Creative Suffering

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God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Creative Suffering

Countdown to God’s Healing: I’m excited to announce that BMH Books will release my fifth book soon (in April 2010). To read a sample section of God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting please click here. To pre-order your autographed copy at 30% off, please visit here.

As we countdown to the release, I’ll be sharing periodic excerpts, such as today’s post: Creative Suffering.

Take Heart

We need to be able to deal with life’s losses in the context of God’s healing. Jesus did. “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

Peace. With one word Jesus quiets the quest of our soul. We thirst for peace—shalom, wholeness, stillness, rest, healing.

Take heart. Hope. Come alive again.

That’s what you long for. I know it is, because it’s what I want.

The Anvil of God

We live in a fallen world and it often falls on us. When it does, when the weight of the world crushes us, squeezes the life out of us, we need hope. New life. A resuscitated heart. A resurrected life.

Brilliantly the Apostle Paul deals simultaneously with grieving and hoping. Do not “grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). Paul, who offers people the Scriptures and his own soul (1 Thessalonians 2:8), skillfully ministers to sufferers.

To blend losses and healing, grieving and hoping, requires creative suffering. Frank Lake powerfully depicts the process.

“There is no human experience which cannot be put on the anvil of a lively relationship with God and man, and battered into a meaningful shape.”

Notice what the anvil is—a lively relationship with God and God’s people. Notice the process—battering. Notice the result—meaning, purpose. What cannot be removed, God makes creatively bearable.

Converting Suffering

Another individual, this one intimately acquainted with grief, also pictures creative suffering. British hostage, Terry Waite, spent 1,460 days in solitary confinement in his prison cell in Beirut. Reflecting on his savage mistreatment and his constant struggle to maintain his faith, he reveals:

“I have been determined in captivity, and still am determined, to convert this experience into something that will be useful and good for other people. I think that’s the way to approach suffering. It seems to me that Christianity doesn’t in any way lessen suffering. What it does is enable you to take it, to face it, to work through it and eventually convert it.”

Creative suffering doesn’t simply accept suffering, through the Cross it creatively converts it. In God’s Healing for Life’s Losses, our passion is to learn together how to grieve but not as those who have no hope.

Join the Conversation

What do you think about Terry Waite’s perspective? Christianity doesn’t lesson suffering, but enables you to face it, work through it, and convert it.

Christ Our Sentry

The Anatomy of Anxiety, Part 14:
More Than Conquerors Through Our Conqueror

Note: For previous posts in this blog mini-series, please visit: 1: http://bit.ly/aHstk, 2: http://bit.ly/20R01P, 3: http://bit.ly/HAoxI, 4: http://bit.ly/1I6XmF, 5: http://bit.ly/19Jdqt, 6: http://bit.ly/19vCXx, 7: http://bit.ly/21wPLg, 8: http://bit.ly/m50On, 9: http://bit.ly/4vhNIt, 10: http://bit.ly/1ClPr4, 11: http://bit.ly/2Sb2Ec, 12: http://bit.ly/2xv4BV, 13: http://bit.ly/baNuS.

Does worry, doubt, or fear get the best of you sometimes? Do you wonder where anxiety comes from and how to defeat it in your life and the lives of those you love? Then we need a biblical anatomy of anxiety. And, we need God’s prescription for victory over anxiety.

“Cure” Equals Caring for Others

The movement toward healing of anxiety is a relational movement toward Christ and the Body of Christ. Many people struggling with anxiety issues feel disconnected from others. Sometimes they can’t attend functions. Other times they do, but they feel so “different.” At times they feel shame in their relationship to Christ. They believe the lie that says, “If I only trusted Christ more, then I wouldn’t have any fear. He must be ashamed of me.”

As I noted in an earlier post, the “goal” of healing is not necessarily the absence of all feelings of anxiety and fearfulness. The goal is the experience of a peace that passes all understanding, even if the struggle with anxiety is not totally eliminate and defeated until heaven.

The goal is also to move from what we’ve called “stuck vigilance” to “healthy vigilance.” Vigilance, recall, is God’s gift to us to warn us of impending danger and to prompt us toward courageous response. When is a person “healed” from anxiety? When are you healed from anxiety? When you are tending and befriending others. When you are protecting others, not your self.

In the opening credit scenes to the TV show Monk, there’s a clip where Monk is racing frantically after an airplane. He’s risking his life, despite his many phobias, to rescue his assistant and friend, Natalie. Monk wasn’t “cured,” if cured means no more feelings of fear. But Monk was and is on his way toward “cure” if “cure” means caring for others.

“Cure” Equals Trusting Christ

When the alarm bells of vigilance go off, God designed us to enter sentry mode—to vigilantly tend, befriend, and defend. In the midst of overwhelming, terrifying fear, how in the world are we supposed to have that kind of courage?

It comes when we move from stuck vigilance to trusting vigilance when we see and experience Christ as our Sentry. Scripture after Scripture calls Christ our “Rock,” “Defender,” “Strong Tower,” “Fortress,” “Shield,” “Defender,” and so much more.

What’s your image of Christ?

When anxiety, fear, and phobia strikes, the battle plan involves seeing Christ as the One who battles for us. In anxiety, we scan, and scan, and scan—obsessively pondering every possible future negative eventuality. In victory over anxiety, we hear God’s story of scanning for us. “Cast your care on Him, for He cares for you.” “Do not fear (or give into fear), because He never slumbers or sleeps.”

In defeating anxiety, more than anything else we must ask, “What is our image of God?” Is He for us, or against us? Do we see Him as our Conqueror through Whom we become more than conquerors? Through Him who loves us so…so much that He empowers us to face every fear!

The Rest of the Story

In facing and fighting fear, we not only need to see Who Christ is; we also need to understand God’s plan for fear. What is God’s design for fear?

That’s our question (and answer) for our next post.

God Is Dependable; Life Isn't!

The Anatomy of Anxiety, Part 10:
God Is Dependable Even When Life Is Undependable

Note: For previous posts in this blog mini-series, please visit: Part 1: http://bit.ly/aHstk, Part 2: http://bit.ly/20R01P, Part 3: http://bit.ly/HAoxI, Part 4: http://bit.ly/1I6XmF, Part 5: http://bit.ly/19Jdqt, Part 6: http://bit.ly/19vCXx, Part 7: http://bit.ly/21wPLg, Part 8: http://bit.ly/m50On, Part 9: http://bit.ly/4vhNIt.

Does worry, doubt, or fear get the best of you sometimes? Do you wonder where anxiety comes from and how to defeat it in your life and the lives of those you love? Then we need a biblical anatomy of anxiety.

And, we need God’s prescription for victory over anxiety.

God Is Dependable

What message does someone struggling with anxiety need?

When life is bad, we need to remember that God is good—all the time. And when life is undependable, we need to know that God is dependable—all the time.

Life can feel like it is out of control, capricious. Stuff seems to happen for no reason and with little or no warning.

When cares overwhelm, we need to remember that we can cast all our cares on Him, because He cares for us. We can depend on Christ’s care because He is the same yesterday, today, and forever—He is eternally dependable.

Listening to Sad Stories

Helping one another to embrace our dependably caring God is the ultimate goal. However, that does not necessarily mean that our first response is to spout verses about trust.

Before we race in telling others about God’s story, we need to earn the right to speak by listening to our friend’s story.

People will hear us as we talk about God’s story of healing only if we have been compassionately listening to them talk about their story of hurting.

It’s excruciating to feel enslaved to fear. It’s confusing and even maddening to have something so good (that “vigilance” that we spoke of in Parts 1-8) turn so harmful.

As a spiritual friend, we want to empathize with our friend who is struggling with anxiety. We want to compassionately identify with them in their story of life that feels so out of control.

If you’ve never experienced panic or phobia, if you’ve never been overwhelmed by nebulous anxiety, if life for you means charging ahead, then you will need to prayerfully ask God to enable you to connect with and comfort those who feel like “anxiety” is staffed on their forehead.

Can you listen to a friend’s hurt without compulsively needing to immediately fix your friend? Or, are you afraid of their fear? Anxious about their anxiety?

The Rest of the Story

What do you listen for? How do you respond to what you hear? We’ll address those vital questions next time.

Keeping the Faith

A Voice for the Voiceless: African American Women of Faith
Part 4: Octavia Rogers Albert: Keeping the Faith

Note: Taken from Sacred Friendships: Celebrating the Legacy of Women Heroes of the Faith. For more information on this book, please visit: http://bit.ly/YmaM1

Note: For part one of this blog mini-series, please visit: http://bit.ly/T7Zas and for part two, please visit: http://bit.ly/14aWH6 and for part three please visit: http://bit.ly/wJs58

Keeping the Faith

Sustaining enables suffering people to survive.

Healing and guiding encourage and empower sufferers to move beyond the suffering—to thrive.

Healing and guiding never ignore, deny, or minimize affliction; they always heroically, resiliently empower believers to keep the faith (healing) and to live out that faith active in love (guiding).

Octavia challenges her suffering spiritual friends to live their Christian faith by recognizing the common bond they share with captive Israel of old. Her work emphasizes the unshakable faith of slaves who survived and thrived despite their captivity, their ridicule, and the hypocrisy of their masters. Though urging them to be longsuffering, Octavia never encourages them to be passive.

Her husband and daughter, in their original Preface to The House of Bondage, clearly saw Octavia’s twin goals of sustaining (surviving) and healing/guiding (thriving).

“An only daughter unites with the writer [Octavia’s husband] in sending out these pages penned by a precious and devoted mother and wife, whose angelic spirit is constantly seen herein . . .” Having honored Octavia’s character, her daughter proceeds to venerate her ministry. “. . . and whose subtle and holy influence seems to continue to guide and protect both [daughter and husband] in the path over which they since have had to travel without the presence and cheer of her inspiring countenance.”

Hope Inspired through Inspired Scripture

Octavia inspires hope through inspired Scripture.

Often it involves spiritual conversations through guiding questions that draw out Aunt Charlotte’s embedded faith. Having listened to Charlotte’s testimony of repentance and faith in Christ, Octavia asks her “whether she felt lonely in this unfriendly world.”

Charlotte answers, “No, my dear; how can a child of God feel lonesome? My heavenly Father took care of me in slave-time. He led me all the way along, and now he has set me free, and I am free both in soul and body.”

At other times, Octavia’s counsel was more direct as she used scriptural exploration and Bible reading to encourage Aunt Charlotte and others. Charlotte was nearly blind by the time she met Octavia, and thus harbored no hopes of learning to read. On one occasion, while discussing the hope-giving nature of Scripture, Octavia reads Job 19:25-27 (“I know my redeemer lives”).

“Thank you, too, for it” Charlotte exclaims in response.

Apples of Gold

What stands out in Octavia’s use of spiritual conversations and scriptural explorations is her remarkable knack for selecting the right topic and/or passage for the right person at the right moment. When Aunt Charlotte shares about the inhumane, brutal treatment she received at the hands of her white masters, Octavia responds by reading the hymn All the Way My Savior Leads Me.

Charlotte replies immediately. “O, bless the Lord for the chance of hearing those word! They suit my case. I want to sing that very hymn in glory.”

To “suit the case” of another is to connect, to speak timely words, appropriate for the person and the situation. In this, Octavia follows the inspired counsel of the Apostle Paul. “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen” (Ephesians 4:29).

The Rest of the Story

For the rest of the story, please return to this blog for part five . . .

Note: Readers can enjoy the empowering narratives of over two-dozen African American women (and scores of African American men) narrated in Kellemen and Edwards, Beyond the Suffering. For more information, please visit: http://bit.ly/XvsTu

Secluded in Our Ivory Towers

Why Some Biblical Counseling Is Only Half Biblical!
Part Ten: Secluded in Our Ivory Towers

*Note: If you’re disappointed that I’m saying that some biblical counseling is only half biblical, then please read my comments at the end of my first post in this series: http://tinyurl.com/n8k799.

My Premise

Some modern biblical counseling considers the seriousness of sin—sinning, but spends much less time equipping people to minister to the gravity of grinding affliction—suffering. When we provide counseling for sin, but fail to provide counseling and counselor training for suffering, then such biblical counseling is only half biblical.

Secluded in Our Ivory Towers

Though acknowledging suffering, it became an underdeveloped element of some biblical counselors. When they did address suffering, it often became “private preaching” with a moralistic, non-relational, directive bent.

Why did this occur? Preaching training, theological perspectives, views of the image of God, and personal sin issues all combined with the historical setting to “set up” early biblical counseling for movement away from the Church’s historic practice and the Bible’s comprehensive focus on sustaining and healing for suffering.

Non-Comprehensive Theological Training

Frank Lake, who we quoted in post one of this series, traces the neglect of suffering to a shift in the focus of ministry training.

“If theological training had not lost its Galilean accent on persons encountered by the roadside or on the roof tops, in favor of libraries and essays in the schools, it would be unnecessary to argue the case for pastoral listening (empathy) and dialogue (conversing with, not private preaching at).”

Secluded in our ivory towers, far from the gravity of grinding affliction, we lose our perspective and our sensitivity. Pastors taught in such settings are trained to preach at people. They then enter a parish with suffering people—people like Job and the man born blind in John 9. Lake describes what stereotypically occurs when pastors trained to talk at sinners are forced to face sufferers.

“The pastoral counselor, in spite of himself, finds himself tittering out his usual jocular reassuring prescriptions, minimizing the problem, and thumping in optimism or the need for further effort. He has the ingrained professional habit of filling every unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of good advice.”

Trained to preach, but not trained to counsel, many pastors, to this day, are ill-equipped to help the suffering. Theirs is an instinctive activism that revolts against a caring presence and words of comfort. They assume that a directive response is best for the pastor’s busy schedule, and that the preaching mode is best for the care and cure of souls. All of this, despite what the Bible and church history teaches.

Non-Comprehensive Theology

Another reason why some biblical counselors are ill-equipped to help the suffering relates to a non-comprehensive theological perspective. The early biblical counseling movement was launched based upon one version of Calvinistic, Reformed theology. However, it was not the comprehensive version practiced by the Reformers like Luther or by Calvin himself. Both Luther and Calvin had a comprehensive, compassionate theology that included a focus on sin and suffering and included a focus on creation, fall, and redemption.

Early pioneers in biblical counseling, reacting against the pendulum of liberalism, the social gospel, and secular psychology, added to it their focus on the fall, sin, and depravity. Such factors were a recipe for biblical counseling that failed to address suffering biblically.

Focusing on the fall, sin, and depravity, and not as much on creation and our original design, and not as much on redemption and dignity in Christ and deprivation and suffering, they defined and described counseling as confronting sin and minimized the scope of true pastoral ministry.

Non-Comprehensive Image of God

Additionally, some biblical counselors tended to focus on the “volitional” element in the Imago Dei. That is, when they considered the image of God in human beings, they focused on the will, actions, and behaviors (and in later years on motivation)—putting off and putting on right actions. As biblical counseling developed, it began to focus more on the mind—putting off and putting on a right thinking—mind renewal.

However, to this day, there is not as much focus on the relational aspects that the Puritan Jonathan Edwards called “the religious affections”—longings, desires, thirsts, etc. And, to this day, some biblical counselors consider emotions to be “the black sheep of the image bearing family.”

Valuing reason and action above affections and emotions, when they did address suffering, they did so with a focus on right actions and right responses in reaction to suffering, while minimizing the emotional and relational aspects of and responses to suffering.

Personal Sin and Sinful Fear

Since the Bible insists on comprehensive and compassionate ministry that both confronts the sinning and comforts the suffering, and we fail to do this, then part of the reason must be internal. That is, even given all the historical, cultural factors, we can’t blame externals for our failure to do what the Bible calls us to do—comfort the suffering.

The personal sin of the fear of man is another reason that some biblical counselors fail to address suffering. Preachers and pastors (and lay people) are terrified, scared to death, to enter hurts deeply. They are much more comfy behind the pulpit generalizing about life, then facing suffering people face-to-face and moving into their hurting lives.

If they do come face-to-face with a suffering soul, it is much easier, much safer, to see counseling as problem-solving and to treat the soul as if it is a car engine to be fixed or a computer virus to be eliminated, then it is to relate soul-to-soul. Teach truth. Exhort right response. Talk. But weep with those who weep? But listen empathetically? But enter deeply? But sustain? But climb in the casket?

We can explore externals, but the reality is, the bottom line is, when pastors, spiritual friends, and biblical counselors fail to engage in biblical sustaining and healing for suffering—it is a sin.

Where Do We Go From Here

So far we’ve seen what we should do: care-front sinning and comfort suffering. So far we’ve seen why we have not done so: historical, cultural, theological, and personal factors that led to a minimizing of sustaining and healing for suffering.

Next we’ll explore how the minimizing of suffering negatively impacts Body life—the natural, ongoing, daily one-another ministry of God’s people in the church.

Creative Suffering or Destructive Suffering?

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 42: Conclusion—

Creative Suffering or Destructive Suffering?

It’s clear that there is a typical way to respond to suffering. That typical way does not typically factor God into the equation.

It’s equally and biblically clear that there’s a better way, God’s way to respond to suffering. We can face suffering face-to-face with God and we can empower our spiritual friends, parishioners, and counselees to do so if we will follow a biblical theology of suffering—a sufferology.

This biblical sufferology uses sustaining trialogues to help our spiritual friends to move from candor, to complaint, to cry, to comfort.

It uses healing trialogues to encourage our spiritual friends to move from waiting to wailing, to weaving, to worshipping.

Biblical sufferology helps us to find God in the midst of our suffering, to glorify God by how we respond to suffering, and to become more like Christ as we face our suffering.

Select Bibliography of Biblical Sufferology

Adams, Jay E. A Theology of Christian Counseling: More Than Redemption. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1979.

Aden, L. “Comfort/Sustaining.” Pages 193-195 in The Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling. Edited by R. J. Hunter. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990.

Eyrich, Howard and William Hines. Curing the Heart: A Model for Biblical Counseling. Ross-shire UK: Christian Focus, 2002.

Graham, L. K. “Healing.” Pages 497-501 in The Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling. Edited by R. J. Hunter. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990.

Kellemen, Robert. Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007.

Kellemen, Robert. Soul Physicians: A Theology of Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Third revised edition. Winona Lake, IN: BMH Books, 2007.

Kellemen, Robert. “Spiritual Care in Historical Perspective: Martin Luther as a Case Study in Christian Sustaining, Healing, Reconciling, and Guiding.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Kent State University, 1997.

Kellemen, Robert. Spiritual Friends: A Methodology of Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Revised third edition. Winona Lake, IN: BMH Books, 2007.

Kellemen, Robert. Sacred Friendships: Celebrating the Legacy of Women Soul Care Givers and Spiritual Directors. Winona Lake, IN: BMH Books, 2009.

Kellemen, Robert. What to Do After the Hug. Crown Point, IN: RPM Books, 2009.

Keller, Timothy. “Puritan Resources for Pastoral Counseling.” Journal of Pastoral Practice 9, no. 3 (1988): 11-44.

Lake, Frank. Clinical Theology. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966.

Lewis, C. S. The Problem of Pain. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1962.

Powlison, David. Seeing with New Eyes: Counseling and the Human Condition through the Lens of Scripture. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2003.

Powlison, David. Speaking the Truth in Love: Counsel in Community. Winston-Salem, NC: Punch Bookstore, 2005.

Tripp, Paul David. Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands: People in Need of Change Helping People in Need of Change. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2002.

Waite, Terry. Taken on Trust. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1993.

Wangerin, Walter. Mourning Into Dancing. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992.

Seeing with New Eyes

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 36: Seeing with New Eyes

What about you? We’ve explored how we can journey with others helping them to entrust themselves to God’s larger purposes, good plans, and eternal perspective. But what about you?

Whether you are reflecting on your past suffering or experiencing current grief, here are a few suggestions and questions. I’ve designed them to help you to move from despair to hope, from darkness to light—seeing life with spiritual eyes instead of eyeballs only.

Don’t try to address every suggestion. Pick a couple that connect with you.

My Weaving Journey

How could you look at your suffering not with rose-colored glasses, but with faith eyes, with Cross-eyes, with 20/20 spiritual vision?

What might God be up to in your suffering?

God’s story doesn’t obliterate your painful story, but it gives it meaning. What meaning could you find as you weave God’s story into yours?

C. S. Lewis famously noted that, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, but shouts to us in our pain. Pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” What is God shouting to you in your pain?

How could you apply Genesis 50:19-20 to your life? “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”

How could God be weaving good out of the evil you are experiencing?

Life hurts. Wounds penetrate. Without grace narratives, hopelessness and bitterness flourish. With a grace narrative, how could hope and forgiveness flow and your grace perspective grow?

“In what ways do you think the world, the flesh, and the devil are trying to creep into your thinking (1 John 4:1-6; Galatians 5:13-21; Ephesians 2:1-3; 6:10-18)?”

“What passages have you found helpful in gaining a new perspective on your suffering?”

“How could you relate Paul’s perspective on his suffering in Romans 8:17-28 to your life? How could taking on his perspective alter your perspective?”

“What dead things do you anticipate Christ resurrecting? What will your resurrected life look like it?”

Gain a New Perspective on Suffering

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 35: Gain a New Perspective on Suffering

How do you help others to trust God’s Person, larger purposes, good plans, and eternal perspective? There are many effective ways to journey with people toward seeing life with spiritual eyes. We’ll focus again on trialogues: three-way conversations between us, our friend, and the ultimate Spiritual Friend: Christ.

Sample Weaving Trialogues

Consider some sample biblical trialogues to assist people to overcome doubt and despair by looking at life with faith eyes.

“In what ways do you think the world, the flesh, and the devil are trying to creep into your thinking (1 John 4:1-6; Galatians 5:13-21; Ephesians 2:1-3; 6:10-18)?”

“What passages have you found helpful in gaining a new perspective on your suffering?”

“When else have you experienced suffering like this? What did you learn about God in that situation? What would you repeat and what would you change?”

“How could you relate Paul’s perspective on his suffering in Romans 8:17-28 to your life? How could taking on his perspective alter your perspective?”

“God promises that all things work together for good for His children (Romans 8:28). What good purposes has God already provided to you or in you through these events?”

“What might God be wanting to accomplish in your life through your circumstances?”

“God is all-powerful, holy, and in control of everything. What impact do these characteristics of God have on you as you face this?”

“What applications can you make from Joseph’s conviction that though people intend things for our harm, God weaves them together for our good?”

“How could you emulate Joseph and forgive those who intended you harm? What would that forgiveness look like?”

“Let’s explore passages on forgiveness such as Matthew 18:21-35; 2 Corinthians 2:3-11; Ephesians 4:32; Colossians 3:8-17.”

“Let’s explore passages on reconciliation and restitution such as Matthew 18:15-20; 2 Corinthians 6:11-13; 2 Corinthians 7:8-13.”

“What dead things do you anticipate Christ resurrecting? What will your resurrected life look like it?”

And What About You?

I invite you back tomorrow as we’ll explore how you and I can entrust ourselves to God.

Life Is Bad, But God Is Good

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 34: Life Is Bad, But God Is God

Weaving is entrusting myself to God’s larger purposes, good plans, and eternal perspective. Weaving is everywhere in Scripture. We find weaving in passages like John 14; Romans 8; Ephesians 3; Colossians 3; Hebrews 11; and Revelation 19-22.

Joseph's Story

Hear Joseph’s words to his fearful family in Genesis 50:19-20. “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”

Joseph uses “intended” both for his brothers’ plans and God’s purposes. The Hebrew word has a very tangible sense of to weave, to plait, to interpenetrate as in the weaving together of fabric to fashion a robe, perhaps even a coat of many colors.

It was also used in a negative, metaphorical sense to suggest a malicious plot, the devising of a cruel scheme. Other times the Jews used intended to symbolically picture the creation of some new and beautiful purpose or result through the weaving together of seemingly haphazard, miscellaneous, or malicious events.

Life Is Bad, But God Is Good

“Life is bad,” Joseph admits. “You plotted against me for evil. You intended to spoil or ruin something wonderful.

“God is good,” Joseph insists. “God wove good out of evil,” choosing a word for “good” that is the superlative of pleasant, beautiful. That is, God intended to create beauty from ashes. Joseph discovers healing through God’s grace narrative.

Further, he offers his blundering brothers tastes of grace.

"And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been a famine in the land, and for the next five years there will not be plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt" (Genesis 45:5-8).

Grace Narrative

Amazing! I hope you caught the words. “To save lives,” “to preserve,” “by a great deliverance.” That’s a grace narrative, a salvation narrative. Had God not preserved a remnant of Abraham’s descendents, then Jesus would never have been born.

Joseph uses his spiritual eyes to see God’s great grace purposes in saving not only Israel and Egypt, but also the entire world.

I hope you also caught Joseph’s repetition. “God sent me.” “God sent me ahead of you.” “It was not you who sent me here, but God.” Joseph sees the smaller story of human scheming for ruin. However, Joseph perceives that God trumps that smaller scheme with His larger purpose by weaving beauty out of ugly.

Life hurts. Wounds penetrate. Without grace narratives, hopelessness and bitterness flourish. With a grace narrative, hope and forgiveness flow and perspective grows.

Weaving Truth Into Life

Join the journey again the next two days as we weave truth into life—showing how to use weaving in the dailyness of real life.

Living Passionately for God

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 31: Living Passionately for God

What about you? We’ve explored how we can journey with others helping them to long deeply for heaven while living passionately on earth. But what about you?

Whether you are reflecting on your past suffering or experiencing current grief, here are a few suggestions and questions. I’ve designed them to help you to move from deadening to groaning—staying alive to life even when it crushes you to death.

Don’t try to address every suggestion. Pick a couple that connect with you.

My Wailing to God Journey

1. When are you most tempted to deaden the pain of life? How do you defeat this temptation so you’re able to groan to God?

2. Groaning exposes us for the needy people we are. How hard is it for you to admit your neediness—to yourself, to others, to God?

3. God made you a longing, thirsting, hungering, desiring being. What are you longing, thirsting, hungering for and desiring?

4. How do you stay alive to life when it crushes you to death?

5. Reread and meditate upon Philippians 1:23-25. What would it look like in your grieving to apply this passage to your life? “I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of your for your progress and joy in the faith.”

6. Wailing says, “I wanna’ go home. This world is so messed up. I ache for Paradise. However, I’m pulling weeds till the day I die!” Write your personal “wailing psalm.”

7. Satan wants life to kill your dreams. What dreams do you want God to resurrect?

8. God calls us to keep longing for Paradise while still pulling weeds even while we live East of Eden. What weeds is God calling you to pull?

9. “If you were to write a thirst Psalm like Psalm 42, how would you word it?”

10. “In Romans 8:17-18, Paul did some spiritual mathematics and reasoned that his current sufferings were not worth comparing to his future glory. As you calculate your earthly suffering and your eternal glory, what conclusions do you make?”

11. “Satan wants to use your suffering to suck the life out of you. How can you connect to Christ’s resurrection power to find new life, new zeal for God? How can you not only survive, but thrive?”

Weaving

Surely we can’t stay forever in the wailing stage. How do we uncover God’s perspective on life? How do we gain the spiritual eyes, the faith eyes to see life with 20/20 spiritual vision again?

We need spiritual laser surgery. It is in the grieving stage of weaving that the Divine Soul Physicians operates on the eyes of our hearts. We visit His office tomorrow to have those cataracts removed . . .

Spiritual Mathematics

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 30: Spiritual Mathematics

How do you help others to long for heaven and live passionately for God and others while still on earth? There are many effective ways to journey with people toward groaning while growing. We’ll focus again on trialogues: three-way conversations between us, our friend, and the Ultimate Spiritual Friend: Christ.

Sample Wailing/Groaning/Longing Trialogues

Consider some sample biblical trialogues to assist people to refuse to long deeply while living passionately.

“The temptation when life beats us down is not to face life anymore. To survive, but not thrive. How are you facing this temptation?”

“What will it look like for you to keep hoping?”

“What God-designed thirst is this situation stirring up in your soul?”

“What are you longing for from God right now?”

“If you were to write a thirst Psalm like Psalm 42, how would you word it?”

“As Paul faced suffering, he groaned for heaven (Romans 8:17-25). What are you groaning for?”

“In Romans 8:17-18, Paul did some spiritual mathematics and reasoned that his current sufferings were not worth comparing to his future glory. As you calculate your earthly suffering and your eternal glory, what conclusions do you make?”

“How is your current suffering causing you to long for heaven?”

“How is this situation helping you to realize that ‘this world is not your home’?”

“What testimony of future hope might spring from your current suffering?”

“In Philippians 1:23-25, Paul says that he longs for heaven, but that he’s passionate about staying on earth in order to glorify God and benefit others. How can you apply his choice to your life?”

“Satan wants to use your suffering to suck the life out of you. How can you connect to Christ’s resurrection power to find new life, new zeal for God? How can you not only survive, but thrive?”

And You?

Tomorrow we explore how you can groan for heaven while growing here on earth.

Become a Nike Christian

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 29: Become a Nike Christian

Is wailing biblical? Is it biblical to long for heaven and live passionately for God and others while still on earth? Is groaning with hope scriptural?

Desperate Desire

Consider Romans 8:18-25 and its support for wailing as a stage of acceptance, as God’s plan for responding to suffering.

"I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay, and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently."

Paul couples suffering, frustration, eager waiting, and pregnant groaning. “Frustration” suggests the ache that we feel due to the emptiness and void we experience living in a fallen world. It’s the same Greek word (mataioteti) used in the Septuagint to translate Solomon’s word “vanity”—meaningless, soap bubbles, unsatisfying, pointless, absurd—all of this describes life south of heaven.

“Eager waiting” pictures ferocious, desperate desire. When we wail, we declare how deeply out of the nest we are, how far from home we’ve wandered, and how much we long for heaven.

Paul illustrates our desperate desire using the image of pregnancy. He describes a woman groaning as in labor that lasts not hours, not nine months, but a lifetime. Imagine a pregnant woman in labor for seventy years! That’s groaning. Groaning not only the pain of seemingly unending labor, but groaning the pain of not having the joy of the baby.

East of Eden

That’s our current condition. For our allotted years on this blue planet, we’re pregnant with hope, groaning for Paradise, for Eden, for walking with God in the cool of the day, for being naked and unashamed, for shalom.

When we groan, we admit to ourselves and express to God the pain of our unmet desires, the depth of our fervent longing for heaven’s joy, and our total commitment to remain pregnant with hope—labor for a lifetime.

Thriving

And what’s the result? Weak, mournful surviving? No way. The result is thriving.

In Romans 8:28-39, Paul insists that even in the midst of trouble, hardship, persecution, and suffering, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. He teaches that in all our suffering we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us so.

“More than conquerors” comes from the Greek word nikao from which we gain our word “Nike”—victors, Olympic champions, winners. Wailing empowers us to long passionately for heaven and to live victoriously on earth. Wailing moves us from victims to victors in Christ.

So What?

What difference can this make in the lives of others? How can we use these truths to help our grieving friends? Back at ya’ tomorrow!

Hope Waits

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 23: Hope Waits

Yesterday’s journey ended with the Woman at the Well in a dilemma. God told her to wait.

So what would “hope” look like in her immediate context? Hoping in God, she would choose delayed gratification over immediate gratification. She would accept her singleness, clinging to God and trusting His timing.

Hope waits. Hope is the refusal to demand heaven now.

Waiting Defined

If hope leads to waiting, what then is waiting? Waiting is trusting God’s future provision without working to provide for myself. Waiting is refusing to take over while refusing to give up.

Waiting refuses self-rescue.

You’ll never see waiting as one of the stages of grieving in any research study because it is not natural in a fallen world. It is supernatural.

I do a lot of ministry to ministers. A couple of years ago I was working with a pastor and his wife (we’ll call them Tim and Terri) in a situation where the pastor was fired, frankly, without cause. No moral failure. No doctrinal error. This pastor had been at the church for over 20 years. It was the only home his three teenage daughters knew.

We worked through the candor, complaint, cry, and comfort process. When it came time for waiting, he battled. Everything in him wanted, almost desperately needed, to regroup. He was ready to take a church, any church, on the rebound. He was ready to take a job, any job, on the rebound.

However, I counseled him to wait before making any long-term commitments to a new ministry position because I sensed that he was motivated by a desire for self-rescue, for regrouping, not by a desire to wait on God.

Waiting Biblically Supported

Was my counsel godly or ungodly? Wise or foolish? Too heavenly-minded to be of any earthly good? Can we find biblical support for the principle of waiting rather than regrouping?

We’ll be back tomorrow for answers to these important questions.

When God Says "Wait"

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 22: When God Says “Wait”

If the grief process was a direct journey, and it is not, then we would have arrived at the half-way point on our path. Sustaining has been the first “half” of our journey—the journey from denial to candor, from anger to complain, from bargaining to cry, and from depression to comfort.

Our Path Marked Healing: Waiting, Wailing, Weaving, and Worshipping

The second half of our path is marked “healing.” Healing is a term that describes the second phase in historic soul care. Today, we use terms like encouraging, enlightening, helping people to see the larger story of God’s perspective, infusing hope, etc.

I like to picture healing with the powerful image of celebrating the resurrection. We are moving from grieving to hope like the Apostle Paul was in 2 Corinthians 1:9-10.

“Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us.”

From Here to Eternity

Once we’ve climbed in the casket, we then celebrate the resurrection by finding hope in God’s higher plan and loving purposes. It is possible to hope in the midst of grief.

Sustaining says, “Life is bad.” Healing says, “God is good.” In sustaining, we enter the smaller earthly story of hurt. In healing, we enter the larger, heavenly story of hope.

Healing celebrates the resurrection by exploring waiting, wailing, weaving, and worshipping. These four biblical stages contrast with and expand upon the one stage in the world’s process called “acceptance.”

Stage Five: Waiting—Trusting with Faith Rather Than Regrouping with Self-Sufficiency

You’re in a casket. Finally, you’ve come face-to-face with death and with utter human hopelessness. Do you want to stay there? No! Frantic to escape? Yes! You cry out to God for help. What’s he say? “Wait.”

Now you’re at a faith-point. “I trust Him; I trust Him not. I’ll wait; I’ll not wait.”

Which will it be? Will you wait or regroup? Will you wait on God or will you self-sufficiently depend upon yourself?

Regrouping Described: The Woman at the Well

John 4 illustrates the contrast between waiting and regrouping. The woman at the well was in a husband-casket. One husband left the scene, “Encore! Encore!” she’d shout, bringing the curtain down on another failed marriage. Frantically she searched time after time for a man she could have—a man she could desperately clutch who would meet her desperate needs by desperately desiring her above all else.

We don’t know what came next for her after she surrendered her thirsts to Christ. Certainly, if she were to live out her new Christ-life, she would have to change her habitual pattern of regrouping through “having” a man.

Suppose that she took her longing to God in prayer. Presuppose God told her to stop living with this man who was not her husband. Don’t you think that on a human plane she would experience excruciating emptiness, starving hunger?

So she prays to God, “Father, I know that all I need is You and what You choose to provide. I’m cleaning up my life. Would You please send me a godly man.”

God says, “Wait. Delay your gratification. Don’t get involved with a man.”

Everything inside her—her flesh-habituated past way of surviving, her cistern-digging style of relating—craves satisfaction now. If she regroups, she grasps yet another husband on the rebound. She takes matters into her own hands.

And What Would Hope Look Like?

What would hope look like in her context? In ours? In yours?

You know what’s coming. Now is when I say…

“Come back tomorrow to define and find hope.”

The Presence of God in the Presence of Suffering

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 20: The Presence of God in the Presence of Suffering

How do you help others to move from depression to comfort? How do you help your hurting, grieving spiritual friends to find God’s comforting presence in the presence of suffering?

There are many effective ways to journey with people toward God’s empowering, comforting presence that helps them to survive scars and plants the seeds of healing hope. We’ll focus again on trialogues: three-way conversations between us, our friend, and the Ultimate Spiritual Friend: Christ.

Sample Comfort Trialogues

Consider some sample biblical trialogues to assist people to move toward God’s comfort—toward their comforting God.

“The Bible teaches that ‘hope deferred makes the heart sick.’ It’s normal to hurt and to struggle when our internal pain seems incurable. How could you connect with Christ and the Body of Christ to find relief for your sadness over your scars?”
“Sometimes life beats us down so much and scars us so deeply that we just want to quit. We want to retreat, to give up on God and on ourselves. How are you facing this temptation?”

“Jacob’s physical wound left him with a permanent limp. Ironically, it left him stronger than ever spiritually. How is that possible? How could that happen in your life?”

“Some wounds won’t be totally healed until heaven (Revelation 7). How can you connect to Christ’s resurrection power to face life with this wound?”

“What can’t be cured, can be endured. How is God fortifying you to survive your loss?”

“What is your suffering teaching you about God’s power made perfect in your weakness?”

“What passages have helped and strengthened you to deal with this?”

“What verses have you found helpful in gaining comfort and hope as you go through this?”

“If you were to write a Psalm 42, (David moving from confusion to comfort) what would you write?”

“What applications could you make from how Paul found comfort in his despair in 2 Corinthians?”

“Christ often comforts us through other Christians. Who is coming alongside to help and comfort you? How could you connect with other Christians so they could help you to bear your burdens?”

And Your Comfort Source?

And how about you? When you struggle against depression over life’s losses, where do you turn for comfort? How can you find peace through the God of all comfort? Join us again tomorrow for your path to God’s comfort.

Wreslting with God

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 19: Wrestling with God

Can we biblically support comfort as a legitimate stage of the grieving/healing process?

Wrestling with God

Jacob’s wrestling match with God certainly illustrates it. Recall the context. Jacob is terrified that his brother Esau will kill him. In self-sufficiency, Jacob plans and plots ways to manipulate Esau into forgiving him.

Then, at night Jacob encounters God. He wrestles God throughout the night until God overpowers him by dislocating Jacob’s hip. In response, “Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘It is because I saw God face-to-face, and yet my life was spared’” (Genesis 32:30). Tenacious wrestling with God, Jacob shows us, results in painful yet profitable comfort through communion.

Interestingly, as the sun rose, Jacob was limping. He looks up and there’s Esau. Jacob limps up to Esau and, with the pain of his dislocated hip, bows down seven times. Imagine the pain. Then he receives from Esau an embrace instead of a dagger. He faced his fear, still wounded and scarred, but surviving. God humbled Jacob, weakened him, and in the process strengthened him.

God Shares Our Sorrow

What’s illustrated in Jacob’s life is taught in Asaph’s story. According to Psalm 73:21-28, suffering is an opportunity for God to divulge more of Himself and to release more of His strength. When Asaph’s heart was grieved, and his spirit embittered, God brought him to his senses. Listen to his prayer.

“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:26).

My flesh may be scarred, my heart may be scared, but with God I can survive—forever.

Thus faith perceives that God feels our pain, joins us in our pain, even shares our pain. In fact, faith believes that, “in all my distress he too was distressed” (Isaiah 63:9). His sharing of our sorrow makes our sorrow endurable.

Faith does not demand the removal of suffering, but desires endurance in suffering, temptation, and persecution (1 Corinthians 10:13). Faith understands that what can’t be cured, can be endured.

Faith delights in weakness, because when we are weak, then God is strong, and we are strong in Him (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).

Finding Comfort

Join us the next two days as we explore how to help others to wrestle with God to find His comfort. And as we journey together to find our own comfort in God.

Surviving Scars

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 18: Surviving Scars

For those without Christ, the grief process moves from denial, to anger, to bargaining/works, to depression. For those with Christ, for those who grieve with hope, we journey from candor, to complaint/lament, to crying out to God, to comfort.

What Then Is Comfort?

What then is comfort? Before I offer a definition, I’ll offer some history. Historically, sustaining has attempted to draw a line in the sand of retreat. Horrible things happen to us. We’re charging headlong away from the life that we once dreamed of. We’re ready to give up and give in.

Sustaining steps in to say, “Yes, you do have a wound. You will have the scar. But it is neither fatal nor final. Don’t quit. You can make it. You can survive.”

Co-Fortitude

It’s within this context of surviving scars that I’m using the word “comfort.” Originally, comfort meant co-fortitude—being fortified by the strength of another. Being en-couraged—having courage poured into you from an outside source. That outside source, for Christians, is Christ and the Body of Christ. In this life, your scar may not go away, but neither will His. He understands. He cares. He’s there.

Now we can define comfort. Comfort/communion experiences the presence of God in the presence of suffering—a presence that empowers me to survive scars and plants the seed of hope that I may yet thrive. At the end of sustaining, I’m not necessarily thriving. More likely, I’m limping, but at least I’m no longer retreating.

My Comfort Journey

For me, comfort reflected itself in my decision not to give up on God and not to give up on ministry. Here I was in seminary, preparing for ministry, and secretly doubting God—doubting His goodness, His trustworthiness, His ability, or at least His desire, to protect me and care for me. As comfort came, I came face-to-face with God. We had some wild talks. We had some fierce wrestling matches.

God won. I surrendered. Still confused about the details of life, but committed to the Author of Life. More than that, surrendered to Him and dependent upon Him. My attitude was like Peter’s when Jesus asked His disciples, “Will you, too, leave me?” Remember Peter’s reply? “To whom else could we go? You alone have the Words of life.”

I was surviving again, surviving though scarred. I was not and never again would be that same naïve young Christian who assumed that if I prayed and worked hard enough, God would grant me my every expectation. My faith was not a naïve faith, but it was a deeper faith—a faith that could walk in the dark.

Is Comfort Biblical?

Did my experience of comfort reflect a biblical process? Join the journey again tomorrow to discover the answer—God’s answer.

God Comes

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 17: God Comes

So far on our journey we have approached three road markers leading to three decision points.

*Confronting road marker one on our destination, we choose to move from denial to candor—honesty with our self about our grief.

*Facing road marker two on our destination, we choose to move from anger to complaint--honesty with God about our grief, pain, and confusion.

*Approaching road marker three on our destination, we choose to move from bargaining/works to cry—crying out to God in humble dependence.

Directional Choice Point Four: Depression or Comfort

In stage four, our journey leads us either to depression due to alienation and separation from God and others, or to finding comfort through communion with God and connection with God’s people.

To use a wrestling analogy (as a wrestling coach, I have to use at least one of these!):

*Through candor we choose to step on the mats with God.

*With complaint, the match begins.

*With cry, we cry “Uncle.” We say, “I’m pinned. I’m helpless. You win, God. Now I win, too.”

*Comfort, then, is the crippling touch of God that plants the seed for healing. In cry, we ask for God’s help. In comfort, we receive God’s help. In comfort, the God we cried out to, comes.

Depression/Alienation Described

In the typical fourth stage of grief, there’s a type of depression that we might best describe as hopelessness. The person accepts reality, but only from an earthly perspective. They can see no higher plan.

It reminds me of the chilling opening scene in the musical Les Mis. Hundreds of prisoners are chanting, “Look down, look down, don’t look them in the eyes.” They’re filled with shame.

Then one prisoner, Jean val Jean, attempts to break free from his emotional prison by singing that there are people who love him and are waiting for him when he’s released. The guards and even the other prisoners heap more shame upon him. One cries, “Sweet Jesus doesn’t care.” Others sing, “You’ll always be a slave, you’re standing in your grave.”

That’s hopelessness. That’s the fourth stage of grief without Christ. Or, as Paul says it in 1 Thessalonians, it is grieving without hope.

Now What?

Grief without hope—without Christ—is no place to stay. We need comfort. Tomorrow we’ll define and describe it, and in coming days we’ll explore how we find it in Christ and His people.

God's Megaphone

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 15: God’s Megaphone

How do you help others to move from a self-sufficient, works-oriented, bargaining with God response to suffering? How do you help your hurting, grieving spiritual friends to move to a God-sufficient, grace-oriented, dependence upon God response to their grief?

There are many effective ways to move with others along the healing path toward crying out to God. We’ll focus again on trialogues: three-way conversations between us, our friend, and the Ultimate Spiritual Friend: Christ.

Sample Crying Out to God Trialogues

Consider some sample biblical trialogues to assist people to move toward crying out to God in humble dependence.

“How could your pain cause you to cry out to Christ for help, love, strength, joy, peace, deliverance?”

“As in Psalm 13, how could your situation cause you to cry out to God for help and strength?”

“If you were to write a Psalm 72 or 73 (Psalms of crying out to God), how would it sound? What would you write?”

“What would it be like for you to believe that God collect your tears in His bottle?”

“Psalm 34:17-18 teaches that God’s good heart goes out especially to the humble needy. How could you apply this truth in your life now?”

“C. S. Lewis once wrote that ‘God whispers to us in our suffering, but shouts to us in our pain,’ and taught that pain is God’s megaphone to get our attention and to cause us to depend upon Him. What message is God shouting to you in your pain? Does He have your attention? Your dependence?”

“God doesn’t seem to be going along with this bargain: you reform; He relents. Since He may not change your circumstances, perhaps you could change your prayers. Praying for inner strength . . .”

“What Scriptures could we look at that illustrate how God’s people have talked to God when they felt that He was not hearing their cry?”

“What’s it like when God seems to rush to your side when you cry?”

And What About You?

It's one thing to help others to cry out to God. How about you? Me? Let's return to the journey tomorrow to discover some personal routes to crying out to God for help in our hurts.

Your Dark Night of the Soul

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 12: Your Dark Night of the Soul

What about you? Yesterday we explored how we can journey with others helping them to move from anger to complaint/lament. But what about your path from anger that pushes away to complaint that draws close?

Whether you are reflecting on your past suffering or experiencing current grief, here are a few suggestions and questions. I’ve designed them to help you to move from anger to complaint—vulnerable frankness about life to God in which I express my pain and confusion over how a good God allows evil and suffering.

Don’t try to address every suggestion. Pick a couple that connect with you.

My Complaint/Lament Journey

1. Biblical complaint/lament trusts God’s good heart enough to bring everything about us to Him. Where would you put yourself on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being anger that pushes God away because I doubt His good heart, and 10 being complaint/lament that invites God in because I trust His good heart?

2. Here are a few complaint trialogues. Pick one or two to explore personally.

a. “What do you think the Bible teaches about feeling anger or
disappointment toward God?”

b. “What verses could you ponder to discover how God’s people have talked to God when they experienced loss?”

c. “What does Psalm 88 suggest about expressing your anger, disappointment, or complaint toward God? How could you relate this to your response to God?”

d. “If you were to write a Psalm 13 or a Psalm 88 to God how would it sound? What would you write?”

e. "Suppose Satan sent someone to you to say, ‘Curse God and die.’ How would you respond?”

3. In past or current suffering, how did you begin to move from destructive anger to biblical complaint/lament?

4. Psalm 62:8 indicates that when we trust God we openly pour out our whole heart to Him, believing He is our refuge. Pour out your heart to God—everything and anything—in prayer, or in a journal, or in your own lament Psalm.

5. Write a Psalm 88—a Psalm of the Dark Night of the Soul—and rehearse before God all the badness of life as you are seeing and experiencing it.

6. Thinking of the examples of Job, of the Psalmists, of Jeremiah, of Paul in 2 Corinthian 1 and 4), and of Jesus (in the Garden), do you believe God invites our complaint and lament? A simple “yes” or “no” will say a lot . . .

7. To deny or diminish suffering is to arrogantly refuse to be humbled
(Deuteronomy 8:1-10). Remember your suffering and rehearse it God for the express purpose of admitting that God is indispensable.

8. Find a trusted, safe friend and take the “baby steps” of sharing with him or her some of your complaint.

What Next? What Now?

So what’s next? You’ve been candid with yourself. You’ve complained/lamented to God. Now what?

For the world the third “stage” is bargaining: basically attempting to manipulate God into being good to us by doing good works.

What Christian “stage” contrasts with that?

That’s our topic for tomorrow.