FamilyLife Today®

Speaker 1

How can a powerful and loving God allow evil?

Speaker 2

Some people think that in order for Christianity to be real, those two things have to reconcile.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Speaker 2

The answer for that person is God is good and life is hard in the Bible. They don't reconcile, they just are. And the Psalms of Lament show us those two things actually coexist in the Christian faith.

Speaker 1

Let's talk about a topic we all need to talk about and we all need to do, but a lot of us don't understand. Yes, that's how I would introduce that.

Speaker 3

Your little tease topic.

Speaker 1

No, I mean, we got Mark back with us, broke up, talking about something that you think is really important for the Christian community to understand. And right now everybody's like, what is this? So I'm going to throw it to you. What is it, Mark?

Speaker 2

We're here to talk about lament, the language that God's people have historically used and is all over the Bible of how you pray and talk to God when life falls apart.

Speaker 1

There you go. We'll see you next week. There we go.

Speaker 3

And that is a new word. I feel like people haven't been using that word until recently, but we've all done it. We've all experienced it. But why do you think it's important now? Because you're writing about it. You've experienced it.

Speaker 2

I have, yeah. For most of us, we don't set out on an academic discovery of the language of lament. For most of us, lament finds us. We have an event, a situation, a pain, a tragedy. And when a Christian's walking through that, they're trying to figure out, how do I grieve and still cling to what I believe? How do I cry, but how do I hope?

And the prayer form that we end up experiencing is lament. For most of us, this category explains what's happened in the past or explains what we've been trying to do. That was my experience. After writing *Dark Clouds of E Mercy* and talking with so many grieving people, the overwhelmingly consistent comment that I hear from people is, "Your book just explained the last couple years of my life."

Wow. So lament usually finds us because we're not familiar with this language. And yet it's a grace. It's all over the Bible. Think of this: one out of every three psalms are laments. God intended for us to have this language to talk to him when life really gets hard.

The challenge is that for many of us, we haven't heard about it, we don't know it, but when it's explained, we go, "Oh, that's actually what's been going on." And in doing so, we find some amazing grace.

Speaker 1

You know, it's interesting. I watch you all over the Internet. We do our homework and research and you know, you made that comment about a third of the Psalms are lament.

A lot of our worship singing in church are the Psalms. Have you ever heard any lament singing worship songs? It's very rare, isn't it?

Speaker 2

They're certainly out there. But unfortunately, the percentage of laments in the Bible do not reflect the percentage of songs that we sing. And I don't know that. I mean, I don't want to say one out of every three songs has to be lament in its orientation.

We also don't hear lament-oriented prayers. And as a result, we're very unfamiliar with this language. Instead, for most of us, in a western American version of Christianity, we think that the standard of what it means to be a Christian is always positive and encouraging.

In fact, there are radio stations that have that as their moniker: Positive and Encouraging, which, okay, I get it.

Speaker 1

Hey, you just did a radio voice.

Speaker 2

Okay, I'll do another one. Ready? Welcome to Dark and Dreary. So who's gonna listen to that right now? Dark clouds deepen.

Speaker 3

It's funny because I remember this. He was a businessman, he was in his 60s, and he said, I don't even like David. Everything I read about him, he seems like such a whiner. You know, when you read the Psalms, he's just always lamenting.

Speaker 1

Hey, Mark, I gotta tell you, you.

Speaker 2

Getting out your guitar right now? Here we go. Here we go. Okay, for those who can't see this or just gonna hear it, this is.

Speaker 3

Why you need to watch this.

Speaker 1

I'm not kidding. I was watching you preach somewhere. It might've been at your church, I don't know where. And you made that comment that there aren't any worship songs that are sort of based like the Psalms.

And so I thought, I'm just gonna go. And you were referencing Psalm 77. So literally an hour ago, I opened up Psalm 77 and I'm in our bedroom and Anne's like, you're not gonna do that on there.

Speaker 3

Look at Mark's faces.

Speaker 2

Thank you. And he's happy. I really don't know what's happening right now. I'm actually gonna pull my camera out and take a picture of this while you do this. Here we go.

Speaker 3

Has this never happened for an interview?

Speaker 2

This has never happened probably in the history of mankind. So this is. This is A moment right here. So, yeah, that's awesome. This is the thing.

Speaker 1

I don't even know where it's gonna go.

Speaker 2

Okay, those are the.

Speaker 1

But I mean, I literally opened Psalm 77 and I thought, when I remember God, I moan. That's a lament, My moan. When I meditate, my spirit fades. Has a steadfast love forever ceased? I'm probably getting too happy. Happy so far.

Speaker 2

No, you're not. You're doing a great job, actually.

Speaker 1

Are his promises at an end for all time? And then you can just feel him. He's gotta be like, has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger, shut up his compassion?

Then, I said, I will appeal to the years of the right hand of the Most High. I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I remember your word.

Speaker 3

Oh, this feels a little more up now.

Speaker 1

Well, he's getting.

Speaker 2

Well, he turned down.

Speaker 3

Yeah, Yeah.

Speaker 1

I will ponder all your words and meditate on your mighty name. Your way, O God is holy. What? God is great. Like a gun.

Speaker 3

Wow.

Speaker 1

Anyway, that's what came to me this morning. I'm like, there aren't songs written like that. I don't know if anybody's sing that at church, but. What do you think? Mark, you're dumbfounded over there. He's speechless.

Speaker 2

Look at that. Yeah, I'm actually pretty emotional. Like, that's really amazing.

Speaker 1

Wow.

Speaker 2

And I just wish a lot more people would do that. Like, seriously like those words.

Speaker 3

Mark, would you read it? Read it. Like at least the beginning.

Speaker 1

That is not the response I thought it was going to get.

Speaker 2

Well, it's really. It's actually, it's the vision of why I wrote. Dark clausity of mercy is to have that happen.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 2

I couldn't do what you just did. I mean, I thought you were joking. Like, that was legit. That was an amazing song.

And yet it's so important because we are very unfamiliar with the kind of words that you've just sung.

So, yeah, here's what Psalm 77. I mean, it's 20 verses. You want me to do them all or you want me to do the same?

Speaker 3

But do the beginning, you know, do the ones that you resonate with.

Speaker 2

Well, yeah, I mean, it's just. I cry aloud to God. Aloud to God, and he will hear me. In the day of my trouble, I seek the Lord. In the night, my hand is stretched out without wearying, but my soul refuses to be comforted. When I remember God, I moan. And when I meditate, my spirit faints. You hold my eyelids open. I am so troubled I cannot speak. I consider the days of old, the years long ago. I said, let me remember my song in the night. Let me meditate in my heart. And then my spirit made a diligent search.

Here's six rhetorical questions that would freak most people out if anybody prayed them in a small group. Will the Lord spurn forever? Will he never again be favorable? Has his steadfast love forever ceased? Are his promises at an end for all times? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger shut up his compassion? Then here's the turn. Every lament has a pivot. Then I said, I will appeal to this, to the years of the right hand of the Most High. I will remember the deeds of the Lord.

So he's taking those rhetorical questions that he knows aren't true, but they feel true. And that's the thing with laments: there are things in life that feel true that you know aren't true. And the question is, what do you do with them? And lament is the answer. You pray them. You talk to God about them. You sing them. I will remember the work of the Lord. I remember your wonders of old. I will ponder your work and meditate on your mighty deeds. Your way, O God, is holy. What God is great, like our God? You are the God who works wonders. You've made known your might among the peoples you have redeemed, your people, the children of Jacob and Joseph.

And then, this is my favorite part. When the waters saw you, O God, when the waters saw you, they were afraid indeed. The deep trembled. The clouds poured out water. The skies gave forth thunder. Your arrows flashed on every side. The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind. Your lightnings lighted up the world. The earth trembled and shook.

Here's the money passage: Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters. Yet your footprints were unseen. You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron. So the reason why that concluding part is so important is because in the Old Testament, the signature redemptive event was the Exodus. And that's what he's talking about there at the end.

And so he takes his heart back. He takes questions like, has God forgotten to be gracious? Is he shut up his compassion? He takes all of that mess and he brings it back to the most foundational truth that he knows, which is God delivered us. We're his people. He led us through the Red Sea. And in the New Testament, that moment is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And so laments eventually lead us to the bedrock of our faith, which is the man of sorrows who can handle our questions. He can handle our pain. He's the one that prayed on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Psalm 22). Pray to lament.

At the end of the day, our hope is that Jesus bought the right to make it right. And lament is the language that helps us get to that point that we could again say, "That's true. I'm really struggling, and sometimes I have doubts, but this is true." So laments, as I define it in the book, are prayers in pain that lead to trust.

So, oh, that there would be more people who would write songs like that. Because I think there are a boatload of people in our churches who need to know that, A, they could sing like that as far as saying those words, and B, know that this is actually a pathway that leads to hope. It's not a cul-de-sac of sorrows where we just are always stuck in our grieving.

Speaker 3

That's a really good sign.

Speaker 2

This is conduit that leads us to mercy and grace.

Speaker 1

So.

Speaker 2

So that's why that's a really remarkable moment to have that kind of song out of Psalm 77.

And to think of this, that for generations, this was the songbook, and that's what they did. They put to music the very words of God.

And think of that. One out of every three songs that are sung have that kind of tone, despair, difficulty, and yet so full of hope.

Speaker 1

Yeah. I mean, literally, when I heard you say that in your sermon, that's why I grabbed my guitar off the wall and said, why don't we sing these?

And I get it. You know, they can be a little depressing, but they also feel life when you.

When the song goes to the turn.

Speaker 2

Right.

Speaker 1

You're reminded. And man, man, what you just said in the last three minutes is a clip we have to put on YouTube that was like, boom. I mean, as well, said he cried.

Speaker 3

Because all of us, every single listener, is experiencing pain at some point in their lives. And if it's not right now, it will be in the future. One out of three psalms, probably one third of our life, if not more, is really hard.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Yeah. I don't mean to be cute when I say this, but I do think it's helped to kind of reset people's expectations.

We talked about yesterday, if one out of every three psalms are songs of lament, you might think that one out of every three days of your life you're going to have sorrows or difficulties.

And I think part of the reason why lament is not a language that a lot of Christians today understand, at least in the spaces in which we live and operate, is because they have a wrong view of what the successful.

Speaker 3

Christian life looks like, especially in America.

Speaker 2

Right. I mean, you can go globally and find believers who understand lament as an intuitive language.

And you can look at American history. If you were to find the genre that expresses lament in American music history, look no further than African American spiritualists.

Speaker 3

That's what I was going to say.

Speaker 2

So when people are in a hard place and they feel like there's no hope in this world, this is the language that they use. And it's so incredibly life giving, both as individuals and for an entire corporate gathering of God's people.

Speaker 1

Yeah, when you said that, I was thinking, when I came to Christ in college, I don't think anybody told me this. I just perceived, now, life will be easy and good. It'll be awesome.

If my mentor had said, hey, by the way, you just signed up for every third day, get ready for a hard struggle that God's going to prove himself to you, I'd be like, wait, wait, wait, I'm not signing up for that. But that's what I sign up for.

And you think Jesus will just make it all smooth and it's going to be easy? The prosperity type gospel. And it's like, yeah, that's not what you sign up for. You sign up for a real struggle with Jesus in the boat.

Speaker 2

Part of the reason that I'm passionate about this subject is not just to help people who are grieving or to explain a biblical category, but one out of every three days. Being difficult isn't just a Christian experience. That's a human experience. So it seems to me that Christians ought to be the best interpreters of pain, sorrow, and difficulties. This is our language and we know the story: the redemptive arc of creation, fall, redemption, restoration.

We know the story. We know that there's coming a day when we won't sing laments anymore. Like, I don't know what songs we're going to sing in heaven. You know, I mean, it would be pretty cool if I'm Keith and Kristen Getty and we're singing "In Christ Alone" in heaven. Imagine your song. Like, it made it into the top 50 with the angels, right? They're like, "Hey, there's this guy who wrote this song. We're going to sing it together." I mean, imagine that.

But there's a whole genre of songs we won't sing anymore.

Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2

Because our faith will be sight, our sorrows will be no more.

But in the meantime, this is our language, and this is our moment to say, look, the Christian faith can handle death, sorrow, and the most difficult questions.

In fact, this language is a means to help us in our long and sometimes difficult pilgrimage.

Speaker 3

Take us back to when lament became a new language.

Speaker 1

Dark clouds.

Speaker 3

Take us to the dark clouds.

Speaker 2

Yeah. So, man, your song just tripped me, and I need to kind of regroup my emotions here. It's funny how when something's so passionate to you, it kind of opens up a. A file and you're like, wow, that's really, really impactful.

Speaker 3

Music does that too.

Speaker 2

It does, yeah. That's the other thing.

Speaker 3

It's just.

Speaker 2

I'm just even processing this moment. Just like. I mean, I've taught Psalm 77 how many times? But hearing it in a song, it just really powers, let me say, too.

Speaker 3

It was so funny. I was spending time with God this morning, and I go through the one year Bible every year and listen to what Today's Psalm was. 69. Psalm 69. Listen to this. And I thought, this is so appropriate.

Speaker 1

For you want me to sing this?

Speaker 3

This is so appropriate for our discussion today. This is a psalm of David. Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire where there is no foothold. I have come into deep waters and the flood sweeps over me. I am weary with my crying out. My throat is parched. My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God.

More in number than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause. Mighty are those who would destroy me, those who attack me with lies. What I did not steal must I now restore. Oh God, you know my folly, the wrongs I have done and not hidden from you.

Let not those who hope in you be put to shame through me, O Lord, God of hosts. Let not those who seek you be brought to dishonor through me. I mean, this is like real stuff, isn't it? It is. And it makes me wonder how often are those my prayers? These people hate me, God. Maybe it's because I'm just messed up. I've prayed those prayers.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Speaker 1

Yeah. There's part of me, Mark. I'd love to hear you talk about that. That runs away from that, like, avoids it. I don't want to feel sad. I don't want to. I don't want to complain.

Speaker 3

Like the guy who said David's a whiner.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Speaker 1

The guys at Davis of whiners, like, so often. And part of my, I think my family of origin, brokenness with two alcoholic parents and divorce and adultery and all that. As I was a little boy, I think part of me from that pain, for a lot of my life, I just buried it. And so I didn't talk about it. Didn't even acknowledge it. I'm good. I'm an athlete, you know, and it's like, no, you gotta step into the, like you said, dark clouds and process it. And what better way to process it with God?

But as I became a Christian, this is where we're going today. I thought, I can't remember the process with him. Nobody complains to God. Nobody yells at God. I hadn't read the Bible that well, so I didn't know it was all over the Bible. I just thought, that's one place you can't do that. Maybe you can do it alone or maybe with your spouse or a really good friend, but never with God because he's going to turn his face away from you.

And I think a lot of believers feel that way, that they cannot lament that. It's not spiritual to lament.

Speaker 2

Absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, there's so much for us to unpack in that. Earlier you asked me about my journey. How I came to this. Shall I go there and then I can answer your question?

Yeah, start there because I think that context is a bit instructive.

So we have twin boys. My wife carried our twins to 39 and a half weeks. When they were born, they were 6 pounds, 7 ounces and 6 pounds, 11 ounces.

Speaker 3

That's big for twins.

Speaker 2

My wife's like 5, 3, so I mean, it was so then we had another son. She carried him full term. Beautiful pregnancy, no problems. Like so for us, pregnancy equals easy.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 2

And then our third pregnancy, a few days before delivery, my wife woke me up and said, "Something doesn't feel right. Baby hasn't moved, I don't think. And I'm going to jump in the shower." There’s a bigger backstory. It felt like the Lord had been preparing me for suffering of some kind. I began doing some study and some reading on suffering at a deeper level. She got in the shower, and I dropped to my knees and said, "Lord, please, not this." I just had this sense, like, oh my goodness. I was afraid and anxious.

Well, sure enough, we get to the doctor's office, and they put that little, I don't know what it's called, but that thing that you hear the baby's heartbeat with. It was the longest three minutes of my life as the doctor was just searching, and I was like, "God, please, please, please let me just hear that sound." But there was just deafening silence. We went into the ultrasound room and saw our baby in the womb. The doctor put the device over her heart and said, "I'm sorry to tell you this, but her heart has stopped. Your child has died." It just rocked my world.

Fast forward to some things. My wife had to give birth to a deceased child and go through all the things of labor. Then we had a couple of years of multiple miscarriages, even one where we thought we were pregnant. The numbers were going up, and we went into the room to see the heartbeat. This was supposed to be a celebration day, only to have, in the same room with the same doctor in the same chair, him say, "I'm sorry, but you have a blighted ovum. You've caught a miscarriage before it's happened."

In the book, I talk about how my wife and I went to our car in the parking lot. I asked her if she could pray, and she said, "I'll try." She prayed, "God, I know you're not mean, but it feels like it today." And what is that? That’s a lament.

Then we finally got pregnant again, and it was the longest nine months of our lives because I lost the husband card to say, "Honey, I'm sure nothing's going to happen," because it had. That nine months was just a battle to believe and trust. Today, by God's grace, we have a 19-year-old daughter, Savannah, who was born after our stillborn daughter, Sylvia.

As a pastor, I'm still preaching and teaching, marrying and burying—like all the things, right? I'm trying to put together what I believe about God. He is sovereign, He is good, He is holy, He has really good purposes, and my life is really hard. I don't know if I can do this. What if my wife is never happy again? What if this is the last story—death and a grave? I'm caught between these two worlds.

I find that Christians are really unintentionally unhelpful. They try to paper over our pain or our questions with, "Well, God can trust you with this." I'm like, "Okay, well, it doesn't feel like I can be trustworthy," or "Maybe more people will come to Christ." Well, that'd be great, except I'd rather have a living daughter, to be honest. People were just not helpful in kind but ill-informed ways.

So I started to wrestle with this: How do you live between the poles of a really hard life but trusting in God's providence and His sovereignty? How do you live with both of those things? I found that in most Christian experiences, it's either/or—either life is all bad, and God’s dealt me an unfair deck, or we trust in His sovereignty and ignore how painful it is. So I started teaching.

Speaker 1

That's what I did.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Yeah. It's what most, I think many Christians do.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 2

So I started teaching on it, exploring this a little bit. And then I was like, oh, wait a minute. What's been going on in my life all these years is lament. That's what it is. And I didn't have a category for it at the time. I was just trying to survive, trying to live out my theology while in pain.

And so I started teaching on some of the darker psalms; I taught through the Book of Lamentations. This book came out of real-world conversations with hurting people who, after service, were like, "Hey, is there anything else on this? I need to explore this further." Eventually, I got so tired of saying, "I really don't know that there is," that I decided I need to put this into some kind of published form.

The title, *Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy*, comes from the juxtaposition in the Book of Lamentations. In chapter 2, the Lord has set us under a dark cloud, and in Lamentations 3, the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies are new every morning. I think the Christian life is lived in the tension between those two realities: dark clouds often, always deep mercy, and there's grace for the in-between time. It's our language of lament.

Speaker 3

I'm just teary about the whole conversation just because I know so many people that have suffered so much. I mean, I'm just imagining like the couple that we know that their baby was just stillborn.

And here's the thing that happens. I've seen so many people walk away from God as a result, and I'm not sure how to encourage them. What would you say to that? Like, there are so many that if this is who God is, I'm out.

Is it because we haven't learned to lament? Is that what it is? And how can we encourage them or come alongside them?

Speaker 2

Yeah, so two things on that. Number one, I think you've had Garrett Kell on your program here. So Garrett told me, he and our friends that he had an intern who made an incredible observation. He connected some dots for me.

Speaker 1

An intern?

Speaker 2

Yeah. They were reading this book and they said, you know, I think some people deconstruct their faith because they don't know how to lament.

Speaker 1

Oh, that's so true.

Speaker 2

And he was like, one of the hardest things is if you've had pain but you don't know what to do with it, you begin to think that Christianity isn't legit. That's like, I was like, wow, that's actually really, really helpful. Because I think pain creates a tension point of how do I live with the fact of what I believe and what my experience is doesn't seem to match? And the answer for that person is God is good and life is hard. And those two things actually coexist in the Christian faith. Some people think that in order for Christianity to be real, those two things have to reconcile. But in the Bible they don't reconcile, they just are.

And the Psalms of Lament show us that in the exact same psalm, the psalmist can say, how long, O Lord? Psalm 13, have you forgotten me? Will you forget me forever? And then four verses later say, but I have trusted in your mercy. I will sing. It is the fact that Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday are both a part of the Christian faith. And so part of it is helping people understand that if you think that Christianity is only resurrection, then you miss that the cross was necessary. If you think Christianity is only the cross, you miss the resurrection. Hope—you have to have both. And the Bible has words and language that describes that.

And so like for your friend, I would say, listen to these words in the Bible: Save me, for the waters have come up to my neck. The Bible actually empathetically understands the pain that you're walking through in a variety of kinds of brokennesses in the world. And pain tests what it is that we really believe about God. Some people think that lament is to be faithless. It's actually one of the most faith-filled things that you can do. And it's one of the most theologically informed things to do because, and I think this was Todd Billings who said this, it's precisely out of our theology that we offer complaints to the Lord. Because if we believed that he wasn't good or we believed he wasn't sovereign, then why lament? It's just the normal thing of life. Bad stuff happens, get over it, live free, die, like, just party, whatever. Because life is filled with no connecting dots.

But if the psalmist believes that God is good and he believes that he's sovereign, then the world in which he lives doesn't fit with his knowledge of who God is. That's precisely why the psalmist takes the complaints to God and says to him, this is hard, and yet I know you're good, but these don't mesh. They don't reconcile. And I think that vision of Christianity is really important because some people think that once you come to Christ, you just have all the abundant life. And that is not the story. By much suffering and tribulation, we enter the kingdom.

Speaker 1

Yeah. I had a woman come up to me at my son's ministry, what, two months ago after the service. I had preached for my son that Sunday night, and I don't even remember what I preached about. She just came up and said, "I do not believe that God will ever allow suffering and pain. And I have so much suffering and pain in my life. And that's not what the Bible says. That is not. And I need out, I need answers."

I should have been compassionate and tender. I don't know what her suffering and pain was. I just looked at her and said, "That is not at all what the Bible says. That is not the Bible. Where have you heard that?" She replied, "I've heard that at the other churches I go to." I said, "They are lying to you." I should have been nice.

I was frustrated because I had heard her say this to so many people. I thought, "I am going to tell her the straight truth. That is not in Scripture. Lament, pain, suffering is part of life and part of the Christian life and navigating it." She just looked at me like, "Okay, I don't want your theology," and she walked away.

And I'm like, "Okay, I just told her the truth."

Speaker 3

And I had already told her many times because she was saying, I was promised that when I give my life to Jesus, I will have wealth, I will have a great job, I will have an abundance of friendship, and I would not be suffering like I am right now, in depression.

And I said, but if you read the scriptures, like you have to be in the scriptures to see that all the heroes of the Bible, they felt all of those hard things of suffering, and yet God was with them and he's with you.

But man, when she had that image of, I should be wealthy, successful, and...

Speaker 1

That'S sort of the God we manufacture, isn't it?

Speaker 3

The genie and the bottom.

Speaker 1

In the church or outside the church. I mean, I remember you can see.

Speaker 3

If you're watching this on YouTube, you can just look at Mark's face and say, I remember.

Speaker 1

I'm sure you're familiar with Lee Strobel's book *The Case for Faith* and *The Case for Christ*. But then the case for faith was, I don't remember if it was six or eight biggest questions.

The number one question that people wrestle with, he said, and they walk away from the faith, is how can a powerful and loving God allow evil? I can't reconcile those. I'm out.

He even started the book with some famous theologian alongside, I think, Billy Graham, and he walked away. And that's what you're saying, that number one question is answered in scripture.

Speaker 2

It is. At least it's answered in the sense that there are things that God intends to be left in tension. And we just have to realize that we're not the master of the story.

Part of our reason for wanting the reconciliation of those is we want to step into the judge's seat and evaluate. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, that's good. That makes sense to me.

And this is the problem with Job. I mean, Job is in a tough place. He's losing everything.

Speaker 3

Can you imagine?

Speaker 2

I cannot. And if I'm God and Joe is lament, Job is lamenting to me, I would say, okay, look, this isn't about you. I'm sorry. This is really hard. There's actually a contest behind the scenes. It's between me and Satan, and you're stuck in the middle. And you're actually the most righteous guy I got. And so I'm proving something through you. Hang in there. You got this. Like that's what I would do.

Well, God doesn't do that. He doesn't tell him anything about the behind the scenes. Instead, what does he do? He says, hey, Job, where were you when I hung the stars in space? Have you played with Leviathan in the sea? He basically goes through a series of instructive questions to help Job realize this is really important, that the who question in our suffering is so much more satisfying than the why question.

Speaker 1

What do you mean?

Speaker 2

Meaning we want resolution, we want answers. And God says the answer is, I'm God, I'm sovereign. It just depends on how we think about ourselves in the narrative.

So many of us think that we're 30 years old when really we're 3-year-old kids talking to our parents, going, "Why do I have to go to bed? Or why is this happening? Or why won't you let me do this?" Eventually, parents run out of rational arguments for a three-year-old or a seven-year-old, and where do they eventually revert to? They say, "I'm your mom or dad, you just have to trust me."

We forget that we're not the parent in the story. We're the child. We're not the judge. We are somebody who is human and fallen. And it's all going to be plain; it's all going to be evident. God's going to make it clear. We're going to see the grand plan.

When we see it, maybe in the new heavens and the new earth, we'll say, "Yeah, that's the best plan." But right now, we get the opportunity to live in the tension of experiencing our humanity while we live underneath the umbrella of God's sovereignty.

Speaker 1

I have a good buddy who played quarterback for the Lions, was an amazing man of God. And when he was our quarterback, we baptized 27 people, largely because of John and Jenny's marriage. It was amazing.

But I'll never forget, John is pretty bold in his faith. Big evangelist John Kitna. And after a game that he got pulled in the fourth quarter, he's doing the press conference after the game, he says this. They say, hey, you feel like it was wrong for coach to pull you in the fourth quarter?

And he looks at this room of reporters and says, yeah, I don't think it was wrong at all. You know what I deserve? Oh, no, they said they used the word deserve. Do you think you deserve to be pulled? And he goes, he literally looks at them and goes, you know what I deserve? I deserve hell. I deserve hell because of my sin. That's what I deserve.

Speaker 3

I forgot he did.

Speaker 1

I mean, the room was like. He goes, come on, seriously, the coach wants to make that call, he makes that call.

I mean, if you want to know what we deserve, we deserve the pit of hell because we're all sitting.

I mean, he just thought, I'm going to be an evangelist here. Well, it didn't go over real well, but it made the papers.

Speaker 3

But let me go back to what you said about Job, because some listeners caught that, like, wait a minute. So this is just some test between God and Satan and Job's the one that has to suffer. What kind of God would allow that? You know, it's like a little ooh.

Speaker 2

Yeah, well, a God whose glory and goodness is so amazing that those things, including human beings and our Hardships and difficulty that end up giving him glory. Actually, it's the best thing in the world for those people and for the creation. The problem is, again, who are we in the narrative that the child doesn't understand the value of what's behind mom and dad's decision. And so the ability to trust God in the most difficult moments in life comes from an understanding that God not only is trustworthy, but that his grace is amazing and he knows better than I do. And there's a plan here somewhere. Just because I can't see it doesn't mean that it's not good or it's not real. So many of us, again, we just, we think, prove it. Prove that this is worth it. Prove that this is fair. Prove that this makes sense. God doesn't have to prove anything to me because the reality is I'm the problem, not Him. My sin and my separation from him is what's caused my own shortcomings in the world and my sinful responses. And when you understand the beauty of God's grace, it allows you to see suffering and hardship in light of the bringing of what it is that God's going to provide to help us both love him and follow him even better. I mean, that's the whole argument of Romans 8, right? All things work together for good to make us more conformed to the image of Christ. If you take that verse and you remove the image and likeness of Christ out of the verse, it just sounds like all things work together for good in a way that makes me happy, wealthy and wise. It shapes me into the likeness of Christ. And the question is whether or not I actually value that.

Speaker 3

I remember our friend Jamie Winship once said, God doesn't answer our why questions, but he will answer. What do you want me to know through this situation? I thought, oh, so many of us have those why questions and we usually don't get them answered. A lot of times we don't. But we're learning and God's trying to teach us, right?

Speaker 2

So like in my own story, you know, here I am 2004, I've just got a grieving wife, crying kids, trying to be a pastor. And let me be clear, I would much rather have a 21 year old daughter than a book on this subject. Hard stop. In fact, if I had a choice, I know what I'd choose. I would have never discovered Lament, would have not gone after the subject. And I just think of the number of people today that know my daughter's name, that know the story, who have found healing and grace through talking about the subject of lament. I mean, it's so incredibly life giving and I'm really grateful I didn't have a choice in the matter. I'm actually thankful that God is sovereign over all those things because I know what I would have chosen. And someday some way God will explain it all and he'll make it all. He'll make sense of it. I think it was William Cooper who said, judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust him for his grace. Behind a frowning providence, he hides a smiling face. And that's really, really important. Written by a guy who understood the depths of despair, difficulty and depression.

Speaker 3

Well, I think we need you to walk us through all the things that God taught you, because I think I know that this book has ministered to so many and what you've gone through has helped people. It's helped all of us learn how to truly lament. So where would we start if somebody's like, this is all me, this is me. I need this. Get the book first of all, but walk us through some of the most important things.

Speaker 2

We'll start with the definition. So I define lament as a prayer in pain that leads to trust. Every one of those words and phrases are important. So it's a prayer. It's Christian language where I'm talking to God. So all human beings cry. It's how we enter the world. Humans cry. To cry is human, but to lament is uniquely Christian. It's the language that God's people talk to God when they're secondly in pain. So it's a unique kind of prayer. There's lots of prayer language in the Bible. There's praise, there's thanksgiving, there's supplication. Lament is a unique prayer form. A prayer in pain that leads. So lament is process language. It's not meant just to be something that we remain in. And this is important because sometimes when you've had a traumatic issue in your life, it's not just a thing, it becomes the thing. And when it's the thing, it can become your only thing and it becomes your identity. And lament is how pain becomes something that's happened to you. But it's not everything, because lament leads you to trust and trust. Trust in what? Trust in God's goodness, reaffirmation that you know that he's good. Trust in his ability to make sense of everything, in his timing. It's the psalmist in Psalm 13 who says, I will sing, I will rejoice because you have dealt bountifully with me. So if somebody only commiserates in their sorrows and they never get to trust, they actually haven't lamented. To lament is this process where we make our way to trust. And most laments have four key elements of some kind. It's music, it's poetry. So we have to be careful that we don't make it overly linear. But there's turn, complain, ask, and trust. So turn, complain, ask, and trust. And the idea is, I turn to God in my sorrow. I refuse to give him the silent treatment, which is really tempting when you're in pain. Just stop praying or stop praying about a particular subject. I complain. I lay out my problems, my challenges, in clear and stark terms. I'm not a complainer. I'm laying out a complaint. This is what's wrong. So they give it in an official sort of legal sort of way. It's not grumbling. It's saying to God, this. I don't know how this fits with what I know to be true about you. We live in a broken world.

Speaker 1

Is there anger in that or no?

Speaker 2

There could be sinful anger in that. Yes. So I take the position that it's never right to be sinfully angry with God, where anger, I think biblically defined, is an emotion designed to address an injustice. And I don't think God is ever unjust with me. I do think we can feel frustration, we can feel confusion, we can feel tension. But to be sinfully angry with God is something that should be repented of, because I think sinful anger comes from a place of, you did me wrong and how dare you?

Speaker 3

This is when Piper said to me, I was telling John Piper a story of my sister dying. And I said I was angry. And I told God, I am angry with you. And he said, well, that's in. And that kind of stopped me in my tracks. Like, oh, wait, wait, but that. You just explained it.

Speaker 2

Yeah, and I would agree with him on that. It depends on what you mean by anger. So I want to acknowledge, though, that there are real tensions that people feel and there are real struggles. And sometimes that may feel like sinful anger. And it might not be. It might be. Like, this is really, really hard. Like when the psalmist says in Psalm 77, I remember God. When I remember God, I moan, I moan. Yeah, well, you press that too far with a wrong attitude. That could be sinful. But at the same time, it acknowledges that there's moments in life that we're like God.

Speaker 3

Seriously, this is really Hard and I don't understand. But at the end of my prayer, I was like, but I'll trust you because I know that you are a good God, even though I don't feel it right now.

Speaker 2

And that's exactly where lament leads. So stern complaint, ask. Take the promises of Scripture, incorporating them into your life, asking for God's help. And then the conclusion is, trust God. I can trust you with these gaps. I can live in this tension of my sorrow. And I know that somehow, some way, there's a good God behind all of this. And today I am confused and a little disoriented. But I know who you are. It's a regrounding, if you will, of who you are and your experience in the goodness and grace of God.

Speaker 3

Do you think people. And I know the answer to this, but I feel like when people are like so burdened and in pain emotionally, we go. Often we go hide in something rather than truly lamenting and going to the Father. What areas do you think we hide in? What's an area that you would. Apart from Christ?

Speaker 2

Well, I think what we do is we give God the silent treatment. We just stop praying entirely or we embrace emotional or physical or real escapisms. You know, kind of thing where, you know, one of the psalms says, I think it's Psalm 55, oh, that I had wings like a dove. It could fly away and be at rest. This idea of just kind of running away from my problems. And we have all sorts of ways that, you know, we can try and do that and cope or, you know, we can get really, really busy. I find this particularly to be true with men. Rather than grieving the loss, they just click into, no, I'm fine. And they just try to fix, fix, fix, fix, fix, fix, fix.

Speaker 3

Is that yours?

Speaker 2

Finally, their grief catches up with them.

Speaker 1

Don't even talk about me. No. I had a therapist once. I was going through a thing with our church in succession and sat down with him five hours at the end of the day, sort of drawing my whole life on a board. And he didn't know me, but, you know, amazing Christian counselor whose niches Christian leaders. He goes, I don't really do therapy. I just meet with Christian leaders. And so he says, here's your homework. What are you running from? You got to answer this question. What are you running from? And I look at him, I go, what are you talking about? He goes, you don't see this? You are this, this, this, this, this, this. You're running from something. I come home till end. She's like, you know, what'd he say? What'd he say? He said, I gotta answer this question. When I run from. She's like, duh. I've been telling you this forever.

Speaker 3

I didn't say that. I didn't say duh.

Speaker 1

You said. You gave me a look like that, like, bless your heart. I tried to tell you this.

Speaker 3

I felt the duh.

Speaker 1

But that was a large part of my life was. And there. And it was sort of running, even from lamenting about pain, even from family of origin. And I'm good at things, so I run to things and accomplish. And I'm not going to lament. I'm not going to deal with it. I'll bury it. Horrible way to live life.

Speaker 2

Yeah. And very common. And part of the reason is grief is scary. It reminds us that we're broken and we would rather ignore that reality. Which is one of the reasons why it's just so interesting to me how we have changed funerals. It's almost as though we're afraid to grieve at funerals. We turn them into celebrations of life. And I mean, I'm thinking, well, we.

Speaker 3

Won'T even wear black a lot of times anymore.

Speaker 2

Or the testimonies hardly acknowledge the loss. And even, frankly, somebody who's passing away gives, like, the family an edict. Whatever you do, don't cry at my funeral. And I'm just like, what are we doing?

Speaker 3

I haven't thought through that because I'm seeing that more and more lately. And people are like, we're celebrating. They're in new life. But you're right. It doesn't give you a chance to just mourn. And grieve.

Speaker 2

Yeah. So that when Thanksgiving comes and there's an empty seat at the table and you're like, I feel this suddenly now we don't have a category. That. Yeah, that's actually normal. That's okay. It's okay to acknowledge the loss. It's okay to grieve it. It's okay to be sad. We're going to be fine. But death is frightening. And sorrow is an early warning that death is still real. And because it's in our world and because it challenges our sense of autonomy and transcendence, human beings have this tendency to want to either ignore it or even shush it. Kind of keep it under wraps. I mean, after I wrote this book and after I'd done a lot of work on Lament, had a friend whose son eventually died of cancer way, way, way too early. And, you know, we're in Their home with a small group. And he's. The dad is just slumped over a, an ottoman. He's just, he's, he's lamenting and he's crying out in prayer to God. I have a category for lament. I've written on lament. I can define lament. I can teach a seminar in lament. And everything within me wanted him to stop. I was uncomfortable. It was frightening. And it was just a stunning moment to be like, wow, this is not intellectual. This is a visceral reaction to the presence of loss that's in my orbit. I think that's true for all humans. I think that's true for Christians. I think it's one of the reasons that at times we can be really unhelpful to people when they're grieving.

Speaker 1

And is a lament often long? Can it be a lament over days, weeks, months or years? I mean, you can look at this. Turn, complain, ask, trust. You can do that in 15 minutes. And sometimes we do, but sometimes you're like, this is, this is going a while.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Well, I would compare it maybe to a song, your favorite song. Sometimes you sing it a lot. Sometimes you sing in a particular occasion and sometimes you sing it for your entire life. It's just always with you because it captures the essence of a moment. And I think it's very individual. So I think there are some people where because of the need of the moment, they are lamenting a particular subject and that's, that's really enough. Once, twice. And they feel like I've got some level of spiritual resolution. Other people, because of the circumstances their progress looks like, turn one day, complain the next, ask the third, trust. And for some people, that looks like every three days I'm going to lament, and I'm going to probably have to do that for years because either the problem isn't contained. So death of a loved one's hard, but at least there's a funeral, there's a grave, and you've got to recover and find your new normal. But when it's a divorce, when it's a wayward child, when it's other things that are family related, the sorrow is continual. And so you need to learn how to lament regularly so that you can even be present for your kids or emotionally whole so you can still do life with them despite your deep levels of disappointment and sorrow.

Speaker 1

Yeah, you know, and I just thought of a bonus question.

Speaker 3

Oh, good.

Speaker 1

That we're going to save for our financial partners.

Speaker 3

Give us a tease. What is it?

Speaker 1

The tease will be just based on what you just said. I'll tell them what we're going to ask, and you can become a financial partner and you can start giving to us monthly and you can stay on for this question we'll save for later. But the question is going to be when your spouse is lamenting and you feel like it's too long, how do you respond?

Speaker 2

Oh, man, save that late. I can't wait to die.

Speaker 1

But I think that happens. And you're like, oh, totally.

Speaker 3

It happened with us.

Speaker 1

Yeah, we'll save it.

Speaker 3

Well, I wanted you to get into that a little bit because you're right. When a person dies, you know that in time it will become better. But when you're having kids that are maybe prodigals or your marriage just seems to be getting worse. How do we lament and live our life? That's not an easy thing. What's that look like?

Speaker 2

I mean, it's really challenging. I'm not gonna be all chipper. It's tough. The difference is, though, is that you learn that the language of lament is the means by which God gives you grace to just live one more day.

Speaker 3

Oh, that's good.

Speaker 2

So part of it is lament helps us to know how to live when our time horizon has to be shorter. One of my favorite passages is in Matthew when Jesus said, don't worry about tomorrow because tomorrow has enough trouble of its own. And that sounds like a really depressing verse. Don't worry about tomorrow because it's going to be really bad. What he means is that every day has a providential limit of trouble in a proportionate reference to how much grace that you have. So I have grace for my troubles today. I don't have grace for my troubles for tomorrow. If I want to try and borrow trouble, well, then I can borrow trouble with no grace. Good luck with that. So the key to living through longer seasons of trial and suffering and hardship is shortening our time horizon. And realize what I have to do today as I got to follow Jesus today, I only have grace for what's in front of me and for the sorrows that I feel I need to lament them. Trust God, go to bed, wake up, and believe that the Bible is true, that his mercies are new every morning. And by the way, Jeremiah said that he pronounced that over a situation, that everything about the scenario that he was seeing would have screamed, God has abandoned his people. So I was once at a. I talk about this in the book. I was at a Christian conference center and saw this painting on the wall. It was a Thomas Kincaid kind of looking, you know, thing with a little cottage. Looked like an English cottage. This beautiful river and flowers. I mean, like. Like Airbnb in Colorado.

Speaker 3

Lights in the window.

Speaker 2

Oh, yeah. I mean, all the soft colors. And underneath it, it says, you know, the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercy are new every morning. And I just looked at that, and I was like, so somebody thought that verse goes with that picture? Yeah, that verse does not go with that picture.

Speaker 3

If you want, what would your picture look like?

Speaker 2

It would look like an F4 tornado just wiped out a city.

Speaker 3

It's true.

Speaker 2

Because that's what that verse is about. It's about even though when it looks like God has ditched us, he's abandoned us, the temple is torn down, all the people of Israel have been taken captive to Babylon. In that moment, Jeremiah has the courage to the faith to say, the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies are new every. He's planting a flag. His mercies are new every morning.

Speaker 1

And it wasn't denial, because sometimes when people say those kind of things, they're just living in denial because they're not willing to bring the two together.

Speaker 2

Right? Yeah. I mean, I think Christians live either in denial or despair. Denial is they think that real Christians never talk about their sorrows, and they come to church and people ask them, how you doing? And they're like, fine. Just trust in the Lord. And behind the scenes, they're really struggling because they think that the best kind of Christians actually only talk about all of the good. And then they come to church, and all the songs we're singing are about triumph and victory. And they're in the pews or your seats going, that's not me. Do I belong here? So then they can tip into despair, which is, if I have these questions, I might not be a Christian. And so I think a lot of Christians tend towards those two ditches. Now, somebody would say, wait a minute, Mark. Doesn't the Bible say, rejoice always? Yes, it does. It's true. You should rejoice. My question is, how do you get there? And that's what lament does. Lament is the language that moves us from being in a really hard place with really tough questions to get us to the point that we could say, I will sing. I will rejoice, because God is dealt bountifully with me@psalm13. But before that, he said, how long, O Lord? You forget me forever. So that's what lament does. It's a bridge between the poles of, I believe God is good, but my life is really hard.

Speaker 1

Wouldn't it be interesting? I've never had this thought if, as we walk in church, if there was a little scale or something, but everybody's head that measured how much pain they're in right now, and that could be revealed. We could see it. I think we'd be shocked at the amount of pain in the room. We used to have a sign in our green room that said, never underestimate the pain in the room. So when we were walking onto the stage, we're like, you gotta remember, I may be great today. There's a lot of people in this congregation, maybe the majority, that are not great today don't go up there and just say, hey. And that's part of you gotta be, hey, God is good, but you also have to. There's a lot of pain that you don't see, but it's real and it's happening. We need that. We need that little counter.

Speaker 3

Let me ask you, because when my sister died, I'd go to worship, I couldn't even sing. I just sobbed the entire time. I wanted to sing. And it felt good to be there, but I couldn't even get the words out. It's almost like worship opens your soul and you, like, you just feel it. Was I grieving or was I lamenting? And what's the difference?

Speaker 2

Well, what do you think?

Speaker 3

I think it was both.

Speaker 2

Tell me why.

Speaker 3

I think I was grieving out of sadness and loss. And the lamenting part, I think I was doing that along the way of telling God, this is where I am. And lamenting is like expressing out loud, I'm suffering. I'm. This is hard.

Speaker 1

It felt unjust.

Speaker 3

Yeah, but what. What's grief?

Speaker 2

Yeah, well, grief is just the. The normal human emotion in response to pain. Yeah, grief certainly is part of lament. But what happens is that lament takes grief. And think of it like giving it tracks. Which is why I asked you the question, what do you think it was? Because sometimes you just don't know. And what lament does is it takes grief and it. It moves it along. So if in that worship service you are sad and filled with emotion, that is hard and challenging, and you're hearing singing and you're like, this is true.

Speaker 3

Yeah, that's what I felt.

Speaker 2

This is true. That's that what just happened there, the connection between your grief and believing what's true. That is lament right there. That's that process.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Speaker 2

Is what Lament is designed to do. I'm really sad. I remember God. I moan. And yet your footprints were unseen.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Speaker 2

And that's what. So Lament holds those two things. It doesn't. Doesn't conflict with one another. It's that those two things just exist in tension.

Speaker 3

But I like that it gives its tracks so they can move along.

Speaker 2

And it would be helpful and might have been even helpful for you in that moment. Imagine if you knew in that moment. My grief is normal, and my experience here is part of what it means to be a human and what it means to be a Christian. And as I sing, God is moving me along. I'm actually making progress right now because so many people, when they're in a worship service like that, their emotions and they can't sing, they feel like a failure. If I was a real Christian, I could just sing. I could just. And I could smile more or I could. Because they have this idea that what happens with real Christians is they experience pain and they live in a way that is disconnected from their pain. To be a Christian means that you're in pain and yet you trust.

Speaker 3

And honestly, it was so hard for me to understand, like, the purpose. It seemed like. It seemed ridiculous. Like, this is the dumbest thing. Lord, I don't understand. And it was good for me to be reminded. I needed the Word and I needed worship. I felt like I couldn't pray sometimes.

Speaker 2

Sure.

Speaker 3

Is that normal? Like, I've heard a lot of people say, I can't even pray. And that made me feel guilty. But there is a part of me I can't even. That's why church was important, just to hear it and to be reminded of this is who he is.

Speaker 2

To answer your first question about hardly even pray. I mean, Psalm 77. In the day of my trouble, I seek the Lord, but my soul refuses to be comforted. So his prayers aren't working.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Speaker 2

So let me ask you if I can. So it felt like it was unfair or felt like it was stupid. I think it's the word you use, which I get. So did you come to a point of accepting or resolving that tension? No, it just is what it is.

Speaker 3

I mean, when you look at it, she's 44, with four little boy, four boys. You know, to me, that seemed like, what would the point be? My resolution was, God is good and I can trust him, and I don't need to know the answer. That was it. And I'm going to trust him because I know he has an answer. I know he knows all things, and I think that maybe this happened to you. I had to be in the Word constantly to be reminded of the truth, of how good he was. If I wasn't in the Word, I think I could have drifted.

Speaker 2

Sure.

Speaker 3

For sure.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Your emotions certainly would take you that way. And the evidence in front of you might even take you that way. Because objectively, how could that be good? And yet, if you were to stand. So imagine in front of me is the Cross, and behind me is Resurrection Sunday, empty tomb. If I have my back to the resurrection and all I see is the cross, my conclusion is, this is unfair. This is unjust. This is a waste.

Speaker 3

It's stupid.

Speaker 2

It's stupid. 100% right? And so part of it is just realizing, well, in time, if we turn and we understand the rest of the story, we'll see. Oh, that's what's going on. And that's to live in that gap. Or that tension, though, is, what do we do in that season. That's the language of lament.

Speaker 3

And I think the older we get, the more you see, like, should we mourn the death of someone in Christ? Because we know, like, it's paradise, what they're experiencing eternally with the Father, that is good news. It's just for us here that are suffering in the midst of it. That's the hard part. Not for them. And I usually hear people. My sister didn't complain as she was dying. She was my best friend. She didn't want to leave her kids, but she knew what was to come. I struggled more than she did.

Speaker 2

Right. And there's just something objectively true at every funeral, which is, death is outrageous. I mean, it's the separation of family, the loss of relationship. Like, it's a regular reminder something is seriously wrong with the world. Every death is a reminder of that. And I think part of it is that we live in our everyday human experience and we become a little inoculated to the problem and the presence of sin in the world. And sometimes it takes a death to remind us. Oof. Or Solomon, put it this way. It's better to go to the house of mourning than the house of feasting. Why did he say that? He said that because you learn more at funerals than you do at parties. You listen to what's said. Or I think it's David Brooks that talks about eulogy virtues versus resume virtues. Eulogy virtues are the things that are said about you at your funeral. Resume virtues are the things that you build your career upon. And he says basically, be sure that you're living by eulogy, virtues, not just resume virtues, which I think is really an insightful caution about how we can live our lives in an incorrect, sort of focused way.

Speaker 1

I mean, I love this quote in your book from Nicholas. How do you say it? Walter storf Waltersdorf yeah, yeah. I shall look at the world through tears. Perhaps I shall see things that dry eyed, I could not see.

Speaker 2

Man, oh man. Yeah. I mean, he uses eyes as a metaphor, I use ears. Once you've heard lament, it's amazing how you hear it in so many other spaces. Or once you see it or hear it in one space, you begin to realize, oh, and it's there and it's there and it's there and it's there and you realize that there's a reason that Jesus was called a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Here's the God man in the world, and he is seeing the effects of the departure from the glory of God. So he stands at Lazarus's grave. He knows he's going to raise him from the dead, but he's weeping. Why is he weeping? Because of this. It didn't have to be this way. Yeah, the sorrow of Lazarus's family and Jesus is acquainted with our grief and yet is about ready to call him out of the grave. Because there's something fundamentally wrong with the world. And Christians know the answer. It's sin. The broken world we live in cries out for redemption.

Speaker 1

I mean, how would you coach or counsel listener or somebody watching that's been following us this whole time and saying, I don't think I've ever lamented. I'm definitely in grief, I'm definitely sad. I'm not sure I've ever lamented. How do I start?

Speaker 2

Yeah, I'd start by looking @psalm 13. Read it out loud. It's short, it's clear, the transition is there. And then after you see it and read it, imagine you translate that in your own version. So imagine the Wilson translation or the Rogappian translation. What does that sound like? That's what you were doing with your guitar. You were taking Psalm 77. And with music and the whole thing, you were interpreting it in your own life and experience. The third step would be to take the framework of turn, complain, ask and trust and just try it. Just talk to God, turn to him in your grief, lay out what's wrong, ask for him to help and trust him. And then to start doing that on a more regular basis to see how it is that the Lord uses this prayer language to give you grace. And I think folks would be surprised that just baby steps in this way results in an overflow of mercy and grace that God sends our way.

Speaker 3

Can you give us an example of that? Like Juliet, like when your daughter died and when you suffered and you were grieving. Give us an example what that could look like and what you did.

Speaker 2

Yeah. In that moment, I am calling out to God and acknowledging God, I am really hurting and I am really scared. I am worried that my wife is never going to stop crying and how are we going to make it? How am I going to be a pastor and why? A nine pound little baby doesn't deserve this. And there's no answer. So I'm going to be left for the rest of my life with an unexplained stillbirth, which means no ability to prevent in the future. It's not a problem I can solve because I don't know what the problem was and yet or. But I know you're good and I know I can trust you. You've proven yourself over and over and over in my life that you're trustworthy. And so I'm going to live in this tension of a life that's harder than what I wanted and a situation that feels overwhelming than what I think I can bear. And I'm just going to believe that somehow, some way, you're going to help me. And therefore I am going to sing my way through the storm. I'm going to trust that you're going to help me. You're not going to leave me. And I'm still hurting. So come. That would be how I would interpret Psalm 13.

Speaker 3

And would you have to do that.

Speaker 2

Again and again and again and again and again and again and again. So, I mean, even as you asked me to do this, it's been 22 years since my daughter's passing and it doesn't take a lot for the emotion to pop right up.

Speaker 3

It doesn't take me a lot to go with you in it.

Speaker 2

So it's. Yeah. And then so here's another thing. Just I'm not a, you know, I'm not a grief counselor. I don't have training in that. Let me just tell you experientially what I've observed as a pastor helping a lot of people in grief. Sometimes people think that grief recovery looks like I get over it and I never grieve again. They think that's. They wish that was the case. Oh, it just hasn't been my Experience or the experience of others. Instead, what it looks like is the length of time between really strong and almost frightening emotions. It gets further and further apart. So, you know, two years in, Sylvia's birthday comes up, or we're hanging up a Christmas ornament. It's got her name on it. Those emotions just. They come rushing back, like, out of nowhere, or. I was doing a talk on Lament last weekend, and somebody asked me a question, and I forget what it was about. And I started to tell a little part of the story. I had to stop because I actually got very emotional, and I just paused and I was like, look, I don't even know where this is coming from. And it's not even within my control. But apparently I'm still a person who's grieving at some level. John Piper described it this way. It's like an amputation. You heal, but you're never the same. I think that's a good way to think about it. I'm okay, but this will always be true. And I'm able to move on and still glorify the Lord. And not everything in my life is defined by these sorrows and losses. But it doesn't take a lot to open that subject back up. And there's, I think, always a good amount of, I think, appropriate sorrow. It doesn't mean I haven't healed. I think I have healed. But it means that that moment counted, and I'm a normal human being that is still processing that.

Speaker 3

Yeah, I'm thinking about your kids. How old are your kids now?

Speaker 2

Yeah, so our twins are 28, another son who's 25, and our daughter Savannah is 19.

Speaker 3

How have you taught this to them? I think one of the things I love about you, Mark, is you're not afraid to show emotion and pain and sorrow. What's that look like for us as parents? How can we help our kids with this?

Speaker 2

Yeah, that's a really good question. And I don't know the full answer to that because I think that sort of depends on a person, their personality, the event that's happened, the age of their kids, even kind of the wiring of their kids. I mean, so it's. The risk would be, as I get a simplistic and prescriptive answer. But let me try at one level just to set the framework. I think that it's important for parents to appropriately allow their kids into their grief. And I say appropriately because there are boundaries, there are levels of transparency that parents shouldn't go to because it would be damaging to kids. But there's another extreme, which is that kids don't know that fighting through sorrow and battling it is actually the success, not never having it. And so I think welcoming them in, sharing the struggles as appropriate, teaching them how to grieve, and hopefully, you know, the kids have been old enough that they've got a theology already built into their system because of what they've heard and seen. Depending, again, on the age, it's hard to teach a child a theology of suffering in suffering. That theology needs to be built in before, so then it can click in and again, age appropriate, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And one of the things I'm thankful for, in the last five years, there's been some resources for kids about lament, even a great book, a kid's book called the Moon is Always Round.

Speaker 3

We just interviewed John Gibson. Yeah, we had Jonathan call in. His wife was here talking about the book.

Speaker 1

That's right.

Speaker 3

But then we had Jonathan read the book. I can't imagine it's so good.

Speaker 2

And just that idea, that model, I mean, and when I saw the book, I was like, oh, praise God, thank you, Jesus, that somebody's doing this kind of work and there's a new book.

Speaker 3

Because they had lost their stillborn child.

Speaker 2

Exactly. Yeah. And I think one of the staff folks at tgc, I think it's maybe Betsy Child Howard, has a children's book on lament specifically. Just super thankful for people entering into this space because kids need to know that this situation in life that we're in is real and it's consequential. And then I think, also finding ways to exercise the lament muscle in minor moments of disappointment instead of just major moments.

Speaker 3

Yeah, that's good.

Speaker 2

So that, hey, when you feel mistreated at school or when you're disappointed about something that you've lost or some, you know, childhood grief, I think it's important to teach kids. How do we respond to that, how we use this biblical language. Because if you're only applying lament in the most dark and difficult scenarios of life, it feels really intense. And it's hard to apply something if you're trying to do it for the first time. So those are a few ways, I.

Speaker 3

Think, too, to demonstrate even in prayer. Before our kids, when our kids were little, I can remember driving them to school and they were elementary, young elementary, but allowing them to see my disappointment or sadness, like, Lord, I feel sad today. But to end the prayer, but I trust you because I know you're good for little ears to hear. Those things, I think that's teaching our kids we can be real and honest with God. But mom says that she loves him and she trusts him and that he's good. And those things lock into our kids of knowing, like. And I can trust God, too. I may not know him like mom does, but mom and dad think that he's good and he's trustworthy. I can also be really honest with him. I can say in Michigan, like, lord, how many days is it going to be cloudy? Come on. Like, what's happening? You know, to see, like, this is a conversation with a God that we love who's with us.

Speaker 2

Yep. And, you know, as long as. Well, we need our kids to have a fully orbed understanding of the Christian life. So as long as the laments are balanced with opportunities for Thanksgiving and praise, I think that's great, that's good. The trouble is that so many of us, we kind of have a. Have an inkling or we're so chipper. We don't acknowledge that things are hard or we're so, you know, naturally given to despair that the only time we're praying out loud is when the sky is falling, so to speak. You know what I mean? And so that's where the kids learn. Oh, real Christians, like, are just really sad all the time. Right.

Speaker 3

Or there's never sadness. Mom's always up and everything's great.

Speaker 2

Right? Yeah. So June, July and August does happen in Michigan.

Speaker 1

Right.

Speaker 3

And I'll say that like, lord, look at this tree that you. You created in the fall. Like, we're celebrating all of it.

Speaker 2

Yeah. So I just think it needs to be balanced and appropriately sort of calibrated to understand the Christian life is highs and lows.

Speaker 3

It's just like marriage.

Speaker 2

Yep. What Eugene Peterson said, it's a long obedience in the same direction. We're just going to take one step, and highs and lows and difficulties. We're just going to keep marching on, trusting the Lord.

Speaker 1

Yeah. It's interesting. I was not excited about this interview. I mean, I like you, Mark, but I'm like, we're gonna talk about Lament, you know, for several sessions.

Speaker 3

You don't like to stay in the movie.

Speaker 2

I have a hard time believing that. Because you got up and wrote a song about it.

Speaker 1

I didn't write it. David did. But let me ask you this. Is there anything we didn't hit that you're like, oh, gee whiz, we missed this?

Speaker 2

You didn't miss anything. There's just one. We've talked a lot about Psalms. I just want to mention Lamentations. Lamentations is the longest lament in the.

Speaker 3

Whole Bible, and we don't always like to read Lamentations.

Speaker 1

I'm not teaching that on a sermon. And you did a whole series on it. You walked your congregation through it.

Speaker 2

And our staff were a little bit like, we're going to spend how many weeks on this? But it actually proved to be one of the most consequential sermons in the life of our congregation, really. Because it demonstrated two things. One, there's a boatload of people in the church who Lamentations was like, that's my song.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 2

And it also demonstrated we can talk about grief or lament for six weeks and be okay. We actually have more resilience in the space. We're more afraid of it than what we even want to acknowledge. So Lamentations, you know, it speaks about the destruction of Jerusalem, and it's like a mountain. Chapters one and two are just rehearsing. What's wrong? Chapter three is kind of the summit, and the pinnacle of the summit is the. You know, the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. I love how the new living translations renders it. It says, I will never forget this awful time, and yet I will dare to hope. The idea is when hoping is often a dare, like, it's a big risk to hope in God when you have a really hard time. But then what I love about Lamentations is after that, that, like, sort of signature moment where he just plants a flag. God is faithful and God is just. Then there's two more chapters. There's chapter four, where things are not still great. Chapter five, Things are still not great. And the whole lament ends with this. Restore us, O Lord, to yourself that we may be restored. Renew us as the days of old, unless you have utterly rejected us and you remain exceedingly angry with us.

Speaker 1

Wow.

Speaker 2

And that's how it ends. Now, why do I love that? And there's a whole host of theological things we could talk about. That why do I love that? Is because most of our lives look more like that than they do. Like a Hallmark movie.

Speaker 3

Yes.

Speaker 2

It's like, I don't. You get up off your knees praying. You get out of your couch after you've poured out your heart to the Lord, and you're like, well, I don't know if my kids are coming back. I don't know how my sister's kids are going to fare. And the reason that's important is because some people can think that Lament ties a bow on it all. And it's a package. And Lament in Lamentation shows us, no, it actually opens up a new vista with a lot of risk but a lot of confidence. But knowing that, as C.S. lewis talked about in the Chronicles of Narnia, we go further up and further in, further up, further in, further up, further in. That the more you understand and expand on this, the better questions you have, the more unresolved life actually is. And yet you still have a great confidence that someday, some way, God's going to make it all clear. Until then, you rest in the fact that the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.

Speaker 1

Wow. Well, I'm thinking, you know, everything you've said and even limitations there. If my mom. Think about that, if she would have been able to understand Lament, my dad leaves. My brother dies. I'm seven. He's five, like six, seven weeks later after the divorce. And my sister, who's in high school, told us just this last year, she goes, yeah, you don't know this because you were a little boy, but I came home from high school, and the pastor's walking out of our house, and he says to me, your brother just died. And mom never talked about it ever again. It was never brought up. It was like, that's what you do. You just, okay, bad thing happened, move on. So listen to this. I'm just like, wow. And so what was her escape? Alcohol. That's where she ran. And it would probably have not had to go that way if she had been able to understand that. And me as a little boy, like, this is hard. And you can cry and cry as human. I love that quote to Lament as Christian. And we were never taught that. This is such a gift to so many people to understand that.

Speaker 2

And isn't God kind that even though you didn't know that language, even though your mom didn't? I bet if we were to trace back how informative those moments in your life have been to actually where you are today.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 2

So even we don't know how to lament, God still is kind. He's still sovereign. This is our language, though, to help us in the. In between times.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 3

And the bow happens when we are with Jesus in eternity.

Speaker 2

That's when the tears get wiped away. Our faith becomes sight.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Speaker 2

Until then, we just got to keep lamenting until he comes.

Speaker 1

Thank you.

Speaker 2

You're welcome. It's been great to talk with you guys today.

Speaker 3

Hey, thanks for watching. And if you like this episode.

Speaker 1

You better like it.

Speaker 3

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Speaker 1

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Speaker 3

Word like and subscribe.

Speaker 2

Look at that.

Speaker 1

You say it so easy. Subscribe. There he goes.