04/02/2023
A long excerpt but such a good reminder.
From Esther Fleece's book: No More Faking Fine, pages 184 -185.
"Here's what I'm continuing to learn: when someone is in a lamenting season, it is not the proper time to offer a theology lesson or an out-of-context Scripture verse as if it were a fortune cookie. If God Himself has not yet offered an explanation to someone who is suffering, what makes a person's friends think it's appropriate to do so? We don't always know the reason for another's suffering, and we certainly aren't privy to God's plans or timing to bring them through it. Therefore it's better to sit with a lamenting person rather than attempt to fix him or her. Empathy and presence are enough; none of us need correction to our theology when we are in the depths of our pain. Rather, we are to 'rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn' (Romans 12:15). If our churches want to be seen as hospitals for the sick then we must stop bandaging people's wounds with harmful Christian one-liners and 'Job's-friends-like' comments. We don't want to be like the corrupt Israelite leaders Jeremiah castigates: 'They dress the wounds of my people as though they were not serious. 'Peace, peace,' they say when, there is no peace' (Jeremiah 6:14). We must resist the urge to offer quick-fix solutions, however well-intentioned.
We don't have to always make everything sound so nice and pretty and 'Christian' when it's not. Things are not always okay. God never silences a lament in Scripture, so why would we think we can? God doesn't always rush to answer our laments, but He never minimizes our pain or tells us to 'just get over it already.' God does not ignore the cries of his people and He never, ever abandons us. Let's encourage one another with these words instead of pretending and preaching that everything is fine. Instead of silencing those who are hurting, let's start training our ears to hear the night cries.
Maybe it would help to remind ourselves that grief is not a disease. We can't catch it from people who experience it, and we certainly shouldn't judge them and run from their pain. Yes, God wants his children to be joyful, and happy seasons WILL come again, but He does not ask us to fake fine while we wait.
We have full permission to feel every emotion before God, and not minimize a thing.
We are wrong to say that if someone is worrying, they must not be praying. Emotions are signals of the heart. They have the power to tell us what's going on under the surface. And a lament helps us roll out of our uncomfortable emotions and not sit in hopelessness forever.
What If instead of telling people who are anxious that they're not trusting, we begin to tell people about a God who carried their burdens on a cross?
What If instead of criticizing weary people who've had enough of this world, we celebrated their desire that God would make all things new?
Author and psychologist Dr. Larry Crabb helps readers approach the Bible with a God-centered focus in his book '66 Love Letters.' Larry writes about Job. He imagines God saying, 'I wrote Job to reveal who I AM, not who you imagine Me to be. I permit suffering but never more, always less, than I experience.'
We don't have to sit alone in our suffering because God did not sit alone in His. And it becomes our privilege to love one another and listen without offering solutions as we lament together."
