Struggling to Find Reception
Notes
Transcript
I am the man who has seen affliction
under the rod of his wrath;
he has driven and brought me
into darkness without any light;
surely against me he turns his hand
again and again the whole day long.
He has made my flesh and my skin waste away;
he has broken my bones;
he has besieged and enveloped me
with bitterness and tribulation;
he has made me dwell in darkness
like the dead of long ago.
He has walled me about so that I cannot escape;
he has made my chains heavy;
though I call and cry for help,
he shuts out my prayer;
he has blocked my ways with blocks of stones;
he has made my paths crooked.
He is a bear lying in wait for me,
a lion in hiding;
he turned aside my steps and tore me to pieces;
he has made me desolate;
he bent his bow and set me
as a target for his arrow.
He drove into my kidneys
the arrows of his quiver;
I have become the laughingstock of all peoples,
the object of their taunts all day long.
He has filled me with bitterness;
he has sated me with wormwood.
He has made my teeth grind on gravel,
and made me cower in ashes;
my soul is bereft of peace;
I have forgotten what happiness is;
so I say, “My endurance has perished;
so has my hope from the Lord.”
Remember my affliction and my wanderings,
the wormwood and the gall!
My soul continually remembers it
and is bowed down within me.
But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
Let us test and examine our ways,
and return to the Lord!
Let us lift up our hearts and hands
to God in heaven:
“We have transgressed and rebelled,
and you have not forgiven.
“You have wrapped yourself with anger and pursued us,
killing without pity;
you have wrapped yourself with a cloud
so that no prayer can pass through.
You have made us scum and garbage
among the peoples.
Scripture: Lamentations 3:1-23, 40-45
Sermon Title: Struggling to Find Reception
Brothers and sisters in Christ, earlier this summer one of the ways I suggested for how we can look at prayer is through the process of communication. A message is formed by one party and delivered to another over any number of formats. The other party whether they are the intended or unintended receiver, hears that message though maybe in part or all of it, and they can process it the way it was intended or differently. The processing is so they can give some type of feedback or response. One of our channels for communication is cell phones. Over this summer I have learned that on my route home from church along the conservation areas of the Dundas Valley there are three or four areas where I am without reception. I have figured this out because whenever I leave church I call Christie to check-in and see if she wants me to pick anything up on my way home. We have learned that either we must talk really fast, or eventually when I end up talking and all of a sudden I don’t get a response, I realize that I dropped the call without Christie hearing a word I said. All we can do in these situations is redial and laugh it off, and thankfully these conversations don’t have too much important content. ///
What about when this happens with God though? In prayer, we don’t visibly see him and generally we don’t hear him talking back to us in a voice like our spouse, friends, or co-workers can; prayer is an act of faith. But I think there are times when prayer can feel like contact has been made with God, but at some point it seems like the other end of the line gone dead. Other times it feels like there is no service to make contact. This struggle to find reception in prayer is a real part that can come up in the lives of believers, but it’s an aspect that I think all too often stays hidden. Tonight my hope is that we can begin look at where those areas that seem to have poor reception are, what characterizes them, and then look deeper into Scripture to hopefully provide some ideas for how we might bring the struggle into the light to get better reception to communicate with God.
We begin by looking at where are the areas of life where poor prayer reception shows up, the times it seems like we have lost contact or can’t seem to find reception. I’m sure there’s many but there are three circumstances that come to my mind. The first is in times of wandering in sin and guilt, which is the situation that the author of Lamentations writes from when he says, Even when I call out or cry for help, he shuts out my prayer…You have covered yourself with a cloud so that no prayer can get through. These words are coming out of the author’s experience of his home city being destroyed and his countrymen being killed or taken captive, all of which has come about because of their sin and rebellion. He says I am the man who has seen affliction, I became a laughingstock for my people, I have been deprived of peace and forgotten what prosperity is. My splendor is gone and all that I had hoped from the Lord. There’s no consolation for this person, and maybe even reading or hearing his cries makes us uncomfortable. I’ve counted somewhere around 25 allegations that he brings against God, not the least of which are: he has driven me away and made me walk in darkness; he has turned his hand against me; he has walled me in so I cannot escape; he has weighed me down; he dragged me from the path and mangled me and left me without help; he drew his bow and made me the target for his arrows; he has broken my teeth with gravel; you have made us scum and refuse among the nations. These are the cries of a man struggling to find reception. He knows and believes God exists and that the people sinned against him, but this punishment seems unbearable. He cries out from a place of abandonment, hardship, and anger; a place where he can’t seem to get through to receive mercy.
A second circumstance where we may see reception fall out, one that can easily get overlooked is when prayer becomes routine. This is the type of thing we see in families on television or in movies who say grace around a meal though they don’t practice faith anywhere else. Producers know there is something about a family coming together that makes us feel warm inside, and the majority of people watching these shows at least for now claim to believe in something. We know that this type of action is not just something in movies though; we can get into ruts in our lives where we pray the same thing meal after meal, devotion time after devotion time, just trying to catch as many things as we think we should be praying for. This struggle captures us when prayer is in the category of ritual rather than a discipline. It gets acknowledged as something we have to do rather than something we get to do as part of a growing relationship between us, God, and the world. It can seem like God is not listening but it’s our words that have become hollow and absent of the belief that he can do more than just give us stuff.
The third circumstance is in experiences of pain and grief. We or a close loved one receives news of a life-threatening illness, a young person is killed in an automobile accident, a tragedy like what many of you may have experienced with the Bosma family strikes a community. All of sudden happiness, comfort, and peace is ripped away; we have done all we can to safeguard our homes and our lives, but instances of brokenness remind us of the reality of this present world. In these types of situations, calling upon God is not at all like the call that I make to my wife to check-in; no, these attempts are rescue calls. In times like these when reception gets tricky, it’s not just the mere inconvenience of poor reception, but it can cause a lack of hope as we try to figure out where the one on the other side of the line is. ///
I think most of us can think of times like these or similar ones when we’ve wondered where God is? I don’t mean that in the sense that God actually leaves us, but in a sense, we face this mix of motions: anger, pain, sadness, fear, questions, even doubt. We know God is with us, but he seems pretty hidden, if not even blocking himself from us, and our struggle is knowing what to do, how to express ourselves. We live in a world that demands happiness, do what makes you happy, and we mean do whatever will put a smile on your face. It is a world that puts those struggling with sadness, depression, and grief on antidepressants or other medications. Now let me be clear, I’m not against the use of these medicines and I think they can be extremely beneficial for those in real need, but medication should not our primary route. I think though this isn’t just something of the world anymore; at some time we as Christians have taken this “be happy” mentality for ourselves. We read Paul writing to the early churches to rejoice in all circumstances and sufferings, and I’m guessing that many of you have heard the logic that Christians should be recognizable to those who don’t believe because of their joy. Christians always should be wearing a smile and laughing in public. At some point, all other emotion was forced behind closed doors and we were told to do what we have to do to get through things. We commend prayer for one another, but we do so expecting that to be natural, expecting that reception will be there. What might we do though in the times when the one we’re trying to contact drops out or when we become disconnected.
The answer is to pray, but prayer can look different in times of trial, in times when we feel afflicted and unheard. Finding reception requires a rooted faith. The author of Lamentations speaks with what feels like desperation, yet he says I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. Brothers and sisters, in good times, that’s a statement that we can say with a smile on our face. In times of trials, that’s a statement that we need to make though it may come as hope-filled anguish. I don’t think happiness is required in the sense of putting a smile on your face, but rather hope needs to be maintained because it’s our unshakable assurance in times of need. The words might feel empty rolling off of our lips, but praise God his working and his faithfulness overcomes just what we’re feeling.
The first thing we can do is develop faith with roots; the second thing is to develop ways of expressing our emotions as a way of communicating with God. Christians, including strong males, are allowed to show emotions other than smiling and laughing and reverence. What helps I think though is for there to be some direction to expressing emotion. This is where I think we need to recover some of the books of the Bible that get tossed to the margins. Books like Lamentations, Job, Ecclesiastes, and many of the psalms. We don’t need to be poets or even necessarily like poetry to see and learn of how God’s people can describe their lives and their hurt. The people that wrote these books were not afraid to share their pain, to write down all the ways they felt God had afflicted them. We can rejoice in the Lord always, in happiness and sadness, by being truthful to what God has already done as well as where we are at right now.
Our expression should be honest but we also should remember that God is the one who has given us language to communicate with. We should be careful in our use of words because they are shape how we communicate our faith, but whether we express through writing our emotions down or speaking them out loud, there are faithful ways to speak into our need, our struggle, and our pain.
The third consideration as you try to complete your connection to God is to make sure you’re calling the right number. Even when we start our prayers with the name of God, are we really intending for him to hear them? When you pray God free me from my sin, take away the obstacles that keep popping up, have you bought in that you want God to do that? Have you dialed his number or have you dialed a similar number, not actually wanting him to hear this prayer yet? Part of the journey of faith, brothers and sisters, that I think we should come back to again and again is that it is something that develops and matures. The closer you are to home, the less frequent the interruptions on the line; but our maturity never completely eliminates the struggle and all chances of losing reception. // What spiritual maturity does is help in developing a radical dependence that we trust God can and will do things that we cannot. Our prayers are not just words expressing inconvenience in our lives or comments on things that cannot be controlled by anyone, but we need to believe God listens and responds knowing exactly what we need.
The apostle Paul in Romans 8:26-27 writes, In the same way (that’s in the way that you have hope for redemption even though you can’t see it) In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will. When all else fails, and even when we do call the wrong number, we’re reminded that we’re not in total control, we’re not the only ones who have his number. The work of the Spirit involves taking what is on our hearts, and he brings it before the Father without us necessarily knowing what we should be praying for.
Brothers and sisters, as we close tonight, be reminded that in those times where God seems distant, where it feels like your words and prayers just aren’t getting through, his plan holds the fulfillment of our deepest needs. Be reminded also that our God allows us to express our emotions, to beat him up when it seems like he’s crushed us or left us for dead. He’s the one who created us with the capacity to feel these things. If you find yourself wondering if God’s still listening or wondering where the service is, remember that the Lord has promised his unchanging faithfulness, he has done the work to bring coverage to all areas, and even when the prayers we offer don’t get through, the message on our hearts and in our minds will still reach him. Amen.