October 30, 2010 Effective Grieving

The book of Lamentations makes a lot more sense when you read it right after Jeremiah.  Considering what had happened to Jerusalem, the siege and the exile to Babylon, it makes total sense to grieve.  Most of us are familiar with the "stages of grief" from psychology.  Instead of referring to that right now, I am looking solely at what I learned about grieving from what we've read so far in Lamentations.  Then we can evaluate the observations as we read the rest of the book and review what we've already read.

There are different points of view expressed in this long poem of grief.  It's not so confusing when you read it this way.  However, strong feelings of confusion are natural when experiencing grief, especially something so deeply affecting as what Jeremiah is writing about.  As we see Jerusalem personified as a grieving widow, and then enter in to her experience and the expression of her grief, we can learn a lot. 

There's Jeremiah's personal grief expressed here, too;  and sometimes it even seems that God is expressing His own grief through Jeremiah.  I came to the conclusion that God grieved as much as anyone for having to put His people through the stuff.  If you're a parent, you most likely know how painful it is for parents to do the needed discipline at times.  It is obvious that God did not enjoy the destruction and the resulting grief of His people.  He's a compassionate God.

So, my first conclusion is this:  if you've suffered loss, no matter what type, tell the story and express the grief as thoroughly and honestly as you can (and a creative medium such as journaling or poetry can help you do this).  At first, you don't have to think through the feelings, make sense of them, dissect them or judge them (they may seem irrational to you or others).  Just get them out in reviewable form.

If we are around someone who is grieving, being able to hear/see, etc. the feelings helps us share the grief with them-- helps us understand.  Reading this book, along with some of the Psalms and other people's expressions, can help us understand someone in extreme grief even if we haven't been there ourselves.  Being open to sharing our grief expressions with intimate others can open us up to sharing our grief with God, and to experiencing His comfort as well.  We understand from Lamentations that God does not hold Himself aloof from our grief, even if we have brought a loss onto ourselves (yes, I have been there). 

IMPORTANT: I want to note that we must not apply the discipline reason for loss to someone (even to ourselves, as in the throes of grief, we may become self-condemning) unless it is our own child we ourselves are disciplining.  It is up to the Holy Spirit to reveal the "whys" for things happening to people, and He may not always do so. It can be so terribly wounding to people for us to try to interpret their losses for them, even if we are correct-- and we most likely are not.  Please refrain from doing so (unless you're the prophet Jeremiah--and remember, he warned them in advance by God's orders).

Second, in the midst of the grieving process, it is paramount to remember what we know about God, review things He's done for us, and praise Him for His goodness and steadfast love.  Making ourselves read or listen to the Word is essential in this process.  If we have journaled about His work in our lives, this is a good time to go back to it and read it again.    We may be feeling really angry at God, and maybe we're blaming Him for stuff.  He can handle it, and He is OK with us expressing these thoughts and feelings.  But He also wants us to draw away from the feelings and the grief sometimes, and just meditate on Him.  Sometimes others can remind us of His love and goodness, and His good plans for us-- this must be done gently and with love.  Look how Jeremiah did this so tenderly in the middle of Lamentations.  Such a good example!

The third part is a melding process of the first two.  The Holy Spirit begins to work in us to compare and contrast our experience and feelings of grief with the realities of God.  The more we are able to immerse ourselves in Him and His Word, including fellowship with wise and loving believers, the quicker we are able to integrate what we've experienced and feel with our knowledge of Him and the truth He reveals to us.  Slowly, (and it's different for everyone in timing and the way the process looks), things start to clear up.  We see where we need to repent, and we are able to do so.  We see what God is doing in our life, and we are able to hear and accept His promises for the future.   He imparts His peace to us as we hold on in faith to what we believe about Him. 

The more solidly we are rooted into the Rock that is God, and the more thoroughly we have allowed His Word to change our thinking, the more equipped we will be to endure hardship, loss, and even disaster, and the more effectively we will be able to work through our grief and help others to do so as well.  Even if we find ourselves being disciplined for something, we will be secure in the love and goodness of our Father.  Perhaps we will even avoid said discipline by having experienced vicariously the loss and grief, repentance and restoration of another.  I believe this is God's hope for us all.  

October 18, 2010 Bubbles of Hope

God loves us so much!  He is daily sending out His messages of love and hope, if we just had ears to hear, eyes to see, and hearts to understand.  Jeremiah received a message of hope in a mundane transaction of real estate.  How often we miss these things because we're not expecting them.

Are you in the midst of disaster?  Turn to God.  He is the God of restoration.
Are you suffering from depression?  I am your hope, says the Lord.
Are you being disciplined?  "For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” Jeremiah 31:34

In Christ we have a new covenant, the promise of God's goodness forever.  Even if you feel like you are at the bottom of the ocean. . . weighed down by impossible circumstances and crushed by unbearable heaviness. . . God is with you, and nothing is too hard for Him.  Do you feel separated from God's love?  There are bubbles all around you!  Take these to your heart, for they contain the oxygen of hope that will sustain you until He comes and lifts you up. 

"And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from doing them good; but I will put My fear in their hearts so that they will not depart from Me.  Yes, I will rejoice over them to do them good" Jeremiah 31: 40-41a NKJV

July 3, 2010 Turn At the Light

God's word testifies today of the power that His light and truth have to turn a person, or even a nation to Himself.  God had mercy on Josiah because he turned to the Lord, but the nation still had major consequences to deal with because of their great idolatry.  Paul the Apostle had a magnificent conversion when he encountered the glorious Christ on the road to Damascus.  He had a lot of suffering to deal with in his life, but the Lord used him to reach many souls for Him-- his letters minister to us so much even today.

I remember many years ago-- as a backslidden young woman lost in darkness-- coming to myself just like the progidal son did.  The description in today's 2 Kings reading reminds me so much of how I felt back then.  Suddenly, my eyes were opened, and I was overwhelmed when the Lord showed me how every area of my life was sin!  But because I turned to Him when He revealed himself to me, He cleansed me and healed me, and is in the process of restoring all that was lost through my rebelliousness and idolatry.  God is so good!  He will do the same for anyone that turns to Jesus as their Lord and Savior in true repentance, and He will lead them in the Way, the Truth and the Life.

I pray, on the anniversary of our "independence," that our nation will likewise have a great conversion.  We may still have to accept hard consequences for our mistakes, rebellions and idolatries.  But God will have mercy on any one who comes to Him humbly.  If enough of us turn to Him with our whole heart, perhaps this country may again shine His light as we are called to do.  As a nation, as well as individually, we must not trust in our wealth or our power to save us; we must humble ourselves before God and rely on Him alone.

"The rich man’s wealth is his strong city,
And like a high wall in his own esteem.
Before destruction the heart of a man is haughty,
And before honor is humility." Proverbs 18:11-12 NKJV  

June 1, 2010 How to Light Up the King's Face

"In the light of the king’s face is life, and his favor is like a cloud of the latter rain." Proverbs 16:15  The promises in this proverb are great, and they induce me to want to "light up the king's face."  So, how to do this??  I want God's life and favor.  I'm getting a picture of the glory cloud in the day of the latter rain!  I think I would like to walk in His glorious presence in this time.  Don't you?

Jesus' response to Thomas, after His resurrection, gives us a wonderful clue as to how to excel in pleasing Him: Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” John 20: 29  When we believe His Word, even when it comes through others, we please Him.  He can work through faith.  Jesus didn't condemn Thomas for needing to have proof, He just indicated that he wasn't going to be as blessed as those who believed without seeing. 

The Apostle John was one of the disciples who believed Jesus had risen without first seeing Him in the body.  Later on in his life, he was given heavenly visions that showed Christ in His kingly glory, as well as many things about the future.  This is a kind of blessing that I would like to receive!  When we only believe what we see with our eyes, we certainly limit our spiritual vision.

When we love Jesus enough to obey Him, this is when our faith can work  (Gal. 5:6).  We don't get proofs of His Word, most of the time, until after we have carried out His Word.  We just have to obey.  If our faith doesn't operate without signs or proofs, then our love is small and we will end up being  disobedient.  This, of course, is a way to NOT please the Lord, and then we don't have the flow of favor we are hoping for.

I realize that some of what I'm saying here could be taken as if God shows favoritism: but giving favor and practicing favoritism is not the same thing.  God doesn't have "favorite children."  He gives reward and disciplines us depending on what we need at any given time.  Really, His discipline is favor, it just doesn't feel like it at the time it's happening.  All His children have His favor (and this means His "born-again" children, not just His human creation).  He still blesses everyone with His overflowing goodness, even unbelievers-- "He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good." (Matthew 5:45)

Here's a verse that makes it clear that there is a way to "light up the king's face": "But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him." Hebrews 11:6  There's reward!  Who doesn't like reward?

In order to diligently seek the Lord, we have to believe there is more than what we can see, and that God is desiring to give it.  "Seeking" is looking for something we haven't found yet.  If I were "seeking employment" or "seeking a soulmate," that means I believe there is a job out there that I could do, or a person with whom I could  happily spend my life.  I don't seek for things I don't believe exist.

The more I know God, the more I seek for Him, because He keeps telling me about things I haven't seen yet, things that are in Him.  When I believe His Word-- whether I read it in the Bible, I hear it in a sermon, or the Holy Spirit whispers it in my heart-- I begin to "ask, seek and knock" for the thing I heard about.  This is when I can receive.  This is when I am blessed with that favor that was waiting right there in heaven with Christ.

The disciples were wonderfully blessed by having the opportunity to walk around with Jesus, see His miracles, and hear God's Word straight from His mouth.  But we are even more blessed!  Why? Since we don't have evidence of constant "seeing" and "touching," we have a greater opportunity to believe by pure faith (which is itself the "evidence of things not seen" Hebrews 11:1).  Therefore, WE have the opportunity to "light up the king's face" with our faith in Him and His Word.  This opens the door to greater blessings and favor than you or I can even imagine.   

May 29, 2010 The Method of Merciful Exposure

Reading the Bible, especially the Old Testament, can sometimes feel like wending our way through the darkest recesses of the human psyche, groping for answers.  While in the obscurity of waywardness and hidden motives, I am glad to be reminded that, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." Psalm 119: 105.  This is all here for my instruction: teach me, Holy Spirit!

The human tendency is to gloat over other people's wrongdoings, which must explain the preponderance of evil in human storytelling: well, at least I'm not as bad as all that, we think--  and are therefore justified in our own minds.  Holy Spirit's reasons for taking us through the darkness of history includes freeing us from our own darkness.  We must admit it when He shows it to us.  Yes, it's there, and I am not free from it yet.  It's so hard for us to admit that the same depravity that caused Absalom to do the things he did, that caused Judas to betray Jesus, and Peter to deny Him, still lives in our own heart to some degree.  Until we are completely changed into the likeness of Christ, we still have darkness within. 

One of the hardest things for me to understand has been how the Lord seems to allow sin to run its full course.  We ache for others when they are on a path of darkness, yearning to "fix" it and get them on the right track before it's too late.  Often, we can only pray.  In my own personal experience, I know the Lord begins to whisper to each one of us of our heart condition before it has ever caused us to stray.  Holy Spirit desires to enlighten our darkness with His holy light and to lead us onto the right path. 

I find this is one of the most important functions of Scripture-- to give us wisdom without us having to go through our own experience of failure.  He will point to someone else's mess and say, look, there's the seed of that in your own heart.  If we are humble and willing to agree with Him, He grants us repentance and cleansing.  He shows us the Light we need in order to overcome that darkness and avoid the twisted path of wickedness.  But if we are proud and stubborn, this hidden depravity of soul will reveal itself through more and more obvious behavior, until everyone around us knows about it, often leaving us blind to it ourself.  How many of us have to totally "hit bottom" before we will turn our sin over to God?  It is God's patient mercy that allows our sin to run full course.

Eventually, I got tired of rejecting Holy Spirit's private whispering that would preserve me from public humiliation.  I listen to Him now.  I learned the hard way, though, I have to admit.  I am so grateful for His love that covers a multitude of sins.  Sins I never have to commit! 

April 19, 2010

All the passages today, from Luke on, seemed to speak to me of the consequences of rejecting the Word of God.  Jesus wept over Jerusalem, prophesying that “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” Luke 19:41-44

As I read Psalm 88, it seemed like the psalmist (not David) was seeing ahead to that day of destruction and expressing the feelings of a people who had experienced that destruction.  He seemed not to see the restoration, but that doesn't mean there was not to be one.  It reminds me of the times I have been in the throes of deep depression and hopelessness.  It does truly feel like a waking death.  However, I can testify that if we will continue to cry out to the Lord, He will come to us, and again reveal Himself to us and restore us, if we will respond to Him and believe His word to us.  He will come with whatever we need-- conviction, correction, healing-- but He always comes with love.

How often, I wonder, does our Lord visit our life with His presence and weep for our lack of response to Him?  It does not give Him pleasure to have to bring discipline, or to have to allow us to "hit bottom" so that we will turn to Him.  But one thing is certain, when we do realize we are in need of Him, He will answer our cry for help.  He will come with "the things that make for our peace."