a sense of hope because of all of this?" Well, I believe it is. And I want to introduce you to some people that some of you know well who are going through a real time of darkness right now.

Here's a little clip about their story from the Today Show. Watch this. As Veronica Eckhart was losing her only son, she made this desperate plea. We want people to know how dangerous this is. This is not a game. It is totally real. Connor was never coming out of his coma. After one hit of synthetic pot, doctors declared the 19-year-old brain dead. It was a horrific sight to see your son hooked up to machines and to know that possibly they weren't gonna actually wake up and ever say mama again.

Connor was with friends when his parents say he was offered synthetic pot, commonly known as K2 spice or Scooby snacks. Easy to find, easy to buy, and in some forms even legal, the $10 baggies are a non-potent herb laced with dangerous unpredictable chemicals designed to mimic pot, though typically labeled not for consumption. You would think would be safe, would be okay. It's an alternative to marijuana and it's anything but that. It's a deadly poison.

A poison becoming prolific. According to studies, 17% of teens, including one out of every nine high school seniors, have used synthetic marijuana. This stuff is being marketed to your kids. Your kids are exposed to these products and you've got to help them understand that this is incredibly dangerous. Doctors say more and more teenagers are ending up in the ER every day. We've seen seizures, seen a lot of psychosis where people have had kind of these psychotic episodes. Every time someone uses one of these products, they are really risking their life.

Connor was kept on life support for four days, but there was nothing doctors could do. My life was forever changed the day Connor was born. I remember holding him in the hospital and just thinking I'm a dad. A family who lost their little boy, now doing all they can to save others. Well would you please join me in welcoming Devon and Veronica Eckhart to the stage. It's so good to have you guys here. It really is. You know many of us know you guys from the years that you spent here at Twin Lakes Church. In fact, Connor, the son that you lost that the video was all about, attended our preschool here at church and Devon you grew up here and so thank you for coming back from your home in Sacramento to share with us.

Your lives were devastated in unimaginable ways to two years ago. Your family was happy and healthy. What's not mentioned in the video is Connor loved the Lord. Connor was studying to be a worship pastor and then something happened. Can you go into just a little bit more detail for us? Well as you see July 5th, a little over two years ago things were good. Our family had come through some really rough times. We all experienced things like that but we were in a great spot and things were good. Little did we know that eight days later our lives were going to be ripped apart and forever changed.

We were going to be thrust into the deepest, darkest valley that we had ever experienced. Our son was with a friend. The friend had offered him pot to smoke just hanging out and he said no. He didn't want to be around it. Didn't want to have anything to do with it and then suggested as an alternative let's go over to the local smoke shop and we'll get something else and the friend got what's commonly known as spice. Goes by lots of different names. But it's a synthetic drug at the time and still very easily readily available. He had one puff, one smoke of it. Didn't feel well. Laid down. His friend never checked on him. Never went to see if he was okay. When they finally did the next morning it was too late.

He had fallen into a coma and shortly after that is when we got the phone call that no parent ever wants to receive. We had just arrived in Puerto Rico with our two girls. Connor had a full-time job and did not have the time off. We were there about four hours when we got a phone call that our son was in a coma. It took us 14 hours. You can imagine what that was like. 14 hours to get home. We flew into Los Angeles. My brother picked us up. He drove like a crazy person down the 405. About two minutes away from the hospital I had to ask. I said he's not okay as in he started to sob and he said no.

We walked into the hospital. We were greeted by neurosurgeons, different people. They told us that Connor had a smoke, one single puff of a synthetic called spice that comes out of China sprayed onto plant material. We had never heard of it. That was our first decision we made to make sure people did but we walked into a room and our beautiful beautiful son kissed son was laying there with tubes and beeping machines and they told us he was brain dead. At that moment we prayed for a miracle as we had been. The miracle ended up being that Connor was an organ donor and while the decision was so difficult to make to release him from this earth to glory, four of Connor's major organs were given to people on the other side that were waiting with their families for their lives. Connor gave a great gift.

Two major decisions Connor made in his life. One to give his life to Jesus Christ, the ultimate decision and the next was to give life to other people. And since then your story has gone as they say viral in incredible ways. You've been on every major news network in America. You've been on networks overseas. You've been on the biggest network in the world, the BBC. You've been on all kinds of different talk shows probably every outlet people could imagine. You were on CNN the other day on all sorts of other shows and you have borne the message of warning against drugs in general and spice specifically and if people want more information about this, this is such an important topic.

You have some wonderful material out at a table in the lobby. I hope people meet you there especially if they want to talk to you more about this and have more questions. Also you have a website do it for Connor org. Great site. I hope you check it out. Some of their TV show presentations are on there and I am so sorry for your loss. You know just hearing about it back then and seeing it three times, I know it doesn't get any easier for anybody and yet I wanted to have you speak about this because I've seen you allow God to take this truly bad thing and use it in quite spectacular ways.

The platform you have been given but that had to come from somewhere and I want to just ask you two very simple questions. First is how do you prepare for these times? None of us know what we're going to face but we're all going to face something. How do you prepare for something if you don't know what you're preparing for? What do you do in advance of these times? I don't think any of us consciously necessarily think about preparing for the bad times and yet Psalm 88 is something that Veronica and I identify with very closely.

You know darkness and grief have become a constant companion. This isn't something you ever get through or get past. We just get familiar with the pain and we live in a fallen broken world. You all are going to experience hard difficult things and probably a lot of you right now are wrestling with and going through things like that. But if you don't know learn how to swim before you get thrust into the stormy seas, you drowned. If you don't build a foundation for the hard times when they come you don't have anything to stand on.

And so what you're doing now, what you're putting into your life now matters. We tell people all the time to think about the decisions they're making, the small groups you're in, being in church, really knowing God's Word and what you say you believe in is so important because you know the Bible tells us be transformed by the renewing of your mind. I tell my kids all the time sometimes your head has to inform your heart. Our heart feels all kinds of pain and emotions that would take us and does take us all kinds of really bad places.

And the only way you can get up in the morning is by reminding yourself with what's in your head with what you know to be true about God, about His grace, about eternity that allows me to inform my emotions and maybe think differently and make different decisions. It's not that Connor was. Connor is. He's not a part of my past. He's part of my future. Amen. Amen. That hope in the resurrection, that hope in the kingdom of God that's in our future, that changes the whole perspective doesn't it?

And Veronica you said something when we were talking earlier you said that just knowing that you have a purpose makes all the difference going through something like this. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? We've never chosen this road. Roads chose to choose you. Yeah. And the moment we decided to be purposeful and to make a difference, doing this, and we do this a lot, is extraordinarily painful. There is only one reason we do this and that is to help other people.

God has opened the doors for us to speak at the United Nations, testify before Congress, the first bill on these synthetics that has ever been written is sitting on Governor Brown's desk right now. We've worked very hard legislatively but we work really hard communicating with young people and with parents so that they are informed. And you had this idea of a purpose very early on in this process didn't you? My purpose was to do the next right thing. I love that quote, do the next best thing. What do you mean by that? You say that a lot. I have to make a choice. I am an amputee. When I get up in the morning I fall down first. My limb has been cut off. I will never get over losing my son. I move forward but I'll never get over it. I have two daughters. I have a husband. They desperately need a mother, a wife. I don't want my children to lose not only their brother but to lose a mom and a dad.

Yeah and that's a great transition into the final question I want to ask and that's how do I respond to the darkness when I'm in it? In the notes it's written incorrectly. The second question should be different than the first of course. I really want people to take notes on this because you said something to me when I was talking to you earlier I was taking notes like crazy because you guys have a lot of wisdom born of pain. I think that's the only way we get wisdom but you said regardless of what happened, regardless of even if the circumstance you're in right now is your own fault. Don't lose yourself in self-recrimination. The most important thing is what you're going to do now. Pray, use this God. Devin tell us a little bit more about that.

I think one of the things we were obviously from the moment we got the phone call and the days in the hospital just on our face praying God you know heal him. Show your glory through doing the miraculous, doing what medicine says isn't possible and believing that that would be the case. Believing that Connor was going to walk out and we were going to give God glory and that somehow this would be used not only to save our son but to magnify God's name and you're begging and pleading with God and you're seeing that not happen and facing the reality that God's going to allow this to be different and Veronica and I looking at each other not only saying as she mentioned we've we can't lose ourselves in this for our daughter's sake and for each other's sake but okay how are we going to allow God to use this in our lives and I think any time hard things happen in your life you got a choice you can either hang on to it and allow it to be an anchor that drags you down or you can give it to God and say okay I don't know how you're gonna use this but God if you choose can you show up in this in some way and so we've tried to do that we've tried to allow people to see Christ in us as we walk through this it started out with a message about raising awareness around synthetic drugs and how prolific they are and how deadly they are but we quickly realized that the message was much deeper and so we've tried to communicate to people about what decisions are you making and how are you living your life and ultimately for us while the platform was spice the message is really about Jesus Christ amen.

Thank you guys so much for being here. I want to pray for you and for everybody here who's going through a time of darkness. It's Heavenly Father thank you so much for Devan and Veronica thank you that they are so willing to share this most painful dark time in their lives. I think it gives hope to people I know it has dissuaded so many people from going down a similar path and God I pray that you would strengthen them give them stamina strengthen their family help them to really see and notice the the fruit that is coming from their ministry and their testimony God I pray that many people would be led not only away from drugs but into a personal relationship with you.

And God I want to pray also for everybody here at church this morning some of us right now feel like Lord it is just total darkness for me that's all I see that's all I feel and so God I pray that you would help us know that you are here with us even when we cannot feel you and that there's help and that there is hope and God I especially pray that if anybody is not certain of their eternal destiny not certain of their relationship with you that they would pray God I don't even understand what all this Christianity stuff means but I know it's not about religion it's not about joining a church it's about a relationship with you so count me in I want to believe in the kind of a God who would be with me in the dark and even with me and for me on a cross and so I receive you into my life Jesus and help me to understand it more but be with me through all the downs of life and all the ups of life to all the joys and all the sorrows in your name I pray amen.

Would you join me in thanking the Eckhart's for sharing their story? Thank you guys so much.