Praying Our Pain

Well I'm grateful to be here with you this morning. My name is Sarah. I'm one of the pastors on staff. I work in our care ministry, but I have the privilege this morning of opening up God's Word with you. If you've been here the last few weeks, you know that we are in a sermon series that we've called Songs of Summer and we're walking through the book of Psalms for a few weeks here.

As I was thinking about my summer this year, it called to mind for me a summer 13 years ago when my life looked very different than my life looks today. And it doesn't just look different because I was 13 years ago significantly younger, newly married, and was in much better shape than I am now after two children, but it looked different for me because in 2005, in January of that year, I suffered a hemorrhagic stroke. In a little over a year I went from that first picture you see to the second picture you see.

Now at first we didn't actually know I'd had a stroke. I just began to have headaches and extreme nausea and fatigue and I actually went to the doctor and he diagnosed me as having the flu and sent me home. So I laid in bed for a week as my symptoms worsened and new symptoms presented themselves and finally we just made the decision to go to the ER. When we got there they started to do a number of scans and immediately found that the center of my brain was filled with blood. They said you don't have the flu you've actually had a stroke.

Well that sequence of events that day in the ER changed our lives dramatically. First they put me in the ICU for 10 days to monitor me to try to figure out where the blood had come from because they couldn't figure it out. At the end of those 10 days they didn't have any more answers but they gave us a few options. They said your options at this point are twofold. Either number one we can implant a shunt which is basically a permanent tube that will connect your brain to your stomach that will allow that blood to drain but then you have that tube for the rest of your life. Or we can let you go home and you just come back every single week for scans and our hope is that over time your body will reabsorb that blood and we'll see what caused the bleed in the first place.

Well I don't know about you but option two sounded a little better. So we went home and for the next two months I returned faithfully to the hospital every week and I have no memory of this time at all. I should say my husband brought me to the hospital every week for those scans over those two months periods. At the end of those two months finally one week we went in and I had the regular scan and the doctor on this day instead of just sending us home said okay we see something there's a mass. We don't know what it is most likely he said it's a tumor. 98% of the time that's what these turn out to be but there are some other options as well but regardless we need to get you into surgery right away.

They scheduled me for brain surgery and what was supposed to be a four-hour procedure turned into a six plus hour procedure but when all was said and done the doctors emerged with the good news that it was in fact not a tumor but a mass of veins and blood vessels that had burst they were able to remove. Buddy said the bad news is this to get back to where that mass was we had to cut through all of the pathways that hold your short-term memories intact. So basically he said from this point on at least in the interim you will not be able to hold on to anything in the short term.

Here's what that looked like for me. I could remember everybody from the past friends, family, René even came to visit me in the hospital. I remember René but they would serve me lunch and they would take my lunch away and then five minutes later I would turn to my husband and say do I get to eat lunch today? No memory at all that I had just eaten. That whole series of events launched us into this season of crying out to God wondering what God was doing wondering how this was all gonna turn out and we cried out in frustration and anguish and confusion trying to keep hope alive in the midst of everything that was going on.

Maybe you're here this morning and you walked in these doors in a similar sort of space. Perhaps your circumstances are very different than mine were but perhaps you find yourself right now in a season of pain or sadness or grief in your own life. A season where you're reeling from the untimely death of a loved one or an unfavorable diagnosis or the loss of a job or a child who has wandered away or you fill in the blank and the question you find yourself wrestling is what do I do with my tears? Where do I turn with my pain?

Well the Psalms are a great place for us to learn what to do with our pain. In fact out of the 150 Psalms we find in our Bible there are more Psalms that have to do with pain and suffering more songs that have to do with tears than any other kind of psalm. In fact these psalms are so prolific so many of them that they actually have their own name they're called lament Psalms and there are different kinds of lament Psalms. Some of these lament Psalms talk about personal sin or the sin of a larger community but other lament Psalms simply talk about the fact that life is hard.

There is a preacher and an author by the name of Tim Keller and he says this about the lament Psalms. He says these lament Psalms give us a gospel third way with our feelings. A gospel third way. Let me unpack that just a bit. He goes on to talk about the fact that in this life most of us fall into two categories either we fall into the category of denying that things are really hard when stuff actually gets hard. This is the it's all good kind of mentality. You probably met people who say that even when they're in the midst of really hard things.

Or we end up on the opposite end of the spectrum of nursing our feelings to the point that our feelings drive all of our reality and it's all we can see and Keller says to either ignore our feelings or to overindulge our feelings is not only potentially dangerous but it's ultimately non-productive. It doesn't move us forward in any way. Rather he says there is a gospel third way. The option of bringing our feelings our tears and our pain to God and processing them there. And that's exactly what the lament Psalms teach us how to do.

And so today we're gonna look at Psalm 77. If you brought a Bible I would encourage you to open it. I'm a big fan of taking notes right in the margins of your Bibles. Mark it up people. It's great to remember the things that hit you and be able to come back to that but we've also included the scripture in your bulletin your notes as well. And here's the big idea I want you to walk away with at the end of today. That God wants us to bring our pain to him. God wants us he invites us to bring our pain to him.

Now before we get on to reading Psalm 77 I want to point something out. If you look under the title Psalm 77 in your Bible you'll notice that it tells us that this specific Psalm is a Psalm written by Asaph. Now many of the Psalms that we have in the Bible were written by David but there were several other authors as well and Asaph is one of those authors. I think it will help us to know a little bit about Asaph's background to have some context on this Psalm.

So if we were to back up in the Old Testament to the book of First Chronicles we would learn that Asaph was a Levite. Now Levites were simply assistants to the priests in Jewish worship. Furthermore we learned that Asaph is a specific Levite who is in charge of the service of song. We might liken him to a worship leader today. Now given his role as a leader in worship I think it's safe to assume that Asaph was a man who knows who knew God. He walked with God and yet he was also a man who knows sorrow and pain as we're gonna see in just a moment.

Now Asaph does not share with us in this Psalm exactly what it is that's causing his pain but we do know that whatever it is it is wreaking havoc on his soul. He's struggling to make sense of his reality and in desperation he is pouring out his heart to God. As he does so I believe he teaches us some steps that are helpful crucial for you and for me as we learn how to pray our own pain.

So grab those message notes you received and here's what we read in Psalm 77 beginning in verses 1 and 2. Asaph writes this, "I cry out to God yes I shout oh that God would listen to me when I was in deep trouble I searched for the Lord all night long I prayed with hands lifted toward heaven but my soul was not comforted." Now right out of the gate here in the first five words of this Psalm where he writes, "I cry out to God." Asaph models for us where to begin when it comes to praying our pain.

When we endeavor to pray our pain we must begin by turning towards God first. Turning towards God first. I was reminded this week as I was reading through several status updates and posts on various social media sites that you and I in this day and age have an awful lot of places, awful lot of outlets we can turn when we are in pain. But Asaph reminds us that God should be our first place.

You know I'm sure Asaph had other places he could have turned to as well. Remember he was a public figure, a church leader. I'm confident he was surrounded by good people, godly people who would have loved to step in and offered advice or a lending ear in his pain. I suspect that you too have good people in your life. Maybe you're sitting next to them right now here this morning or maybe a family member or a co-worker, people who are a great support for you and there is nothing wrong with godly friends or family members or therapists or pastors or mentors.

We need those people and God has given us those people to walk through difficult seasons with but our first place that we should run to in our pain is God. No one can take the place of God. I think we catch a glimpse of why Asaph chooses to turn to God first by the name that Asaph uses in referring to God here in verse 1. Now in our English translations we missed this a little bit because it simply says God with the capital G. But if we were to look in the original Hebrew we would see that Asaph selects the name Elohim in referring to God. And Elohim literally translated means strong one.

In other words Asaph knows he is crying out to a God who is in control, a God who is sovereign. He is taking his concern first directly to the only one who is capable enough, who is able enough, who is strong enough to shoulder his concern and to actually do something about it. We have a lot of options of where to turn but nobody takes the place of the strong one. I think it's also worth noting in these first two verses that Asaph does not approach God, the strong one, with this neatly buttoned up well crafted speech.

Listen to how the message paraphrases these first two verses. Eugene Peterson writes, "I yell out to my God. I yell with all my might. I yell at the top of my lungs and he listens. I found myself in trouble and went looking for my Lord. My life was an open wound that would not heal." Asaph starts out expressing his pain with natural unfiltered expressions for help. The way in which he does that reminds us that we can turn to God first because we're safe with God. We are safe with God. The strong one is strong enough to shoulder your pain and your confusion and your hurt.

In deep trouble we should first move into deeper relationship with God to turn towards God first. But Asaph then moves on and I think teaches us a second step in praying our pain and the second step is this, to honestly engage God. To honestly engage God. I like to call this next chunk of verses the getting down to business portion of Asaph's prayer here.

Here's what he writes beginning in verse three and moving down through verse 10. "I think of God and I moan, overwhelmed with longing for his help. You don't let me sleep. I'm too distressed to even pray. I think of the good old days long since ended when my nights were filled with joyful songs. I searched my soul and I ponder the difference now. Has the Lord rejected me forever? Will he never be kind to me again? Is his unfailing love gone forever? Have his promises permanently failed? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he slammed the door on his compassion? And then I said this is my fate. The Most High has turned his hand against me."

When was the last time in your life you found yourself more consumed with questions and doubts than answers? If you can think back to a time like that right now you are not alone. This is that moment for Asaph. In these verses Asaph moves beyond turning towards God to honestly wrestling with God over these unanswered questions that are looming around him. In fact in this moment it doesn't even seem like Asaph is finding any comfort in God. Instead in verse 3 he says, "I remember God and I'm disturbed." He goes on to say he can't sleep. He's finding it hard to express the words to even pray. He's remembering better times from the past and that only makes him feel worse about the present.

He wonders if the Lord has cast him aside. He wonders if God's kindness and love and favor towards him has run out. Now lean in for just a second. I love that we have examples of honest conversation with God like this in our Bible because it reminds me and I hope it reminds you that God invites us to communicate with him like this. E.M. Bounds who was a Methodist minister and a devotional writer in the 1800s, he actually wrote eight books on prayer and he wrote this about prayer. "Prayer in its highest form and grandest success assumes the attitude of the wrestler with God."

Likewise there's a Christian author from our time. His name is Philip Yancey. He wrote a great book on prayer entitled Prayer and in that book he writes this, "We should pray like a salesman with his foot wedged in the door." I love that. "Like a wrestler who has his opponent in a headlock and will not let go." I mentioned my stroke many many years ago but that is not the only season where I found myself wrestling with God. Eight years after that stroke we would find ourselves in another difficult season where in a span of 12 months we went through three miscarriages in rapid succession all at different phases of pregnancy and during that season I engaged with God like the wrestler that Bounds and Yancey talk about.

I wedged my foot in God's door and I asked the hard questions. God invites us to honestly engage with him. He is not scared off. In fact Psalm 34:18 says this, "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted. He rescues those whose spirits are crushed." If you are crushed this morning God invites you to draw close to him to turn towards him and to honestly pour out what you are thinking and feeling to him.

But as anybody who's walked through seasons of pain can tell you we can't stay in that questioning season forever. We may be there for a very long time but at some point it will be time to move on. Asaph shows us where we can move to next because in the next few verses he transitions from honestly engaging God with his questions and his doubts to choosing to remember what God has already done. He stops, he pauses to choose to remember what God has done.

Here's what we read beginning in verse 11, "But then I recall all that you have done oh Lord I remember your wonderful deeds of long ago they are constantly in my thoughts. I cannot stop thinking about your mighty works. Oh God your ways are holy is there any God as mighty as you. You were the God of great wonders you demonstrate your awesome power among the nations by your strong arm you redeemed your people the descendants of Jacob and Joseph. When the Red Sea saw you oh God its waters looked and trembled the sea quaked to its very depths. The clouds poured down the thunder rumbled in the sky your arrows of lightning flashed your thunder roared from the whirlwind the lightning lit up the world the earth trembled and shook your road led through the sea your pathway through the mighty waters a pathway that no one knew was there you led your people along that road like a flock of sheep with Moses and Aaron as their shepherds."

You see here Asaph is choosing to remember he is calling to mind the mighty acts that God has performed on behalf of Israel in the past the way that God has already made his faithfulness known. In fact I want to take a minute just to rehash what Asaph is referring to here he's talking about the Red Sea you might remember back in the book of Exodus that God's people were slaves in Egypt. Well God sends Moses and uses a series of plagues to convince the Pharaoh to let God's people go and so God's people leave Egypt and they begin to wander through the wilderness and in short order Pharaoh decides I made a really bad decision in letting all my slaves go my help is gone and so he sends his army charging after them.

Suddenly God's people find themselves with the Red Sea in front of them Pharaoh's army closing in on them from behind and they cry out to God and God performs a miracle he parts the Red Sea right down the middle the Israelites walk across on dry land Pharaoh's army follows them into this path through the sea and then God closes the water up swallowing Pharaoh's army in its entirety. Now if you're Israel I would say that that's an event worth remembering but I bet you've got some events in your life that are worth remembering too.

I think Asaph was ahead of his time here in choosing to call to mind God's gracious acts in the past as a way of dealing with his fear or his anxiety his pain in the present. Did you know that today there's actually a form of therapy called reminiscence therapy? It's a form of therapy where the therapist helps the client think back over positive memories events people in their past as a way of helping them deal with their anxiety about the present or the future. Now reminiscence therapy in a secular context is not focused on what God has done but I think the sort of remembering becomes even more powerful when we remember how God has acted on our behalf.

In fact when I was a hospital chaplain completing my residency I worked in a hospital back East and a number of my patients struggled with knowing how to see and feel and experience God's presence in the middle of what they were going through and so we would sit together and I would say let's think back about times in your life when God has been faithful to you. It was amazing how that simple exercise began over time to change their perspective and I think it would be helpful for you and for me to take the time to do the same thing because there's power in remembering.

Remembering God's past grace will fuel our faith in God's future grace. You know years ago when I was in college a friend of mine a mentor she gave me a jar it was not this exact jar it was a little smaller but she gave me a jar and she wrote the word remember on it and then she gave me a number of pieces of paper and she said Sarah I want you to take the time to think back over the course of your life and I want you to think of those moments when you have seen God be faithful or good or tender or loving towards you and I want you to write each specific moment on its own piece of paper and then drop it in the jar.

Then she said when you hit those moments those seasons in life when you're tempted to doubt that God is good or you are hurting and you just can't see through the cloud of your emotion I want you to go back to that jar to pull out a piece of paper and to begin to read the ways in which God has been faithful to you in the past because the God who is faithful to you in the past is the same God who will be faithful to you moving into the future.

So I set out trying to remember as many things as I could and begin to fill up my jar and it is the day's war on just the simple act of disciplining myself to remember radically changed my perspective. That jar over the next several years became a memorial that I would go back to time and time again when things got hard or the pain was too much for me to bear. As you endeavor to pray through your pain today what would it look like for you to pause to remember how God has already proved himself faithful to you?

Maybe it looks like something like this jar some way to physically write down God's acts of faithfulness or maybe it looks like choosing to commit the first few minutes when you wake up each morning to simply thanking God for the ways that he has been good to you or maybe it looks like verbally telling people around you stories of God's faithfulness from your own life or maybe it looks like establishing a new tradition for your family a time each year where you pause together to thank God to remember what he has done for you.

Whatever you choose to do Psalm 77 serves as a reminder that as we pray our pain there is value there's power in recalling God's faithfulness towards us. And this brings us to the final stage of praying our pain. The final stage is this to reaffirm God's goodness reaffirm God's goodness.

What's interesting here in Psalm 77 is that Asaph actually doesn't even get to this step but many of the other lament Psalms do. I don't know if Asaph is just content to remember God's mighty acts and that was good enough for him but several of the other writers of lament Psalms move on to this fourth step of reaffirming God's goodness and I think it is a powerful step. Let me read some examples from other Psalms.

Psalm 13 wraps up like this but I will trust in your unfailing love I will rejoice because you have rescued me I will sing to the Lord because he is good to me. Or Psalm 28 praise the Lord for he has heard my cry for mercy the Lord is my strength and my shield I trust him with all my heart he helps me and my heart is filled with joy I burst out in songs of thanksgiving.

In the case of praying our pain stopping to reaffirm even to speak out loud God's goodness is powerful and it's transformative. It's a discipline that will give us perspective and hope even if our pain has not come to an end yet. We don't have to wait for our pain to have wrapped itself up to reaffirm God's goodness.

You know if I were to summarize these four stages of lament each with a two-word phrase I might summarize it like this I rest or I cry excuse me I cry I wrestle I remember and I declare and these are on the back of your notes if you want to flip them over I cry I wrestle I remember and I declare. If you find yourself in a season of lament of crying out your pain to God today let me just say this these stages are not always linear it's not a neat clean line you may cry out and wrestle and then go back to crying out and you'll kind of be all over them at the map but these are the components that I see and think are so important as we endeavor to honestly communicate our pain to God.

This morning I want you to walk away confident knowing that God invites you to bring your pain to him he will hear you and he will respond you know nowhere in scripture are we promised a life that is free from pain in fact we're told just the opposite we're told in this world you're going to have trouble but I'm really grateful that this world is not all there is in fact we are told in scripture that Jesus came to this earth and he lived a sinless life and he went to the cross to pay the penalty for our sin and then he rose again three days later so that those of us who place our trust in him can not only find forgiveness for sin now but can have the hope of a life after this life an eternal life with him a life where there is no more pain and there are no more tears and there is no more death.

If you were here this morning and you have never placed your trust in Jesus if you don't have the assurance of his presence and of a perfect life after this life would I invite you this morning to make this the day that you say yes to Jesus to say Jesus I invite you in I don't understand it all but I know that you love me and I know that I need you forgive my sin show me how to live be my Savior and my guide and my comforter.

Well for others of us here we have made that decision to say yes to Jesus we have walked with him for any number of years if that's you here this morning I want to remind you that he sees you and he loves you and he invites you to cry out to him in the middle of whatever you are going through.

You know in my own seasons of pain following not only my stroke but all of those miscarriages there were many moments where I had more questions than answers many moments when I had more questions than answers but knowing I could cry out to God knowing I could cry out to the strong one made all the difference in fact it is part of what allows me to stand before you confident in God's loving care for me and for you today because the reality is this if we don't think it's okay to cry out to God in our pain actually if we don't think it's biblical to cry out to God in our pain to scream to God with our questions when it comes to our faith then the only options we are left with is either to fake it or to leave it we fake our faith or we leave it.

And yet there is this gospel third way where God graciously invites us to come to him after all Jesus himself on the cross cried out my God my God why have you forsaken me if you find yourself praying that you are in good company would you leave here today confident that God invites you to cry out to him it is powerful it is healing and God will meet you there.

Let's pray together. Lord as we sang earlier great is your faithfulness you have never failed us and you will never fail us thank you for inviting us to cry out to you allowing us to be honest with you help us to remember the ways that you have been faithful to us today and give us the words to reaffirm who you truly are as we walk through our seasons of pain we pray all of this in Jesus name amen.