Schizophrenic Praise - Part TWO

Wednesday, February 8, 2023

All heaven will praise your great wonders, Lord; myriads of angels will praise you for your faithfulness.  For who in all of heaven can compare with the Lord?  What mightiest angel is anything like the Lord?  The highest angelic powers stand in awe of God.  He is far more awesome than all who surround his throne.  O Lord God of Heaven’s Armies!  Where is there anyone as mighty as you, O Lord?  You are entirely faithful.  You rule the oceans.  You subdue their storm-tossed waves.  You crushed the great sea monster.  You scattered your enemies with your mighty arm.  The heavens are yours, and the earth is yours; everything in the world is yours—you created it all.  You created north and south.  Mount Tabor and Mount Hermon praise your name.  Powerful is your arm!  Strong is your hand!  Your right hand is lifted high in glorious strength.  Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne.  Unfailing love and truth walk before you as attendants.  Happy are those who hear the joyful call to worship, for they will walk in the light of your presence, Lord.  They rejoice all day long in your wonderful reputation.  They exult in your righteousness.  You are their glorious strength.  It pleases you to make us strong.  Yes, our protection comes from the Lord, and he, the Holy One of Israel, has given us our king.  

Psalm 89:5-18

I like consistency; I like to know what’s planned, and I like to see things unfold exactly as planned.  Call it O.C.D. (obsessive-compulsive disorder)…but I don’t like surprises.  It was painful to read Psalm 88 yesterday, with its darkness, despair, and questioning.  And now, here I am this morning, reading the unabashed gushing of unwavering faith and praise in Psalm 89. 

If you lay aside the circumstances of these two psalms, the change from valley to mountaintop can make one dizzy!  What a ride!

As settled as I like things and people to be in my life, I am often moody and affected by uneven circumstances and events.  Life is not charted with a straight edge.  Rather, it can be, and often is, messy.  I’ve heard all kinds of advice…

There are Psalm 88 folk who are deep thinkers…go ahead, question God, they say; Brood if you must; God will answer when he’s ready.  It’s a dark way.      Psalm 89 folk are more positive….they say (with a smile):  when you’re bummed, just lift your hands and praise!  God is good; circumstances aren’t important!  Because I’m more of a brooder, I want to smack Psalm 89 folk upside their happy countenance (in a loving, Christian way, of course!).

So, what to do?  As much as I hate to admit it, I always feel better when I praise God in a Psalm 89 burst of praise.  The problem is, the rarefied atmosphere of the mountaintop fades away, and I’m left wondering if God heard anything I said.  When I stay chained to Psalm 88, with its questioning, blood-letting agony of walking God through why His plan doesn’t seem to be working (often winding-up in the woodshed for my trouble), I am also left wondering if thinking this deeply is worthwhile.  So….maybe this is the reason why God had these Psalms put next to each other.  We are supposed to do the gut-wrenching work of Psalm 88, questioning and agonizing with God like Job.  But we’re also meant to frame it all with the praise of Psalm 89!  It’s a two-pronged fork…Probing and Praising!

For You Today  

I’ve found this to be so helpful.  Whether you’re a brooder or a praiser, get out of your rut!  Get in there and wrestle with God like Jacob at the River Jabbok ^{Genesis 32}, but then come out praising Him like a charismatic at a camp meeting!  It’s not schizophrenic – it’s living life close to the vine!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

Worship Smiles  and  Bi-Polar Prayers 

This is an updated version of “Schizophrenic Praise - 2013 published on Rocky Road Devotions August 12, 2013

Images:  Title Pixabay.com   Images without citation are either personal property of the author, or in public domain.

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

Schizophrenic Praise - Part ONE

Tuesday, February 7, 2023

For the choir director: A psalm of the descendants of Korah. A song to be sung to the tune “The Suffering of Affliction.”  A psalm of Heman the Ezrahite.

O Lord, God of my salvation, I cry out to you by day.  I come to you at night.  Now hear my prayer; listen to my cry.  For my life is full of troubles, and death draws near.  I am as good as dead, like a strong man with no strength left.  They have left me among the dead, and I lie like a corpse in a grave.  I am forgotten, cut off from your care.  You have thrown me into the lowest pit, into the darkest depths.  Your anger weighs me down; with wave after wave you have engulfed me. Interlude

Can those in the grave declare your unfailing love?  Can they proclaim your faithfulness in the place of destruction?  Can the darkness speak of your wonderful deeds?  Can anyone in the land of forgetfulness talk about your righteousness?  O Lord, I cry out to you.  I will keep on pleading day by day.  O Lord, why do you reject me?  Why do you turn your face from me?  I have been sick and close to death since my youth.  I stand helpless and desperate before your terrors.  Your fierce anger has overwhelmed me.  Your terrors have paralyzed me.  They swirl around me like floodwaters all day long.  They have engulfed me completely.  You have taken away my companions and loved ones.  Darkness is my closest friend.  

Psalm 88:1-7, 8-10

If contemporary worship gurus wrote hymns these days, this one would never make the list.  this song even has choir notes:  Sing it to the suffering tune.  In today's culture worship requires "happy and up-beat."  Not so in Psalm 88!

Excepting the first 6 words (O Lord, God of my salvation) the Psalm is pure lament (whining, if you will); the flood of an anguished soul.  The Psalmist is laying-out the miserable conditions of his life and, standing in the death of his emptiness, demanding an answer, Can the darkness speak?  Give me a little light on the subject, here, God!  What’s up with this life of mine? 

Ever done that?  Have you ever laid it out there for God to speak out of the darkness of your existence?  If you haven’t, or at least if your personal lament hasn’t been quite as gruesome as Psalm 88, let Scripture remind us today that the worst possible scenario has already been center stage for God’s answers.

The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.  Matthew 4:16 ^(KJV)

Matthew ties the life of Jesus to Isaiah’s prophecy that a great light, God’s light on a dark world, would come to cover even the shadow of death.  While we remember that Jesus came to bring light and life, sometimes our personal darkness is so overwhelming.  Can that darkness we face really speak?  Does it say anything worthwhile?  Does it have meaning?

Do you recall the man who asked Jesus to heal his son? ^{Mark 9}  Jesus brought up the issue of faith to a man facing the darkness of losing his child.  The man said, I believe…help me out of my unbelief.  Sometimes the greatest darkness is meant to frame the light we’ve been missing; it comes to display our unbelief and the pathway home to faith.

For You Today  

Father, in this day there may be darkness ahead.  When I’m stumbling around let faith light whichever pathway brings me to you.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

Why Doesn't God Answer My Prayers?  and  Bi-Polar Prayers 

This is an updated version of “Can the Darkness Speak?” published on Rocky Road Devotions August 13, 2013

Images:  Title Pixabay.com   Images without citation are either personal property of the author, or in public domain.

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

O God...HELP!

Friday, September 16, 2022

O God, pagan nations have conquered your land, your special possession.  They have defiled your holy Temple and made Jerusalem a heap of ruins.  They have left the bodies of your servants as food for the birds of heaven.  The flesh of your godly ones has become food for the wild animals.  Blood has flowed like water all around Jerusalem; no one is left to bury the dead.  We are mocked by our neighbors, an object of scorn and derision to those around us.  O Lord, how long will you be angry with us?  Forever?  How long will your jealousy burn like fire?  Pour out your wrath on the nations that refuse to acknowledge you—on kingdoms that do not call upon your name.  For they have devoured your people Israel,  making the land a desolate wilderness.  Psalm 79:1-7

This is a prayer ascribed to Asaph (one of the Scribes who could have been tasked with ghost-writing the king’s thoughts to be shared in worship).  There is, in this prayer the beginnings (at least) of that old saying:  Be careful of that for which you pray…you just might get it!

I am referring to that part where Asaph asks God to pour out wrath on the nations that don’t acknowledge God, don’t seek His will.  Only a righteous person or nation could pray that kind of prayer with a straight face.  This was a time of trouble, when the Babylonian Empire had conquered Jerusalem in 586 BC.  With the city and the Temple demonlished, there was a lot of lamenting and praying for God’s help.  But it was little use offering prayers to God to help them get a little payback on Babylon.[1]  That prayer would only bounce-back on their heads.  Israel had sinned just as heinously as Babylon, just in different ways.  In fact, God was the one who engineered Babylon’s conquest.  Jeremiah had prophesied the cauldron[2] of trouble from the North (Iraq) would flood-down on Jerusalem like a pot of boiling water on their heads.  In a kind of poetic justice, when an unrighteous person (or nation) prays that God would destroy the unrighteous, it will receive God’s answer, but it won’t be nearly like the praying person thought.

Following the attack of September 11, 2001, it was common during televised ball games, to sing God Bless America during a break.  Feelings of nationalistic pride would well-up in tears of millions of eyes of those who hardly (if ever) darkened the doorstep of a church, or bowed a knee in prayer.  We pray, or at least sing our national anthem with more gusto, when we’re in trouble.  And that is anything but seeking the face of God…it is praying for the ability to find a plausible alibi when you’ve been caught red-handed with hands in the cookie jar.

A better word would be hypocrisy.  You cannot live every day of your life without so much as a thought of God’s ways, and then expect God’s kindness, just because you deserve it, and He is that big vending machine in the sky.  God does not change his character, and He has told us exactly how he will respond to those who have a pretend relationship with Him.  In the final judgment, there are some who will try to run that game right before the throne; the response of God will be:

But I will reply, ‘I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God’s laws.’  Matthew 7:23

For You Today

Let’s give the Scripture the last word today on a better life’s path:

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.  Proverbs 3:5-6^(KJV)

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

An Empty Lament and Stumbling in Broad Daylight

[1] Images:  via Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

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[1] The city of Babylon, capitol of ancient Babylonian Empire is located 55 miles south of Baghdad (in modern Iraq)

[2] See Jeremiah 1:11-16

Of Lament and Longing

 

Thursday, June 24, 2021

From the depths of despair, O Lord, I call for your help.  Hear my cry, O Lord.  Pay attention to my prayer.  Lord, if you kept a record of our sins, who, O Lord, could ever survive?  But you offer forgiveness, that we might learn to fear you.  I am counting on the Lord; yes, I am counting on him.  I have put my hope in his word.  I long for the Lord more than sentries long for the dawn, yes, more than sentries long for the dawn.  O Israel, hope in the Lord; for with the Lord there is unfailing love.  His redemption overflows.  He himself will redeem Israel from every kind of sin.  Psalm 130

It is a well-known fact that we come into this world crying-out in objection to the change of a comfortable womb to the rude awakening of a birth canal and a smack on the backside.  A book I’m savoring at the moment has this in the first chapter:  Every human being has the same opening story.  Life begins with tears.  It’s simply a part of what it means to be human – to cry is human.[1] 

The Psalmist writes to all the Jewish pilgrims of the land as they head to Jerusalem to worship.  He records the deep lament of his own heart as an encouragement to those who come after him to follow his example of crying-out.  But this crying-out is not just wailing in pain; rather it is pain with purpose.  The purpose draws our longing into looking…for God.  The pure fact at the base of our being is that we long for God, and it compels us to search for Him.  

As the ancient church father Augustine has it, we are born with a God-sized hole in our heart (inner being), and cannot be at rest until that void is filled.

The Psalmist takes us deeper than Augustine’s hole-in-the-heart; he shows us the pathway that leads to what to do about that longing – how to open the heart by placing our hope in the Lord even before we understand Him.  The Psalmist proclaims the forgiveness of the Lord for our sins.  This is the hole-in-the-heart problem that every human understands innately, without any prompting from parents, religion, or the culture into which we’re born.  We KNOW we’re sinners because we feel the hole separating us from every part of our Creator, in whose image we were made.  And we KNOW something must be done about that, otherwise the possibilities are only two – we die in shame, or go insane. 

But, if we are to address the problem, God gives us faith that redemption from our sin comes from the unfailing love and mercy of God…Who forgives.  To place our hope and trust in God’s covenant love is the Psalmist’s solution.

If you look for any other solution you will come up dry.  Lament is different than being a victim, or (on the other end of the spectrum) an arrogant mover and shaker victimizer of others, or anything else in-between or different.  Rather, lament is facing the fact that the hole does exist, and it is yours, chosen when you decided to take your will above anything God said. 

God will forgive that, but only when we fully place our hope in Him, and cry-out to Him in faith for that forgiveness.

For You Today

For those who will not lament over the hole-in-the-heart which separates them from God, there is no hope.  But for those who will lament, and seek, and knock, and ask…the door of mercy will swing wide-open.  And, inside God’s place, beyond the door of mercy, there is a mansion of joy!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!   

[1] Title Image: Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©

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[1] Mark Vroegop, Dark Clouds Deep Mercy (2019, Crossway, Wheaton, Illinois), 25

An Empty Lament

[1]

Wednesday, December 6, 2017

O God, pagan nations have conquered your land, your special possession.  They have defiled your holy Temple and made Jerusalem a heap of ruins.  They have left the bodies of your servants as food for the birds of heaven.  The flesh of your godly ones has become food for the wild animals.  Blood has flowed like water all around Jerusalem; no one is left to bury the dead.  We are mocked by our neighbors, an object of scorn and derision to those around us.  O Lord, how long will you be angry with us? Forever?  How long will your jealousy burn like fire?  Pour out your wrath on the nations that refuse to acknowledge you—on kingdoms that do not call upon your name.  For they have devoured your people Israel, making the land a desolate wilderness. Do not hold us guilty for the sins of our ancestors!  Let your compassion quickly meet our needs, for we are on the brink of despair.  Help us, O God of our salvation!  Help us for the glory of your name.  Save us and forgive our sins for the honor of your name.  Why should pagan nations be allowed to scoff, asking, “Where is their God?”  Show us your vengeance against the nations, for they have spilled the blood of your servants.  Listen to the moaning of the prisoners.  Demonstrate your great power by saving those condemned to die.  O Lord, pay back our neighbors seven times for the scorn they have hurled at you.  Then we your people, the sheep of your pasture, will thank you forever and ever, praising your greatness from generation to generation.  

Psalm 79:1-13^(NLT)

Cookies are still my weakness!  Since I was a small child I never met a cookie I couldn’t love.  And one childhood sin I was hard-pressed to confess was when Mom caught me red-handed with that proverbial offending hand deep in the cookie jar.

I’ll spare you the details, other than to remind you that there was that time you got busted for disobeying a direct command to stay out of this or that.  But, this isn’t about your sins.  Rather I’ll point you to what you probably did, by telling you what I did; I jumped right in the river of denial!  With cookie crumbs all over my face, chocolate chip smears on my hands and half a jar of cookies missing, mustering-up a straight face I looked right at Mom and copied Adam’s excuse; I blamed it on the dog!

This Psalm (as many others) recounts the harsh conditions of Israel’s suffering under the rulers of other nations that had conquered them.  It is a lament for the conditions, but somehow rings empty of confession that takes responsibility for the judgment they were experiencing.  There is a brief “blaming the dog” where the Psalmist asks God to not hold the sins of their ancestors against them.  But this smacks of victim-claiming; not me…I didn’t do anything…must’ve been the dog!

An empty lament is a prayer largely unheard in Heaven.  Any prayer for forgiveness and restoration that will be heard by God always begins with heartfelt and unreserved confession, acknowledging and accepting the guilt of doing wrong.  Mercy and forgiveness are reserved for those who are guilty – not those who have a great excuse!

For You Today

There’s no question that, given an opportunity, my dog would’ve eaten every cookie in the jar…but he didn’t deserve to be blamed for something I did. 

The good news remains that when I learned to confess my sins, God not only forgives me, He finds pretty amazing ways to wash the cookie crumbs off my face.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO

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[1] Title Image: Courtesy of Pixabay.com

Hard Thoughts

[i]

Thursday, September 29, 2016

The thought of my suffering and homelessness is bitter beyond words.  I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss.  Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this:  The faithful love of the Lord never ends!  His mercies never cease.  Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning. I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!”  The Lord is good to those who depend on him, to those who search for him.  So it is good to wait quietly for salvation from the Lord.  Lamentations 3:19-26^(NLT)

Perhaps the hardest of thoughts is to have hope in the midst of grief. 

Battling grief is a common experience; if you live long enough grief will be more than once your uninvited companion on this journey through life.  Often a first touch with grief is as a child when grandparents die.  That was my lot as a pre-teen.  It was then I learned Jeremiah was right; you never forget the time of loss.  In seminary a wise professor shared with us would-be preachers that one of the last, arguably best gifts people give to their grandchildren is their own death; it is a valuable and needed preparation for learning to grieve while parents are still around to comfort and guide.

It has been a little more than a year since my Dad became part of the church triumphant in heaven.  From our family’s perspective he was the last of his generation.  With him passed away any first-hand memories of our family history.  And with our family’s sketchy knowledge of our ancestry, there is a haze of unknowing rather than links to the past.  For my remaining brother and cousins, we don’t know where we come from, and that speaks much about the emptiness and finality of loss.

So what about hope in the middle of loss and grief?

Jeremiah said he dared to hope because his track record with the LORD is that there is mercy forthcoming every morning, like the dew on the ground.  And hope, itself, is much like faith; it is (as the writer of Hebrews proclaimed) the evidence of things we long to see.

There is no standard, one-size-fits-all way to move through grief.  There is certainly no way to escape it altogether, at least not in a healthy way.  It must be embraced as necessary to the process of accepting God’s new mercies in a rotten time.  It must be endured as the inescapable price of loving. 

The question isn’t will I grieve; the question is always, how shall I grieve; how do I start?

Let me borrow some military advice from Jean-Luc Picard.  He is the fictional captain of the Starship Enterprise. 

Patrick Stewart played the captain for the 1980’s TV series, and every time the Enterprise was about to begin a new adventure traversing the next galaxy, or getting ready to do battle with the evil enemies of The Federation, Captain Picard would look wistfully out the front windows from the command center and issue the order to the helmsman, Warp speed….ENGAGE!

This is how we begin – without fear, without hesitation, but not without God.

For You Today

If your pathway is remembering with hard thoughts today, engage…God is faithfully in the middle of it with you with all the new mercies you need.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO

NOTES

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[i] Title Image: By Jiri Hodan [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Lament

Monday, February 24, 2014

Turn us again to yourself, O God. Make your face shine down upon us. Only then will we be saved.    Psalms 80:3 (NLT)

The Psalmist saw Israel in shades of gloomy gray!  Psalm 80 is part of a corporate lament expressing the grief and sorrow connected with defeat and exile.  Israel is pictured as God’s vineyard, broken-down and left in ruins.  (Seems perfect for a Monday, eh?)

The choices for Israel were all scary (aren’t they always that way when you’re not in control?):

          1.      They could accept their captive status and live the life of slaves…forever defeated and entirely unlike beings created in the image of God.

          2.      They could deny anything has happened and live in memory of greater days…forever a caricature of the conquering children of God.  (This is the Emperor’s New Clothes option – confident in their minds that the good days are on the way back, but, in reality, impotent and naked before the world.)

          3.      A final scary option:  totally abandon themselves to God’s choices for their future by confessing their sin and humbly waiting for God’s strength to revive and/or restore them to what He wanted.

God’s people of the exiles were corrupted spiritually long before their political captivity began.  It’s no small leap to figure out that, to reverse the process, first a spiritual healing would have to take place; then (if God approved) a political revival could begin.

In conversation yesterday (Sunday) with a church member we discussed the lament of today’s church.  With something like 4 of every 5 churches in America rated as either declining in membership, or simply “just holding-on” there is plenty of wailing to be done. 

In the United Methodist Church the term “revitalization” is the current watchword.  Bishops and other leaders proscribe “indicators” of what a revitalized church (local and global) will look like.  Like captive Israel of old, revitalizing – claiming our spiritual heritage and strength is something of an “Emperor’s New Clothes” issue, because re-vitalized presupposes anyone really knows what vital looks like.  For a denomination that’s been in decline for half a century, that’s a sobering thought.

Is there any GOOD news?

There’s always good news.  And whenever it takes hold, this Good News (Gospel) is a fresh wind of revival.  But it’s always on God’s terms

“Turn us again to yourself, O God.” 

Throughout the last two millennia, whenever the people of God have decided to lay aside their “Emperor’s rags” and stand naked in the hands of Almighty God, the Spirit of God has moved among us, changed us, and set the world on its ear. 

I wonder if we’re capable of doing that in our Mainline denominational machinery?  I wonder if we’re capable of doing that in our focus groups and caucuses?  If not – and I truly wonder if God really wants that anyway – then it would be good news indeed for a fresh wind of revival to come bubbling-up from outside the walls of the church buildings.

Today…for YOU

Is there any “fresh-wind” of God’s Spirit blowing through your life?  Psalm 80 is a good place to lay down the rags of slavery.  

Let the revival begin.

Title Photo:  https://blog.spu.edu/lectio/out-of-the-depths-onto-the-heights/