From His Heart

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Life can deal us some low blows. Problems can come in like a tornado, like a hurricane, and just seem to blow everything out. They can leave us devastated, not just for a short period of time, but for the rest of our lives, if we allow that to happen.

But God wants to teach us how to sing in the rain, how to have joy and how to have peace, even in a new normal that you didn't want, that you didn't ask for, but that came anyway.

Larry Nobles: When we experience great trauma in life, it's easy to feel as if God has forgotten us. We lose our joy and we lose our song. What do you do when terrible troubles steal your song? This is From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Schreve.

Thank you for joining us today for a lesson that will help us discover how to take our eyes off our troubles and look to the Savior for comfort. The message today is entitled How to Sing in the Rain, and it's from Pastor Jeff's series Life Goes On: How to Face a New Normal.

This five-lesson series and the companion book Life Interrupted, both are our thank you gifts for your support this month to From His Heart. Pastor, before you begin the lesson today, can you fill us in on the thrust of this timely book Life Interrupted?

Dr. Jeff Schreve: The book really deals with traumatic things in life and life-changing events, because life is fragile and it changes on a dime. Many people have experienced those kinds of things in their lives, and if we're not careful, those traumatic events can really derail us to the point that we fail to get out of the ditch, so to speak.

God wants to teach us how to keep going with Him. In this book, we talk about different instances where you lose your song, where you face terrible trauma, and how you get through that, how you grieve in the Lord and trust Him even through the hardest of times so that you can laugh again, you can have joy again, and you can see His light again.

God hasn't left us. The Lord says in His word, "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers they will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire you will not be scorched, nor will the flame kindle upon you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior."

The thrust of the book is to help people to continue to trust God even through the hardest of situations and to know that God can make a way even where there seems to be no way. The Lord does have a promised land for us, a land flowing with milk and honey in this life as we trust Him even through the hard times.

Larry Nobles: Thank you, Pastor. You can find out more about the book and the series Life Goes On when you go to fromhisheart.org, or I'll tell you more later. If you can now, open your Bible to Psalm 137 and let's begin the lesson called How to Sing in the Rain.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Psalm 137 is an interesting psalm. It's written by those who were taken captive to Babylon. If you remember your Bible history, you know that Israel started out in the promised land, led out of Egypt by Moses, led into the promised land by Joshua. They conquered the territories in the book of Joshua, and they were one nation, the nation of Israel.

Their first king was Saul, then came David, then came Solomon. After Solomon, there was a king, his son Rehoboam. Under the kingdom of Rehoboam, Israel split. Ten tribes said, "We're not going to follow Rehoboam," and they became the northern kingdom. Two tribes stayed with Rehoboam as king, Judah and Benjamin, and they became known as the southern kingdom, or the kingdom of Judah. Their capital city was Jerusalem.

The ten tribes didn't do well. They immediately started to follow false gods and it wasn't too terribly long before they had totally apostatized and the Lord allowed Assyria to take them over in 722 B.C. Judah lasted longer. They were a little more faithful to the Lord, but in 605 B.C. God allowed Babylon to come and to put Judah down, so to speak.

They were under Babylon's thumb for years. Nebuchadnezzar defeated Jerusalem in 605 B.C. He took captives back in 605 B.C., the ones that we know of namely Daniel and his three friends Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They had to go from Jerusalem all the way 900 miles to Babylon to be exiles in Babylon in 605 B.C.

In 597 B.C., Nebuchadnezzar came in, slapped Judah around some more, took more captives, and then in 586 B.C. he came in. He besieged the city for a long time and then came in and broke down the walls and destroyed the city and burned Solomon's temple and wrecked and ruined it beyond recognition. It was a terrible time, so terrible that Jeremiah writes about it. There's a whole book in the Bible about it called Lamentations. It was awful.

These thousands and thousands of people who were taken from Jerusalem all the way to Babylon, a 900-mile trip, they didn't want to be there. They share their experience in Psalm 137. It says this, "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. Upon the willows in the midst of it we hung our harps. For there our captors demanded of us songs, and our tormentors mirth or joy, saying, 'Sing us one of the songs of Zion.'"

How can we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? How can we sing in the rain? How can we sing when the bottom drops out of life? God wants to teach us how to do that. What do you do when terrible troubles steal your song, your passion, your zest for living, where you just feel like saying, "I'm done, I quit"?

God says no, you can't quit. Here's how to get your song back. Three steps from Psalm 137 to regain your song. Step number one: get totally honest with God. Totally honest with God. Now, that's something that many of us don't really like to do. We don't like to get honest about how we're hurting. We don't like to get honest about our feelings.

We throw sheets over things and think well that'll just go away if I cover it up, then it's just going to go away. Life doesn't work that way. If we want to get better and we want to regain our song, if we've lost our song because of divorce, betrayal, or some terrible rejection, how do we do that? We have to get honest with God.

Psalm 62 verse 8 says this, "Trust in Him at all times, O people, pour out your heart before Him. God is a refuge for us." Whatever's in your heart today, God says, "I want you to share that with me." All your hurts, all your heartaches, all your disappointments, all your frustrations, share it with me.

Let me know what's going on. God knows it already, but there's something about you telling Him that is very healing for you. Hannah had a big problem in 1 Samuel chapter 1. She was barren. Her rival, her husband's other wife, Elkanah had two wives and Peninnah was the other wife. She had lots of kids and Hannah couldn't have any kids.

Peninnah would make fun of Hannah because she was barren. That was such a stigma to the women in Israel if you couldn't have a child. She just came to the altar and she poured out her heart to the Lord. The scripture says after she poured out her heart and her hurt to the Lord, she felt much better. Her face was no longer sad.

There's something cathartic about tears and about crying and about sharing those things with the Lord. Get totally honest with Him. Pour out your heart to Him. Ask yourself some questions, because for some of us in this room, we've stuffed a lot of feelings and we've acted like it's no big deal, and it's a big deal and it will come back to haunt you.

My friend John Finch, who produced that movie The Father Effect, he said he didn't know how much his father killing himself when he was 12 really affected his life and continued to affect his life. He had stuffed all those feelings down. To do that is like burying toxic waste. You're never going to be able to bury it. Those containers are going to leak and that stuff is going to come out and it's going to poison your life.

Ask yourself some questions. Question number one: have you experienced a great trauma in life? A great trauma. These people had experienced a great trauma, tremendous trauma. The things that the Babylonians did to them when they came in and destroyed their sacred city. Jerusalem is not like somebody coming into Washington, D.C. and tearing down the White House as bad as that would be for us to witness that.

You're talking about the City of God. This is the place where God's presence in the temple, God's presence was there. All of a sudden it's destroyed. The enemy had come in, the pagans had come in. It was awful. They experienced a great trauma. So many people were getting killed, so many pregnant women were being killed in this disaster as the Babylonians came in and destroyed the city.

They were by the rivers of Babylon. Babylon has two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. These are the rivers of Babylon, probably the canals of Babylon. These people might have been canal diggers. It says that they sat down and wept. They put their elbows on their knees, they squatted down, which is kind of the posture of mourning in the Ancient Near East at this time, and they wept.

They didn't just cry a tear or two. That word wept means to wail, it means to sob, and they were just sobbing because of their plight in life. There's probably not a person in the room who hasn't experienced some kind of trauma. But if you've been throwing a sheet over your hurt and your pain, you need to pull the sheet off. You need to deal with that. You need to get that out.

Second question: do you feel as if God has forgotten you? They felt like that. God has forgotten me. Now, why would they feel like that? Because if you're a Jew living in Jerusalem, you feel like we're God's chosen people, and you're right, you are. This is God's city, and you're right, it is. This is the city called in the book of Psalms the city of the Great King.

The Great King is God. This is God's city. God chose that place. God loves the place known as Zion. God loves Jerusalem. He chose it from all the other places on the earth. He chose that place to put His glory. So we're in Jerusalem, this is God's city, this is God's temple, this is God's presence. God is greater than any other god. There is no other god like God.

And yet the Babylonians who are pagans, they worship Marduk, they worship a false god, they come in and they whip us. The Jews are saying, "God, what's the deal? How does this happen? How do these pagans defeat us and defeat You, God? How does Marduk beat Yahweh?" That's the mindset back then, our god beat your god. You see in this Psalm the captors were laughing. Sing us one of the songs of Zion. Sing us about the joy of your God.

Larry Nobles: You're listening to From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Schreve, and today's message How to Sing in the Rain. Pastor Jeff returns in just a moment with more. But as you've already heard today, How to Sing in the Rain shows us how important it is to sing our songs of joy even amid our fiery trials and deep hurts.

The message is one of five in Pastor Jeff's series Life Goes On, and that series along with his companion book Life Interrupted both are our gifts to you for your support this month of any amount. We couldn't be on the air were it not for you. Thank you so much for standing with From His Heart at a time when people really need the Lord.

To get your copy of Life Goes On and the book Life Interrupted, call 866-40-BIBLE or go online to fromhisheart.org. The Lord is not done with you. He still has a plan. He wants to heal your hurt and help you sing again of His faithfulness and help you navigate through your new normal. Now, let's conclude part one of the lesson How to Sing in the Rain.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: One of the things I love about Psalms is Psalms is true to life. Psalms lets you know this is what's going on. It doesn't sugarcoat stuff. David, a man after God's own heart, he would share from his heart in the book of Psalms. I think every Christian ought to read Psalms every single day. Read a Psalm or two or five.

If you read five Psalms a day, every month you read through the book of Psalms. Jesus quoted from the book of Psalms quite often. David in the book of Psalms, he'll tell you how he feels. He said in Psalm chapter 13, verse 1, "How long, O Lord, will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me?"

Did David really think that God had forgotten him? No, but he felt like that. Psalms tells you feelings are what they are. Feelings are not necessarily right or wrong, they're just feelings. You can't let feelings lead your life. You can't let them drive the train, but feelings are what feelings are. David would share his feelings.

If you read Psalm 13, you'll find out at the end of Psalm 13 he says, "But I'm going to trust in You." As Job said, "Though He slay me," speaking of the Lord, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." If you're feeling like God has forgotten you, share that with Him. Let Him know that. "Lord, I don't understand. Don't You care that I'm hurting here? Don't You care that I can't see what to do? Lord, I need You. Don't hide Your face from me."

Psalm 42 verse 3 talks about the plight of the captives in Babylon. It says this, "My tears have been my food day and night while they say to me all day long, 'Where is your God?'" Because our god, Marduk, the Babylonian god, beat Jehovah, Yahweh. They made fun of them. "Sing us one of the songs of Zion." So do you feel as if God has forgotten you?

Question number three: have you given up? What does it say in verse 2? As they're mourning, as they're weeping when we remembered Zion, "Upon the willows in the midst of it we hung our harps." We're done. We're not singing anymore. We're not playing anymore. We brought our harps, but we're not going to play our harps because we've lost our song.

Have you given up? It's a sad picture, this willow tree. It's just a droopy, sad tree. That's a good picture of what those people were like on the inside, just so sad, so forlorn, they just felt like they had lost everything. They were strangers in a strange land. They didn't want to be there. They gave up. They hung up their harps, never to sing again, never to play again.

I like what Jerry Falwell was famous for saying, "It's always too early to quit. It's always too early to quit." Don't hang up your harp. It's always too early to quit, but it's never too early to get honest with God about how you feel. So that's the first step. If you want to learn how to sing in the rain, how to have joy even in the midst of sadness, get totally honest with God.

Step number two: turn your attention to the kingdom of God. The psalmist, he's unnamed, it's just an experience of one of the captives. How can we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? Then he shifts gears. He says, "If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget her skill. May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not exalt Jerusalem above my chief joy."

Turn your attention to the kingdom of God. When the Bible uses Zion and Jerusalem, those are interchangeable. You can't really separate those two. Zion is really, if you get really technical, that's what they called the city of David. The city of David is right there in Jerusalem, and right above the city of David is the temple mount where Solomon built his temple.

It's separated a little bit, but not by very much. All that is encased in Jerusalem. So those are one and the same as they talk about Zion as they talk about Jerusalem. It's the dwelling place of the Most High God. When the rains come and the storms of sorrow come, we need to remember the kingdom of God. Remember the kingdom of God, because it's easy to forget about the kingdom.

We get so tied into this world that we forget about the next world. When he says, "If I forget you," that means to be oblivious of, to lose attention of or your focus on. Many of us are guilty of that, especially in the hard times because all we see is here. We see horizontally, we don't see above, we don't see what God is doing. Turn your attention to the kingdom of God.

Remember this: a Christian is not of this world. We live in this world, but we're not of this world. Our citizenship is in heaven, the Bible says in Philippians chapter 3. Peter says that we are aliens and strangers in this land. We really belong to God, we're citizens of heaven. This is how it works: when a person comes to know Christ in a saving way, they repent of sin, they put their faith and trust in Jesus.

The Lord saves them out of this world, so to speak, and sends them back to this world just like that. You die to your old way of life, you receive a brand new life in Jesus Christ. Baptism is always done in a pool of water. Why? Because it's a visible representation of an invisible reality. Buried with Christ through baptism, raised to walk in newness of life.

You die to your old way of life, but you don't stay dead. You get a brand new life in Jesus Christ and you go down and you come back up. So the Lord saves us out of this world and sends us back to this world, and our job is to be a witness in this world. But we're citizens of heaven and we have to constantly remind ourselves this world is not my home, I'm just passing through. Lord, don't let me forget about the kingdom.

If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget her skill. If your right hand forgets her skill, it's going to be hard to make a living. If you don't know how to use your hands because they were a very hands-oriented society and farmers and things like that, it was very important to have skill in your hands. If I can't do anything, then how am I going to live?

He says, "May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you." Lord, if I don't praise You, then I don't want to have a voice at all. If I don't exalt Jerusalem above my chief joy. A Christian is not of this world. A Christian is called to shine and share and sing in this world. Sing metaphorically speaking.

Shine, share, and sing, those are all the same thing. We're called to be His witnesses in this world. How do we witness in this world? By living a life that shines for Christ. Jesus said let your light so shine among men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. We shine, we share, we tell people about Jesus, and listen, we sing even in the hard times.

We have joy even in the hard times. That is your greatest opportunity to witness for the Lord is in the hard times. Anybody can praise God whenever everything's going great. It's when things are hard, when things are tough, when you're by the waters of Babylon and life has just knocked everything out from underneath you, then what do you do?

Do you do what Job's wife said do, curse God and die? Or do you still praise Him? Do you do what Job did and say though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him? I don't understand this, I don't like this, but I'm still going to trust in Him. I'm still going to praise Him. I'm still going to seek Him. How can we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?

That's what we're called to do. We live in a foreign land because our citizenship is in heaven, and when bad things happen on this earth, it's like, he never said it was going to be easy here. He said it was going to be difficult. As he told the apostle Paul, "You're going to have to suffer for my name's sake." But we need to keep remembering the kingdom. We're here for a purpose. This is not our home, that's our home. We're getting ready one day, we don't know when, but the Lord is coming back to take us home to heaven, and until then, He's called us to be faithful.

Larry Nobles: Thank you, Pastor Jeff, for the lesson today, part one of How to Sing in the Rain. Tomorrow, Pastor Jeff will return with the conclusion to this lesson from the series Life Goes On: How to Face a New Normal. We trust that you'll join us then.

If you've missed any of the messages from this series this month, you can always listen again online at fromhisheart.org, click the listen link. That's all for today. I'm Larry Nobles. Thanks for being with us and we trust you'll be right back here tomorrow for part two of How to Sing in the Rain. Here's just a taste of what's in store then.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: I don't know what's happened to you, but maybe you've hung up your harp on a willow tree. And the Lord says, "I'm not done with you. I still have a plan for you. I want to take your hurt and I want to turn it into a message so that you can shine, so that you can share, so that you can sing of my faithfulness."

Larry Nobles: That's when Pastor Jeff Schreve will open up God's word and share real truth, real love, and real hope from God's heart. Here on From His Heart.