Practicing Lament

The account of the death and resurrection of Lazurus presents many hidden treasures, not the least of which is that grief is a natural and healthy process. Don’t get me wrong - grief is hard, it takes time and it can be very painful. After all, we were not designed for death, but for life. Our souls long for the wholeness that our Creator purposed for us to experience. So what if there is something to be gained through grief?

A few years after my dad died I remember hearing my mom say, “You don’t get over it - you just get used to it… grief has taught me the practice of lament.” Yes, lamenting is a practice. It doesn’t come naturally, but as we take our complaints, anger, sufferings, frustrations, and heartaches to God, we rediscover a loving Father, our Abba, who cares deeply and can be fully trusted. Ann Voskamp says, “Lament is a cry of belief in a good God, a God who has His ear to our hearts, a God who transfigures the ugly into beauty.”

65 of the 150 chapters in the book of Psalms are titled “Psalm of Lament”. Lament was practiced centuries ago so let’s learn from this ancient practice. Following are some steps to help you engage in the Practice of Lament:

Pray aloud a Psalm of Lament: Pray these prayers as your own, channeling your frustrations, disappointments, and sorrows into a posture of self-abandonment to God. Try replacing “I” with your own name.

Individual: 3-5, 10, 13, 17, 22, 25, 28, 31, 39, 42, 43, 52-57, 59, 61, 64, 70, 77, 86, 142
Communal: 12, 44, 58, 60, 74, 79, 80, 85, 90, 94
(Plus many more…)

Follow these Steps in the Practice of Lament:
Turn to God: Lament talks to God even if it’s messy.
Complaint: Biblical complaint vocalizes circumstances that do not seem to fit with God’s character or purposes. When it seems injustice rules, lament invites us to talk to God.
Ask: Asking in lament seeks more than relief; it yearns for the deliverance that fits with God’s character. Repeated requests become hopeful reminders of what God can do. Asking boldly serves to strengthen our resolve to not give up, and encourages us to embrace the destination of all lament: a renewal of trust.
Trust: Laments help us through suffering by directing our hearts to make the choice to trust in God’s purposes hidden behind the pain. They lead us through the sorrow towards trust and praise.

Write your own Prayer of Lament:

Address God: Name his attributes, his relation to you (Father, Abba, Savior, etc.), and recall his promises or past deeds on your behalf.
Complaint: Write out a heartfelt complaint that describes the suffering you are seeing or experiencing in honest and vivid terms.
Confession: Confess your trust in God even if you don’t feel it.
Pray for Deliverance: Plead the merits of Christ, appeal to his honor, cry out for deliverance, and ask God to intervene.
Thanksgiving: Express to God your thankfulness that he hears you.

Practicing lament can be a healing balm to our souls. Then as God invites us to a place of deeper trust and dependence, he allows our pain to bring hope and healing to others, which eventually resurrects sincere contentment and joy. It is here that God often reveals a way forward that we never thought possible. This gift can only come from a truly good God.

Lynette Fuson
Care & Counseling Director

by Lynette Fuson

A Brother's Only Hope

Jessica Klootwyk
Groups and Women’s Discipleship Director

by Jessica Klootwyk

“God Grief”

John 11:35 reveals that “Jesus wept” as he was about to head to the grave of his beloved friend, Lazarus. Since the earliest centuries of the Church Age, Christian doctrine affirmed the incarnate Son of God had both a divine nature and a human nature. Jesus will always be “fully God and fully man”. Over the years, whenever I’ve thought about the scene of Jesus weeping, I’ve tended to assume he was grieved in his human nature and not the divine. But is that a valid assumption?

An intriguing window into the heart of God appears in Genesis 6:6 which discloses that when the LORD saw all the wickedness of mankind upon the earth in the days before the Flood, “He was grieved in His heart.” Based on this passage we see the heart of God can truly be grieved. He is not an “unmoved mover”, who simply created the cosmos and left us to find our own way forward, as once envisioned by Aristotle.. Rather, God’s heart can be moved as He observes our journey. In fact, we see in scripture that God experiences a wide range of emotions including anger, grief, love and joy. And the Bible tells us that as human beings we are created in His image. This includes the ability to experience a wide range of emotions. God truly understands the emotions we feel.

We may be left to ponder whether Jesus was grieved in just his human nature or his divine nature as well, but what we do know is that Jesus himself walked in sorrow and he understands a broken heart. He personally experienced the outright betrayal by one apostle (Judas) as well as a three-fold denial by another apostle (Peter) during his path to the Cross. The betrayal and denial by those two apostles must have deeply grieved Jesus’ heart. Likewise, he understands our grief and he sees into your heart. As our eternal High Priest, Jesus sympathizes with us in all our troubles. His arms are always open to us. We can always approach him when we need his grace and strength in times of need (Heb. 4:15-16).

So if your heart is broken, if you are aching with grief, invite Jesus into your brokenness. Allow him to share your tears and, in return, bring healing to your heart and soul.

Pastor Dave Korinek

by Dave Korinek

No Cookie Cutter Approach Here

For those who are fans of the NFL, you may know that some teams script their first 15 offensive plays. This means, regardless of the situations and circumstances, they are going to run the ones they’ve designed and called. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Having a plan and running with it regardless of external circumstances can be a good thing, but it can also have its downside. One area where it doesn’t work to have a rigid plan is when dealing with grief, and no one teaches us this better than Jesus.

As the Lord approaches the two women In John 11, He encounters two very different personalities and approaches to grief (this is because we grieve in ways that are consistent with our personalities). Martha seems to be very much a woman of action. She wants a result: the resurrection of Lazarus. So she goes to Jesus with a request. And the Lord meets her in her grief with a promise (v. 23, “Your brother will rise again.”) What Martha needed was a word. Jesus gave that to her.

But then there’s Mary. She didn’t go with Martha. She stayed back at the house until Martha went and got her and brought her to Him. And immediately upon seeing Him, she breaks down in tears. What is Jesus’ response? No words. No promises. Instead, He grieves with her. While Martha needed a word, Mary needed a touch. And Jesus knew that. And Jesus did not have the first 15 plays of how to deal with grief scripted out. Don’t you love that about Him?

We will all deal with grief in life. It’s inevitable. The encouraging thing here is that Jesus will meet us where we are with what we need. The challenging thing here is that we should be thinking about the same kinds of things as we encounter friends and family in their grief. Figuring out what people need, and then being there for them, is the way of the Master.

Scott Smith
Care Pastor

by Scott Smith

Perfect Timing

It’s too late, they thought. When Jesus finally showed up, Martha and Mary thought He was too late. The two sisters expected Jesus to come immediately, but He decided to wait instead. When He finally came, the sisters said to Him, “Lord, if you had been here on time, our brother Lazarus would not have died (John 11:21; 32).” Martha and Mary didn’t know that Jesus was never late to any of His divine appointments. Jesus was always on time, and He was never in a rush. The fact that Lazarus was already dead didn’t mean that Jesus came too late; it only meant that the timing He followed was different. Jesus' earthly life and ministry were shaped by God the Father's presence, love, power, and purpose. In other words, Jesus always moved in sync with His Father’s perfect timing. You see, Jesus always followed His Father’s agenda and moved according to His timing to show His works and display His glory. In John 6:38, Jesus said, “For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.”

When Jesus heard that His friend Lazarus was sick, He had the power to heal him just by saying it, as He did in the past (John 4:50), but instead, Jesus waited. He waited not because He wanted Lazarus and his sisters to suffer but because the Father had a greater plan for them. As Jesus called Lazarus into life, the suffering, the pain, and the mourning of this family turned into a powerful witness of the mighty works of God through Jesus Christ in their lives (John 12:1-11).

Jesus was committed to following His Father’s directives, and I would suggest that as followers of Jesus, we should do the same. Throughout Scripture, God constantly invites us to surrender the control of our lives to Him, but unfortunately, most of us struggle to do so. Getting our desire for control out of the way to follow God’s plan and timing with our lives is not easy, but doing so is crucial for walking with Christ. Most of us will agree that having total and complete control over everything in our lives and around us is appealing. But we cannot ignore that God is always persuading us to trust Him and to patiently wait for His perfect timing. My hope and prayer is that this devo will encourage you to do so.

Today, God is still on the move, doing mighty things in His perfect timing on behalf of His people. So, let’s be reminded that yielding control of our lives to God, as Jesus did, enables us to be used for the glory of His Name.

Esteban Tapia
Teaching Pastor

by Esteban Tapia

Hanukkah

John 10:22

Pop quiz… where is the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah mentioned in the Bible? It’s only mentioned in one place. Any ideas? John 10:22. In that passage, John wrote,
At that time the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter… (John 10:22)

The Feast of Dedication is also known as Hanukkah.

So, what was the Feast of Dedication and what might John be telling us about this teaching of Jesus? The Feast of Dedication was a commemoration of the rededication of the temple by Judas Maccabaeus in 165 BC. This was in response to the assault on the Jews and Judaism in 167 BC by the Assyrian king, Antiochus Epiphanes, who claimed to be a deity (“God manifest), who attacked Jerusalem and desecrated the temple. He ultimately sacrificed a pig on the temple altar to a pagan god. In response, the people led by Maccabaeus overthrew their oppressors, took back the temple, and rededicated it to God. The Jewish people celebrated the rededication for 8 days and it was decreed that the Feast of Dedication should be held at the same time every year.

You might be thinking, well that’s a great history lesson, but what does it have to do with my life? That’s a fair question. If you read through John 10:22-42, you’ll see people struggling with what Jesus was teaching and wanting him to offer more proof and more plainly tell them what he wanted them to know. Jesus then made the clear claim, “I and the Father are one.” He was claiming to be God, to be their long-awaited Savior and Messiah. The people’s response to Jesus’ clarity was picking up stones to kill him (v. 33). It turned out they had enough clarity to kill him, but not enough to believe in him.

Catch the irony: they were celebrating the Feast of Dedication where they remember the dedication of the Temple. The Temple was the place where people came to worship God - it was, in a sense, the overlap of heaven and earth. Now, Jesus, the “Word made flesh” is “tabernacling” among them … (John 1:14) and they missed him! The ultimate fulfillment of the Feast was staring them in the face and they resisted belief, they refused to worship. They are celebrating God’s work in the past, but missing him in the present.

I think there are times when we are far more comfortable celebrating what he did in the past than we are about anticipating and expecting God’s work in the present. God’s faithfulness in the past, in events like the ones celebrated during Hanukkah, should give us confidence that God is at work in the present. He’s the same faithful God!

Today, take a moment to think back on God’s faithfulness. Then allow his past faithfulness to inspire you to open your heart more fully to his presence in your life today.

Pastor Ryan Paulson

by Ryan Paulson

A Shrewd Remark Saves the Day

The Pharisees picked up rocks to kill Jesus again.

This time he said, “I and the Father are one” John 10:30, and they freaked out about it.

Smartly, Jesus reminds them of the power he displayed, that they had all witnessed, as he asks, “Which of the good deeds that I’ve done are you preparing to kill me for?” They reply, “Not for good deeds, but for you, a mere man, making yourself out to be God!”

Then, Jesus gave them something to think about that they were not ready for. He quotes Psalm 82:6 to them. Psalm 82 is a tricky passage for modern scholars and for modern believers. Perhaps it was a tricky passage for the Jews at that time too. Psalm 82:1 uses the Hebrew word for God, Elohim, followed by singular modifiers indicating the one true God. Then, it uses Elohim along with plural modifiers indicating gods that are subject to the one true God. God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:

Verse 6 uses Elohim again in the plural and explains that these beings are sons of God. I said, “You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you;”

Psalm 82 seems to be a divine reckoning or a divine pronouncement on angels that have forsaken their roles and service to the Lord. Some theologians argue that it is a referendum to the corrupt kings of the earth. Men were elevated to kingly and God-given positions and were given earthly authority that was absolute amongst men, almost divine, but paltry compared to God’s ultimate authority.

Maybe the Pharisees argued over the same idea. Does this reference to “gods” who are “sons of the most high” refer to heavenly beings or to men? It is likely that some of the Pharisees standing there with rocks in hand to kill Jesus had argued that this passage referred to men. So, in a moment of quick thinking, Jesus brings up the passage. John 10:34-36:

Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken— do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?

This line of reasoning made them pause. It says they still sought to arrest him but gave up trying to kill him right there. Jesus taught his disciples, “Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise (or shrewd) as serpents and innocent as doves” Matt 10:16. Pray that we will be quick with our thinking and that our knowledge and trust of the Bible will be strong enough to help us in every situation.

John Riley
Junior High Pastor

by John Riley

Miraculous Works

John 10-22-42
Have you ever made up your mind about someone before really getting to know them and understand them? Do we take time to observe what they are really about, rather than jumping to conclusions because they are different or we've heard rumors? I’m sure I have and then had to ask the Lord’s forgiveness and possibly the person’s.

In John 10 when Jesus said, “If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me” is a challenge to them. Once again we see Jesus surrounded by accusers demanding he tell them plainly who he was. In verse 23, again Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me.” In other words, if all of the miraculous things I’ve done don’t prove to you that I am who I say I am, then nothing I say will convince you. These were prideful “religious” leaders who didn’t want to believe because they wanted to be right. Jesus was a threat to their legalistic ideas. And Jesus was definitely different. Shouldn’t actions speak louder than words?

The word “works” in Greek literally means “actions” or “deeds” Jesus' list of proofs for His critics referred to "works" in the sense of divine miracles (John 5:36). Still they did not believe him. The problem wasn’t that Jesus was unclear about who He was and where He came from. The problem was the religious leaders had hearts of unbelief they wanted to blame on Jesus.

Has any Christian you know done any or all of the miracles Jesus did? John won the highest praise of Jesus yet he didn’t do any “miracles.” He had a high character and the special work he did had a deep and lasting influence, that is undeniable. Love was at the center of John and Jesus’ relationship so much so that Jesus asked John to care for his own mother.

Paul contends that we are not saved by good works but we are saved for good works. Our “good works” don’t save us, they come as a result of believing Jesus is the son of God and putting our faith and trust in him. “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).

We were created for a relationship with our Abba Father, and good works are a result of that relationship. Good works might just mean being kind, forgiving someone who hasn’t apologized, praying (for someone who has been unkind to you); or things maybe only God knows about but they make a difference and are good works. Whether your “works” are below the radar or in plain sight for all to see, he delights in you. Give him all the glory..

Deb Hill

by Deb Hill