Does God Have Your Attention?

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

Post 14: Does God Have Your Attention?

When loss hits we are typically so shocked that we numb and deny. Our caring God gently urges us toward candor—honesty with ourselves. Because He knows all, He also invites us to complain/lament—honesty with Him. Because He is all-powerful and infinitely loving, He further wants us to cry out to Him—humbly asking Him for help based upon my admission that I can’t survive without Him

Biblical Samplers

Psalm 56:8 teaches that we pray our tears and God collects them in His bottle. Psalm 72:12 assures us, “For he will deliver the needy who cry out” (KJV—when he crieth). Psalm 34 reminds us, “The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles. The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:17-18).

I learned the significance of those particular verses from a counselee whose husband had left her for another woman. She clung to the truth and taught me the truth that God’s good heart goes out, especially, to the humble needy. She practiced biblical cry—the hopeful, trusting expression that God would mobilize Himself on her behalf.

Crying out to God, lamenting, is a testimony that God is responsive, while the idols are non-responsive (1 Samuel 12:20-24). When we cry out, we entreat God to help because expressed neediness compels God’s very character to act. God acts on voiced pain. He’s not a deaf and dumb idol.

More Room for God

Crying empties us, so there is more room in us for God. David wept until he had no strength left, but then he found strength in the LORD (1 Samuel 30:6). His cry summoned God into action—supportive action.

Suffering is God’s “opus alienum”—God’s dominant way of destroying our self-reliance and complacency. He uses suffering to gain our attention. Suffering is a slap in the face, the shock of icy water, a bloodied nose; meant to snatch our attention. Cry is our admission that God has our attention, that God has us.

Helping Others

Return tomorrow to learn how to help others to cry out to God. And the next day—learn how you can cry out to God in utter dependency.

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.

With Christ in the School of Suffering

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

Post 11: With Christ in the School of Suffering

Biblical complaint counters unbiblical anger. Unproductive and unrighteous anger pushes us away from God, others, and personal healing. Productive and righteous complaint/lament draws us toward God, others, and personal healing.

It is reminiscent of what Philip Yancey says, “We can either be disappointed with God or without God.” I would say it like this. “We can either complain with and to God or we can complain without and about God.”

So how do we help others to move from anger to complaint? As we said with candor, there are many effective ways to move with others along the healing path. We’ll focus again on trialogues: three-way conversations between us, our friend, and the Ultimate Spiritual Friend: Christ.

Sample Candor Trialogues

Consider some sample biblical trialogues to assist people to move toward biblical complaint.

“You’ve shared a lot. There’s obviously so much going on inside. Rightly so. Yet, so far we’ve not talked much about where Christ fits into your picture.”

“What are you doing with Christ in your suffering?”

“Have you been able to share your heart with God? If so, what have you said?”

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

“What verses might we ponder to illustrate how God’s people have talked to God when they experienced loss?”

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

“If you were to write a Psalm 13 or a Psalm 88 to God (Psalms of lament and complaint), how would it sound? What would you write?”

“How would you compare your response to your suffering to Job’s? Jeremiah’s? Jacob’s? David’s? Paul’s? Jesus in the Garden?”

“Job and Jeremiah got pretty raw and real with God. Let’s look at some examples . . .”

“We’ve talked about Job’s story. Suppose Satan sent someone to you to say, ‘Curse God and die.’ How would you respond?”

And For Ourselves

Tomorrow we turn our focus to personal complaint. How can we move along the path from anger to complaint? See ya’ then.

God Prizes Complaint!

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

Post 10: God Prizes Complaint!

Can complaint be biblically supported? Does God really prize complaint?

Complaining About Biblical Complaint

Some think not. They ask, “Didn’t God judge the Israelites for complaining?”

There are different words and a different context between the sinful complaint of the Israelites in Numbers and the godly complaint/lament of the Psalmists and others. Plus, biblical complaint complains to God about the fallen world. Ungodly complaint complains about God and accuses Him of lacking goodness, holiness, and wisdom.

Biblical Complaint Samplers

Consider Psalm 62:8. “Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.”

The biblical genre of complaint expresses frankness about the reality of life that seems incongruent with the character of God. Complaint is an act of truth-telling faith, not unfaith. Complaint is a rehearsal of the bad allowed by the Good.

Complaint lives in the real world honestly, refusing to ignore what is occurring. It is radical trust in God’s reliability in the midst of real life.

In Job 3, and much of Job for that matter, Job forcefully and even violently expresses his complaint. “What’s the point of life when it doesn’t make sense, when God blocks all roads to meaning? For sighing comes to me instead of food; my groans pour out like water. What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me” (Job 3:23-25).

In Job 42:7-8, God honors Job’s complaint saying that Job spoke right of life and right of God. God prizes complaint and rejects all deceiving denial and simplistic closure, preferring candid complexity.

In Jeremiah 20:7, Jeremiah complains that God appears, by reason alone, to be an unprincipled, abusive Bully. “O LORD, you deceived me, and I was deceived; you overpowered me and prevailed.”

Jeremiah felt and expressed condemnation and rejection in Lamentations 5:20. “Why do you always forget us? Why do you forsake us so long?” God responds positively to Jeremiah’s rehearsal of life’s incongruity.

Heman, considered one of the wisest believers ever (1 Kings 4:31; 1 Chronicles 2:6), pens the Psalm of the dark night of the soul (Psalm 88) in which his concluding line sums his spiritual struggle. “You have taken my companions and loved ones from me; the darkness is my closest friend” (Psalm 88:18).

Rehearsing Our Suffering Before Our Suffering Savior

To deny or diminish suffering is to arrogantly refuse to be humbled. It is to reject dependence upon God. We are chastised in Deuteronomy 8:1-10 for forgetting our past suffering. God wants us to remember our suffering, our need for Him in our suffering, and rehearse our suffering before Him.

What’s Next?

Given that inspired Scripture documents godly complaint/lament, how do we help others to lament? How do we address our complaints to God in a godly way? Stay with us for the next two days to discover how.

Can We Really Complain to God?

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

Post 9: Can We Really Complain to God?

Our healing journey has walked us down the path from denial to candor: honesty with ourselves. In a Christian approach to grieving, we can’t stop there. We must learn how to traverse the trail of complaint—honesty with God.

From Destructive Anger to Constructive Complaint

Anger is the typical “second stage” in the world’s grieving journey. Satan is the master masquerader (2 Corinthians 11:13-15). His counterfeit for biblical complaint is unhealthy, destructive anger.

He substitutes cursing for complaint. Such as when Job’s wife counsels Job to curse God and die—give up on God, on yourself, and on life. Cursing God demeans Him, seeing Him as a lightweight, as a dark desert and a land of great darkness (Jeremiah 2). Cursing separates. Complaint connects. Complaint draws us toward God; hatred and anger push us away from God.

Defining Biblical Complaint

What is complaint? In candor we’re honest with ourselves; in complaint we’re honest to God. Complaint is vulnerable frankness about life to God in which I express my pain and confusion over how a good God allows evil and suffering.

We needlessly react against the word “complaint.” “Christians can’t complain!” we insist. Yet numerically, there are more Psalms of complaint and lament than Psalms of praise and thanksgiving.

Complaints are faith-based acts of persistent trust. They are one of the many moods of faith. Psalm 91’s exuberant trust is one faith mood while Psalm 88’s dark despair is another faith mood. A mood of faith is simply trusting God enough to bring everything about us to Him. In complaint we hide nothing from God because we trust His good heart and because we know He knows our hearts.

My Personal Lament

In the weeks and months after my 22nd birthday, I engaged in passionate complaint. What made my struggle even more difficult was my lack of assurance that my father was a believer. I had witnessed to him, prayed for him, and he even began attending church with me. Yet even on his deathbed, he made no verbal commitment of faith in Christ.

So I shared with God. I complained to God. I told God, “What’s the use? Why did I pray, witness, and share? Why should I ever pray again? Why should I ever try again, trust again?” I shared my confusion and my doubt with God. “Why does everyone else’s parent accept Christ in a glorious deathbed conversion?”

Were my expressions of complaint biblical? Can complaint be biblically supported? We’ll address that vital question tomorrow. . .