"A Praying Life" (chapters 22-23)

A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World
By Paul E. Miller

“Hebrew Laments”: Relearning Desert Praying - Chapter 22

Understanding Laments

• An ancient, long-forgotten way of praying.
• A very biblical way of praying.
• Laments are prayers for the desert: the times when we are living in the gap between reality and hope.
• A lament connects God’s promises with our problem and gives voice to the seeming discrepancy between what God has said and what is actually happening in our lives.
• The emptiness of the desert drives the power of a lament.
• A lament doesn’t flee the desert (in denial); it fights the desert through prayer and faith.
• The bleakness of the desert emboldens lament.
• Laments might seem disrespectful in the way we voice our complaint to God, but in fact they are filled with faith—a raw, pure form of faith that simply takes God at his word.
• There is no such thing as a lament free life.
• If you are not lamenting, then you are not loving well. You haven’t allowed your heart to be broken by anything.
• If you don’t lament over the broken things in your world, then your heart shuts down into cynicism.
• Cynicism leads you away from God; lament pushes you into God’s presence.
• Not lamenting leads to unbelief. You succumb to reality and lose hope.
• One of the sure signs that we have wandered from God is if we stop lamenting.
• We think laments are disrespectful; God says the opposite. Lamenting shows you are engaged with God in a vibrant, living faith.
  We live in a deeply broken world. If you aren’t lamenting to God, then you are slowly becoming cynical.

Nuclear Praying

• We are confused by lament sometimes because we associate it only with grieving.
• So we think of lament prayers in the same category as funeral dirges—a form of grieving with no expectation that anything will change.
• By far, most laments are not prayers of surrender, grieving what cannot be changed, but a call to arms.
• Lament prayers are the spiritual warfare equivalent of “going nuclear.”
• You have no other option, so you reach for your most powerful weapon—your ability to cry out to the living God for help.
• Lament draws us deeper into a praying life, because we pour out our hearts fully and authentically to God.
• God often answers our laments in ways we don’t expect.

“Understanding How Laments Work” - Chapter 23

• Why do laments feel so strange?
• Laments were not strange to the ancient Israelites. The scriptures are filled with them. In fact, they even sang them.
• The influence of Greek stoicism has subtly crept into our thinking.
  Stoicism resigned itself to the chaos of the world and didn’t have any hope for it getting better.
• The Jewish and biblical worldview sees the world as broken but with the hope of transformation by God.
• The Israelites lamented because they longed for a better world, the way the world was supposed to be.
• They believed in a covenant keeping God, one who keeps his word.
• That’s what makes laments so direct and “in your face.”
• A lament connects God’s past promise with my present chaos, hoping for a better future.

A Template for Laments

• Isaiah 63-64 as a pattern:
  
  • Many laments begin with an emotional dump.
  • Laments believe in a big, sovereign God. Isaiah believed so strongly in God’s sovereignty, he blames God.
  • After the initial passionate overflow, Isaiah connects the reality of Israel’s desolate state with the hope of God’s power. He believes in a God who is near, acting in time & space.
  • Isaiah remembers God’s previous acts of power: you’ve done this before, do it again!
  • Laments are full of faith affirming the greatness of God: “no eye has seen a God besides you…”
  • Laments drive us to patiently endure and wait on God.
  • Laments point us to repentance. God is not the problem, we are.
  • Isaiah submits, pleading with God to act on their behalf.
  • Isaiah begins the lament naked before God, pouring out his heart.
  • Then he reinterprets those feelings in the reality of God.
  • In a kind of spiritual pilgrimage, he begins feisty, in God’s face, then he slowly reveals his faith and his heart.
  • Isaiah’s faith drives the lament.
    
    • God is sovereign and can do something.
    • God is love and wants to do something.
    • God is a covenant-keeping God and is bound by his own word.
  • Isaiah doesn’t stop asking because he doesn’t stop believing.
  • Like Jacob, he wrestles with God. He doesn’t accept the status quo.

Thinking a Lament

• Laments are passionate, but they are also well-reasoned arguments.
• Isaiah begins by making a case that God is all-powerful.
• He argues with God based on his past dealings with Israel.
• Isaiah then moves to confession, knowing that God is bound to act when his people repent and confess.
• He argues based on the honor of God’s name connected to Jerusalem.

Are Laments Disrespectful?

• That’s the wrong question. The question is, “What is on your heart?”
• What is driving the lament?
• What is so striking about biblical laments, is that God almost never critiques them. He delights in hearing our messy hearts.
• At the end of the book of Job, God honors feisty Job with his demanding laments and rebukes the three friends who have been critiquing Job.

Cautions with Counterfeit Laments

• Be careful that laments don’t slip into complaining.
• What’s the difference?
  
  • A lament is directed toward God; complaints are often directed toward others.
  • A lament is faith; a complaint is rebellion.
  • A lament submits.
  • A lament always circles back to faith.

What does it feel like to pray a lament?

• Often it is our anxieties that fuel lament.
• We take our cares to a God who hears and acts.
• Take hold of God and pull.
• Pray the psalms back to God.
• As we finish lamenting, we are quiet. There is nothing more to say or do—so we wait.