The Freedom to Cry Out

Transcript is automatically produced. Errors may be present.

Weeping endures for the night, but joy comes in the morning. So good to be with you. It’s always good to be with you. It’s ironic that months ago I was asked to preach on lament in this series about the wilderness, because quite frankly, I come to you this morning in the wilderness. My, There’s many reasons for that, life, but my father passed away 10 days ago, and I loved my father, but we had a complicated relationship.

And so the grieving has been, I don’t even, I can’t really understand it. I can’t. I can only just try to feel it. And so I come to you this morning not pontificating about this subject, but in teaching about the wilderness, I want you to know I’m in it. I’m sharing it with you, my, my piece, inviting you into your space, and I’m also in a space of lament, even as I talk to you about what it might like, be like for you to enter into your own lament when it’s necessary.

So here’s the deal. When we get into the wilderness, we feel all kinds of feelings. Even for some of you today who say, “I don’t,” yes, you do. You’re created in the image of God, so even if you learn to deny your feelings or to subliminate them, you have them, I promise you, especially in the wilderness. We feel anxiety, we feel different kinds of pain, we feel disoriented, we feel confused, and many times we feel alone.

So this morning, what we’re talking about is basically what do we do when we’re in the wilderness and we start to feel all of these things? W- what is God inviting us to do with these feelings? And so basically, this is the theme. We’re invited to lament, or you might be more used to the term grieve.

We’re invited to grieve, to pour out our pain. That’s what lament means, to pour out our pain to the God who loves us and the God who is very near. So before we get more into the topic of lament, I’ve gotta pause and talk a little bit about this phrase, the God who loves us and is very near, because the wilderness can be an incredibly scary place.

And so if we’re going to take this invitation to talk to the God who loves us and who is near us in this scary place called the wilderness, then we’ve got to come to the point where we begin to believe that he really does love us and that he really is near us, especially in the loneliness of the wilderness.

And my experience of being human on the planet and knowing a lot of other human beings, is that many of us this morning aren’t sure that he loves us. We might think he loves the other, but does he really love me? And because you’re human, because I’m human, we might struggle with thinking, “Is he really with me?”

Some of us may have grown up very alone. I think I felt alone as a kid. There were people arou- all around, but I wasn’t sure who saw me. I’ve carried some of that loneliness into my adulthood, even as a pastor. Some of us have experienced that. Some of us walked in here today, maybe even with a partner that we feel alone with.

We just don’t quite feel connected, quite seen. So it’s easy to then say, “Is there a God who really sees me and who loves me and is really with me?” In fact, Kurt Thompson, Dr. Kurt Thompson says, “One of the primal origins of our fear in the wilderness is our terror of abandonment, especially being abandoned by God.”

To look over in the midst of the darkness and to try to see that he’s there, but then to see that he’s not or to feel that he’s not. So not… I d- I wish I had time to hear all of your stories just around that theme. I do not, of course, but here’s the deal. In the scripture, this is what I’d like you to at least contemplate if you’re feeling alone this morning and not really sure about God’s nearness.

God’s heart in the scripture is always to be with us I can promise you when each of my daughters was born, the only thing I wanted to do after that birth was to be with them. It carries on to this day, even, and my oldest daughter’s in her 40s, I want to be with my girls. I just love it when I’m with them.

I love to be with them. I work hard to spend time with them and to get to be with them, to go to where they are, to try to be in their space, ’cause that’s what parenting is about. Un- unless we’re too broken to feel that, we want to be with our kids. Can I tell you, God is our Father. His heart is to always be with us And quite frankly, He promises to be with us always, especially in the wilderness.

So think about this. In the garden, He was with Adam and Eve, and loving them well, and then they left. They basically flipped Him off and just decided they needed something other than His love. So what did God do? He chased them. He chased after them because He loved them and He wanted to be with them. And then when Israel went into the wilderness, coming out of Egypt, heading toward the Promised Land, He said, “I’m gonna come to you because I want to be with you.

I love you.” So in the wilderness, He came to them in a pillar of fire at night, in a cloud during the day, and then asked them to build a tabernacle so He could… The God who can’t be contained in dwellings, He said, “I’m gonna come in a special way and be present to you there in your midst while you’re in the wilderness,” why?

“Because I love you and I always want to be with you.” And then He told King Solomon to build Him a temple, so in the heart of Israel, in Jerusalem, He could again dwell amongst His people because He loves them and wants to be with them. And then there’s the incarnation. Why on earth would God come to earth?

All the other world religions in the ancient Near East were about man and humans and women coming to be with God, trying to get to Him, but our God came to be with us in the person of Christ. Why? Because He loves us and wants to be with us. And then when Jesus left the planet, in John 14, he 12- He told the 12 disciples, He said, “I won’t leave you orphans.

I will come to you in the person of the Holy Spirit, and I will be with you and I will be in you.” Why? Because He loves us and wants to be with us. And even in Revelation 21, the very last book in the Bible, the end of all things, it’s not us climbing it to get to God. It’s God in His city bringing it back to be with us.

And the text says, “God will once again dwell with His people,” because that’s always where He wants to be. We long for this. It’s intuitively baked into us as human beings created in His image to long, in our wilderness experiences especially, to look over and say, “He’s here and He loves me.” This is why we have this Psalm plastered.

There’s 150 Psalms. This is the one we want. This is the line we want. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I don’t have to be afraid.” Why? “Because you, O God, you love me and you’re with me.” I’ve seen this even on the walls of people that don’t claim any kind of faith. They hope something like this is true, ’cause that’s the way we’re wired.

And then of course we love it that the last words of Jesus before He left the planet, some of the last words were, “Remember,” He says to His brothers and sisters, “I am with you always.” even to the end of the age.” Was that just some kind of metaphor? Did he fib at the end to make them feel good, to make them feel secure, or did he really mean it?

And we don’t have time to get into this, but it’s a very metaphysical statement, “I will be with you.” How could, how can he be with us? I thought, we thought he ascended to the Father, whatever that means theologically, and he’s sitting at the Father’s right hand. Here’s what I’ve come to believe. And wh- when I was growing up, I believed that that promise w- you know, Jesus was out there, and in some kind of I’ve got the whole world in your hands kind, my hands kind of way, he was with us But I don’t believe that anymore.

We don’t have time again to get into this, but I believe he’s not out there, he’s right here. I don’t believe glory is in the human heavens, like out in the galaxies. It’s another dimension. And when the two were walking on the ro- road to Emmaus in their own wilderness after their Messiah figure had died, and all of a sudden Jesus shows up for them, do we think he flew down from somewhere?

N- no, I think, I’ve come to believe he was already there. He just parted the veil between himself and them and let them see him, and he gave them great comfort in their wilderness. When Stephen the martyr was in the midst of being stoned, Jesus appeared. Did he fly down to be with him? W- was it metaphor that Jesus promised, “I’ll be with you”?

Or was he already there and simply opened up the heavens and allowed Stephen to see where Jesus already was? The point is, he is with us in the wilderness. And so back to our definition, lament is pouring out our pain upon that God who loves us and is very near. It is his gift to us to connect us to his heart.

There are people here this morning, and I’ve been in this space myself, who are saying, “I’ve never really felt his presence.” I can tell you, I, I’ve, again, I’ve lived a while on the planet, so I’ve interacted with a lot of different kinds of human beings all over the globe. What I hear over and over is one of the places people who have never experienced God, like experienced, not just believed in their left brain, but felt him, one of the places they begin to meet him is if they have courage to take their lament to him, because then he draws us near.

He’s already there. He’s just waiting for us to give him our heart, and he will draw us near, and we begin, in ways that cannot be explained, to experience his presence. And then, of course, with lament comes the healing of our wounds. Some wounds will never be healed until we go home. But I have found even in the deepest wounds in my life, they’re not completely healed.

They can’t be until glory, till all things are made right. But they heal to a certain extent so I can continue to walk through the wilderness that life can be sometimes with resilience and with hope So this invitation to lament and I it might not be familiar to you. My sense is that in many churches around the country This is an uncomfortable topic, and so if you advertise to your close friends that you’ve been wanting to invite to church, “Come on in, we’re gonna talk about crying to God,” actually, they might come because sometimes they think we don’t do enough of that real talk and real activity and real feeling, so they might come.

But the point is, some of us might be this might be a new thought for you, that lament and the invitation to lament and the actuality of lament is everywhere in the scripture. So for example, Psalm 62:8, this invitation is all over the Psalms, “Pour out your heart before Him because God is a refuge for us.”

And I gotta tell you all the hall of famers in the scripture, all the people we like to hear sermons about because they seem to have these victories, and they do. They have joy, they have victory. They all lament in very deep and profound ways. To a person, they all have spaces where they lament. Here’s Hannah, who is the mother of Samuel, who anointed Israel’s first king, David, and she said when she was struggling she, she hadn’t been able to have a child, and she said, “I have poured out my soul before the Lord.”

And here’s the prophet Jeremiah in the Book of Lamentations. And by the way, there’s a whole book called Lamentations in the scripture. We don’t hear many sermons on Lamentations ’cause it’s so dark and it’s … There’s so much hurt, there’s so much pain. And again, we like to think happy thoughts in church, right?

We got enough pain outside church. But the fact is, this shows you that God says, “No matter what you’re feeling, I am speaking to you, my people, down through history. You can bring your emotions, even the tough ones, to me.” Jeremiah says, “Pour out your heart like water before the face of the Lord.” And of course, and this was even new to me, I knew there were quite a few psalms of lament, but I looked this up again this week.

I thought there were about 45 to 50, but scholars say there are 65 psalms out of the 150 classified as psalms of lament. It’s by far the largest category of psalm. And in fact, in contrast, we often think of psalms of joy, and there are quite a few, but 65 of these, only 30, 25 to 30 psalms of lament. And of course, these psalms of lament are cries of the human heart to God in the midst of their pain, telling God how the pain has cost us in bold and graphic language, and inviting God to come and to heal our broken hearts.

Psalm 13 is one of the shortest. You can read it maybe later, where David just cries out. We don’t know the circumstance of his life, but he cries out. He says, “How long, O Lord? Will You abandon me? Will You leave me to fend for myself?” And you might say, “Can I talk to God like that?” Yeah, in the same way that my daughters can talk to me like that.

I want to hold their pain even if they’re pounding on my chest because they’re angry at me, because I’m their dad, and I want to be with them in that space where they lament. So it is with our heavenly Father. And of course, in the New Testament, we’ve got Peter who it says Peter wept bitterly after he denied Christ.

Paul, who we kinda think is a stoic kind of individual, he’s a tough, hard-nosed guy, he was writing to Philippians and he said, I got good news for you. My friend Epaphroditus has lived, but if he would have died, I would have despaired of life.” And he’s the one also that wrote, “Not only rejoice with those who weep or rejoice,” but in, in the body of Christ, he commands us to weep with those who weep And then there’s our Savior, Christ, who grieved and who welcomed those who grieved.

In John 11, at the tomb of his friend Lazarus, we know this verse because it’s the one we learn when we’re in second grade as the shortest verse in the Bible. Jesus wept. And can I tell you, a better translation would be Jesus sobbed. Even though he knew he was gonna heal his friend and bring him out of that grave, he was weeping for the fact that the religious leaders didn’t know that he was the one to bring life into death, weeping over the fact that death had to be a thing at all in our broken world, weeping over the fact that even his disciples were like, “What are you doing, Lord?

What are we doing here? What are you giving people expectation that you’re going to do?” He wept. He wept over Jerusalem. He- it says he looked down from the Mount of Olives and saw his people and said, “I would have gathered you under my wings as a mother hen gathers her chicks, but you would not have me,” and he sobbed And he welcomed those who lamented.

One, one of my favorite stories is Luke 7, where the woman who had been so wounded by man, she found herself walking the streets, and yeah, she was a street walker. She was a first century prostitute, and Jesus had been invited to a Pharisee’s home, a guy named Simon, probably for the the look of it. Here’s the new prophet in town, n- new teacher, and Simon says, “I wanna look like the cool guy,” so he invited Jesus to come in.

But this woman had probably heard him teach, probably felt his compassion toward her pain, so she broke all protocol, busted in this guy’s house, walked right by Simon the Pharisee as he went, “What is happening?” And went to the feet of Jesus and began to sob at his feet and began to wash his feet with her hair and with the tears that were coming down from her face, and Jesus welcomed her and blessed her there, and said that her lament was a sign of faith So Jesus was so acquainted with pain.

Yes, he had joy as well. If you’ve watched The Chosen, you see those miracles and we weep with joy for the people who are getting healed, right? But there was also much wound, and in the Gospels there’s much wound. And the prophet Isaiah, in prophesying about his coming, said, “Your Messiah will be despised and rejected by men, so we’re gonna call him a man of sorrows acquainted with grief.”

So that when we’re in pain, and I don’t know how many of you today have thought, “Is there a place in the Body of Christ for my deep lament that just doesn’t seem to go away?” Jesus would say, “If it’s my community, there’s a place, because your pain has a place with me.” So we can bring our pain to the one called the Man of Sorrows and pour it out, and he will welcome our pain and begin to heal our broken hearts and set us free.

So this begs the question, if this is so important in the biblical story, if it’s baked into the fiber of God’s people in their everyday lives, and we’re commanded, we’re called, invited to lament, then why is it so important? What is it about us that makes this so endemic to our health? I would say it this way.

Humans created in the image of God are not wired to simply blow off pain I have a little puppy, Carla and I do. His name is Barney, named after the infamous Barney Fife back in the Andy of Mayberry days. At least that’s the Barney that I named him after. Carla has a relative that she named him after, but I, when I see him, I see Barney Fife.

But anyway, he’s a beautiful little sheep-a-doodle. I love this dog. But he’s so excited to be with people, and he’s living with a couple of old people, so he’s, when he sees people that are more active, like when my daughter Caroline comes over, he can’t get enough her. He bounds to her and jumps up on her.

For me, I know that some people don’t like to be jumped on by dogs, so I will be, we don’t beat him or anything. We’re, but we speak harshly. We try to say, “Look, Barney, no.” And f- for a minute, Barney will go like this. And I kid you not, he’s hurt, okay? He’s, his feelings have been hurt. In 10 seconds, he is back jumping again because he has been given by God the ability to, relatively speaking, blow off certain kinds of pain.

But that is not the human condition. We are created to love, and if we love, we are vulnerable, and we will eventually be hurt and find ourselves in a relational wilderness In fact, I would say it like this, and I’m not sure I’m not sure what was said last week about this, but this is my take.

Many, if not most, of our wilderness experiences are linked to some kind of relational pain. Not just a circumstance, but the people involved in the circumstance If you think about it, God’s first lament was relational. When Adam and Eve left the garden, he pursued them in a spirit of lament because he had, for a moment, lost his son and his daughter, and he was pursuing them because, as we said earlier, he can’t stand to be without us.

So one of my favorite pastors says it this way, “The depth of our grief is directly correlated to the depth of love for the person who wounded us or who we hurt for. We grieve because we love.” One of the toughest experiences my family went through was something that happened to us when I was a pastor. I had pastored a church for 14 years in Detroit, and this was before I pastored the church that I wrote the book books about.

But the church unbelievably grew to a couple thousand people. We baptized so many different kinds of people, and it really was, in many ways, a very healthy community that we just loved being in. And then for a lot of reasons I don’t have time to get into, after year 14, we got unexpectedly let go.

And yeah, it was painful. In one way, just the experience of getting fired was painful. I have a master’s degree in theology with an emphasis on church history and Greek. That doesn’t qualify you for many jobs, so there was a bit of a wilderness experience of being unemployed. Where, how am I gonna make a living?

But you know what the deepest pain was? The betrayal

The folks that had pledged themselves to Carla and me and our kids and just walked away because they weren’t happy with whatever. To watch my wife lose friends, to watch her grieve broke my heart. To watch my daughters lament over the loss of people who had babysat them since they were little girls and they just walked away.

So my take is that the deepest parts of our wilderness experiences have to do with relationships, and the length of our lament, the depth of our lament will often correspond to the depth of our love for the person who wounded us or who we hurt for. We grieve because we love. It is not godly, my brothers and sisters, to get over it and move on.

Not grieving denies our humanity. It denies that we are created to love, and in fact, if we don’t grieve, I promise you, we stop being able to love We, we would like to think we can just take the pain part of our emotions and cut them off, and then we could still maintain the part of our feeling self that’s about love, and joy, and peace.

But the fact is, if you cut off the ability to feel pain, you cut off the rest of it as well a-a-and again, I’ve walked with just a lot of people because I’m older and I was a pastor for so many years. When I would see someone with flat affect, not too many highs, not too many lows, just this, I-I-I often wouldn’t say that’s just their personality.

I would begin to wonder about ungrieved loss When I would see folks who were really angry, and can I just be honest? That was me years ago. It made, my anger made me a heck of a football player, heck of a high school and college football player. But in terms of being a good human being, when I was dysregulated, not so much.

And it took me many years of pain to realize, I guess mostly in therapy, that a lot of my anger… I was still responsible for how I handled my anger not passing the buck here. But I can tell you, I couldn’t just say, “I won’t be mad, I won’t be mad, I won’t be mad.” That anger was masking. Underneath anger, there’s almost always pain.

And ungrieved pain will keep anger alive, the kind of anger that hurts others. You might say it like this: the pain of ungrieved loss, though buried like a drum of toxic waste, and you’ve seen this, industry shuts down, and they have to put their toxic waste someti- somewhere, and they might put it in these big steel, I don’t know what the metal is, these drums to try to hold it, and maybe, 80 years ago it did, but then the drums didn’t hold it anymore, and so the toxic waste leaked into the groundwater around them, around those drums.

Our pain is like that. The pain of ungrieved loss, though buried like a drum of toxic waste deep in our hearts, continues to seep the pus of our wounds into our lives. The pain continues to shout, because it is impossible to heal if we have not first allowed ourselves to lament. Lament doesn’t make you a bad, ungrateful Christian.

Lament makes you a human being that is designed to feel the pain of this world as we maintain our humanity, and then to take that pain to the God who will walk with us, hold us, heal us, and set us free. So If this is true then why don’t we lament? If this is so true, what is our resistance Here’s a couple of thoughts.

First of all, children without encouragement and help to grieve often internalize their pain. So when I was nine years old, my grandmother, Lela, died. And I may have told you this before, sorry if I have, but she was the most important person in my life, even though I only saw her a couple of times a year.

She loved me. She saw me. And we’re all looking to be seen, and really seen. Not looked through, not looked around, but really seen And she saw me in the midst of a family system. God bless my mom and dad, they didn’t feel seen in their family systems. They didn’t know how to give what they hadn’t received.

So she saw me, and when she passed, I was devastated. And as a nine-year-old, I was a pretty smart kid, but emotionally … Look, when I was six months old, I knew how to grieve. Wah. I, w- all babies know how to lament. But then society, they begin, we begin at the age of three and five and seven to pick up cues from society, and we begin to go, “Maybe that’s not so

Maybe I can’t cry here. May- I better … i’m six now, I probably can’t…” So kids don’t know. We begin to shut down. What I needed from my mother, God bless her, she’s with Jesus, I love her she’s with the Lord, but what I needed from my mother … here’s what my mother did. This is her, was her attempt, and I think it was her attempt to help me.

She took my hand and took me over to the casket and made me touch my grandmother in the casket. She was trying. That’s not what I needed. What I needed is her to get on her knees and to pull me close, and to say, “I know your grandmother was very important to you, son, and I just want you to know I’m here.

If you need to cry, if you wanna talk, Mommy’s got you.” That’s what kids need, otherwise they won’t know. And what happens is if they don’t learn how to grieve, they bury it, and then they become 35-year-olds in a marriage where they don’t know how to grieve, and so the grief undealt with, childhood and present, begins to pour out into the relationships, even in their grown-up homes.

And then adults often don’t give themselves permission to grieve. Men

And I’m not picking on you. I’m one of you. I’ve been a man all my life, or at least a male, and so I’ve hung out with a lot of men, and I’ve done zillions of men’s retreats and read the literature and been on my own healing journey. It’s hard for us sometimes, men. Sisters, you too.

But for men, it’s if it’s not passed down from generation to generation we buy into some kind of narrative about manhood that’s about being tough and, I’m gonna be the warrior ki- yes, there is a time to be strong. There’s a time to stand up and defend the, th- those who can’t defend themselves in our family systems as well.

Yes. But brothers, we’re human beings created in the image of a God who lamented, who invites us to lament. You can’t… Guys, you can’t blow off pain. It will impact your story, and it will eventually leak out into the groundwater of your relationships

I wish I could pause time right now and just have the sisters go over here, pray for us, and the men would come over here, and we would talk about men lamenting. I did a men’s retreat one time where my father got to come. It was a great honor to have him there. We talked about lament, and I said, “Guys, I want you to go out tonight.

Think of what you need to lament.” ‘Cause everybody in that room sh- should’ve had some pain, ’cause life is painful. And “And then come back and tell us this morning what you heard from the Lord, if anything.” And my dad was the only guy in the room, and I love my dad

His dad didn’t teach him about this. He didn’t know. And he was the guy that came back and he said, “I really couldn’t think of anything. My dad was an attorney, a lawyer. He just didn’t know this pathway.” Another one of his friends, in his 80s, went out that night. You know what he told the Lord? He said, “Lord, I’ve been carrying something.

In the last years of my wife’s life, I treated her horribly. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to do with this pain. Can you take it?” And he came back in the next morning, and it doesn’t always happen this quickly, brothers and sisters, but he came back in that next morning, told us that story, and he said, “I poured that out onto the heart of my God, and that wound is gone.

I was able to release it.” Why? Because God took it. He was a brother that stepped into that uncomfortable space, even in his mid-80s

Have courage, guys, to deal with your wounds. If you ever wanna talk, let’s grab coffee. If 20 of you come up and say you want coffee, we’ll have to work out a schedule. But I’m with you. And then spiritually … I’m sorry, culturally, it just might be uncomfortable. This sister’s name is Sophia. I talk about her in my first book, Choose and Choose Again Actually, her story was the chapter on lament.

I think we entitled it Cry. Sophia had a tough life, don’t have time to get into it, but ended up on the street as a prostitute and as a drug addict for 20 years, and then she came to Christ, but she … Do you, can you imagine the wounds? She had six kids. Five of them were outside having a husband, so she had kids out there, just out there that she, once she came to Christ, she

And left the drugs behind and the hooking she began to love those kids like she hadn’t before, but there was so much wound. So she had a lot to lament. One Sunday morning when I was preaching, it was probably 2010, 2011, I was preaching just like this, and over on this side of the auditorium, Sophia stood up and started to wail.

And she prayed, as I remember it, she was wailing Psalm 13, “How long, O Lord?” I don’t even think she knew that Psalm. You can do what you want with that. That’s a mystery. But she started wailing, and of course in seminary they never taught me what to do in that situation, I gotta promise you. So I did absolutely nothing.

There was something sacred about this, so I let it be and just stood there like this as she lamented. And then I don’t have time to go into it, but over here there was a sister that got up and ministered to her out of her own wound. And then pretty soon S- Sophia said, “Okay, Pastor, I think I’m okay now.

You can go on and preach the rest of your sermon.” Which like an idiot, I tried to do it. I … It was just so stupid. But did the best I could. But here’s the deal. What if today somebody right over here stood up right now and just started to wail Psalm 13 or just their pain? Maybe someone passed this week.

Maybe they just got in touch with the fact that I don’t know, something deep. They came in and they said, “I think these are my brothers and sisters. I gotta cry out.” How would that feel to us? You can understand why culturally sometimes we don’t lament when we need to, because we’re afraid of what others might think in the culture in which we’re, we are living.

Spiritually, it may not feel godly. We may feel God pointing his finger at us saying, “You have so much to be thankful for,” that, that finger. Can I tell you, if you ever s- listen, if you ever see this finger pointing at you, it is not God’s finger. He doesn’t do this thing. It may be your mom or dad or your ex-husband or wife, I don’t know, but it’s not him.

So but we can sometimes feel like it’s not very spiritual. We just need to praise the Lord all the time. No, we need … Yeah, we need to find gratitude even in the sorrow, but we’re invited to lament our pain Personally, we may not have given permission to grieve as kids. When I was a kid, I heard this over and over again stop your crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.”

I can’t tell you how many people lined up this morning to basically just say this to me, “Me too. Me too. Me too.” And the younger generation of parents, you may not use those exact words. You might go, “Ugh, that’s from my mom and dad.” But we have our own version of shutting down our kids’ pain instead of giving them permission to grieve in appropriate ways in a safe space.

And then finally, at times, we have a very real fear that if we begin to lament especially lament that has been stored up, we might never stop Have you ever heard somebody say I can’t go there. I don’t think I’ll ever stop crying if I let myself go there”? I don’t know if you remember this movie. This is The Fellowship of the Ring.

This is the Balrog that chased the Fellowship of the Ring, the Fellowship- chased the Fellowship, into that- on that bridge. I forget the name of the bridge. Man, it seems every time I look this stuff up, it’s all written in Elven language or something. I can’t read it, and I can’t pronounce it.

But- Caras Galadhon. Sorry? Caras Galadhon. Yes. Of course you know that. Of course. This brother, I love you, man. Man, do I love you. So what he said. And then, Gandalf took the, this, his staff and said, “You shall not pass.” It’s a beautiful moment, and the bridge separates, and the Balrog goes down into the abyss, and then you think all is well.

Justice and good and light has won over darkness. And then the Balrog’s tail comes back up and wraps itself around Gandalf’s leg, and he goes down into the abyss, which is where we think we’re gonna go if we start lamenting. Maybe we will But remember we thought we lost him, didn’t we? But he came back.

He went in as Gandalf the Grey, came back as Gandalf the White

What if you and I have this one called the man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, who will put his arm around our waist, and you’ll feel his grip, and you’ll know this brother is not letting me go? And what if he whispers in our ear, “I love you too much to let you continue to be locked down by this pain that you’ve struggled to share and heal from.

So if you trust me, son, if you trust me, daughter, let’s do this together.” And what if we go down into that abyss with all of that wound, and we face it, and we grieve it however long it takes, and then we come back out more healed and more free than we ever thought possible? More ability to love, a love that has been estranged from us because of the pain we’ve been carrying in our lives.

So finally How then do we grieve? I get asked this question all the time. “So what do I do?” First, we must feel the pain, and I know that’s tough for us We spend a lot of our lives trying to get away from the pain, right? To buy little contraptions and, I don’t know, buy the right house or get into a space where we don’t feel as much pain.

It’s normal. We’re not– It’s abnormal if you touch a hot stove and smile. You– we’re trying. It makes sense to try to get away from the pain. But in this case, if we’re gonna heal, we’ve got to feel it. In fact, somebody said to me recently, “We must feel it so God can heal it.” Dr.

Terry Smith, a PhD in social work, says, “We must accept the reality of the loss. We must experience the pain of the loss. Then, and only then, can we begin to make meaning of the loss and move on.” We can’t live in denial about the pain and heal. Denial will serve us for a minute, and then it won’t serve us any longer

Sometimes we get stuck analyzing the pain. Why do I feel this way? That’s me. I get into analysis in- instead of allowing myself just to feel it. Look, feelings of pain are not moral or immoral. They just are. And they don’t tell us everything, but they do tell us something, and we’re invited to pay attention to them and experience them and not be afraid of them because they’re not forever

Sometimes we shame ourselves. Instead of feeling our pain, we go i shouldn’t feel this way. Says who? Sometimes we compare our pain. Can you imagine if two of your kids came off the playground and one said, “I broke my hand,” the other one said, “I broke my arm,” or, I’m sorry, “I broke my leg.” And you tell the kid that’s crying over his broken hand to go away and get over it because break– come back when you’ve got something as serious as a broken leg Your pain is your pain, my brothers and sisters.

It’s okay to be where you are with your story, with your wounds and feel it. You can’t move forward unless you feel it

Do you remember Good Will Hunting? And Robin Williams moves toward Matt Damon, who is holding all this pain, and he says, one day he goes, “It’s not your fault.” Matt Damon goes I… Okay, fine.” And then Robin Williams got further up into his space and says, “It’s not your fault.” He goes, “Okay, I get it.” And Robin Williams says, “No, you don’t.”

And he got up even further, and he says, “It’s not your fault.” And then the tears started to come. And he started– He went, he pushed Robin Williams away. And then finally, Robin Williams would not be denied. He loved this young man too much. He came further in and said, “It’s not your fault.” And finally, Matt Damon allowed himself to feel his pain and fell into Robin Williams’ arms and started his healing journey in the arms of one who held his lament

Secondly, we gotta speak the pain. The Talmud, the commentary of the rabbis says, “The deeper the sorrow, the less tongue it has.” You’ve heard people say, “I can’t talk about it. It’s too painful.” That’s this human reaction. The more we hurt, the deeper the hurt, the less we feel like we can talk about it and yet in order to heal, we must find language for the pain.

One commentator says we’ve got to heal, we’ve got to ungag the voice of the victim

Our laments need to be spoken in raw, honest, no holding back ways Our laments may contain raw fear, raw anger By the way, my daughters know they can bring anything to me. Do you think our Heavenly Father can’t handle the deepest things that you feel? Do you think he’s sitting there going just calm down a little bit before you…”

Or do you think he moves toward you and said, “My strong arms and my love for you are plenty enough. You bring it all to me. You pour it out. You speak your pain. You feel those feelings, and I’m telling you, my love is gonna wrap you up and stay with you until that pain begins to heal.”

And then thirdly, we speak it to the God who loves us and is near. I already betrayed where I was going there. This picture is a picture I found in my dad’s stuff. And I- Caroline, I don’t know how old you were there, but maybe 14? I don’t know We were at a wedding, and my girls can flat dance, and I’m telling you, my one daughter is a professional dancer.

But they were dancing up a storm, and I had my coat off. Maybe I tried to get out there and do a little something. I don’t know. But here’s what I can tell you. That picture represents so much. See how their heads are leaned into my chest? Since they’ve been little girls, my chest has been a repository, along with their mom, for their pain.

They could tell me anything. If it was a big lament when they came to me, they would cry for 20 minutes and move on. If it was a longer lament, it might be an hour and a half, I would hold them, and maybe I would hold them later in the evening. My chest became that place where they could put their pain And then at some point, when they began to feel the healing, they’d just push away, and I could say, “What just happened?”

All I had to do was look down at my chest, and there they had left their tears And what I had given them sometimes without words was my courage, my love, my strength, my acceptance. In fact, Isaiah talks about it like this. This is a messianic promise from the prophet. Jesus owned these words in Luke 4, “God has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to set the captives free.”

Look at these exchanges. “To give them beauty for ashes.” My daughters would give me their ashes. I would give them the beauty that I had for them. That’s what God will do for us in our lament. “The oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they may be called trees of righteousness, planted for the glory of the Lord.”

It took me 30 years to grieve my mom

My mom was so broken when she had me. She didn’t, she was just broken. She g- she loved me, but she gave me a lot of her brokenness. And I hate to say this to you, but I’m only speaking this, it’s not about me, I’m speaking it so that you will know we can tell anything to the Lord. I hated my mom for quite a while.

As a Christian, I just, I couldn’t stand her. And it took me 30 years. I actually carry with me when I talk about lament this is from the Marriott at Niagara Falls Fallsview and Spa. I didn’t see no spa, but anyway, that’s what this says. February the 2nd, 2010 was one of my last psalms of lament I wrote about my mom.

It took me so long, and I’m telling you today, I feel love for my mom And there’s only one reason. It wasn’t about the books of, on Lament that I’ve read. It’s because my heavenly Father and some of my brothers and sisters gave me beauty for my ashes, joy for my mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.

Listen, this is not pop psychology. This is biblical, cosmic, personal reality God wants us to be free. He invites us to bring that which is locking us down, and when we bring it, he will begin to do that healing work and give us what we need in exchange for our pain. Finally, and lastly, we need to do this in safe community.

And that’s hard, isn’t it? Even the way we set up church, and this is not a criticism of South, this is the way most of our churches are set up since the Reformation. We stand up front. We, and it, so it’s it takes work to turn, doesn’t it? That’s one thing. But it’s one thing to turn and say, “Hi, how are you?

Good to see you again.” To turn and go, “Can I tell you my I’m weeping today. Could you bear witness to my story?” But notice what psychologist Henry Cloud … I’m almost done. Psychologist Henry Cloud says in this minute-and-a-half video about how necessary it is for us to weep with others around us who are weeping, to give space for that communal weeping.

Look at this. Look at this

No more profound a phrase has ever been spoken because our pain needs to be seen Two years ago, I went to

A Curt Thompson group experience. Dr. Curt Thompson, psychiatrist, brain scientist, follower of Christ. And I was in a group with other caregivers. We were all caregivers, but we were there to receive care, so we each had an hour to tell our story during the week, and then the rest of the community would f- feed back to us what they were feeling with us.

They didn’t try to fix us. They just fed back to us their love So I thought, “If I’m gonna be here, I’m gonna tell the truth.” Now think about it. I was 70 years old. I’d been living my life the best I knew how, loving the best I knew how, lamenting and receiving freedom, therapy, my brothers and sisters, the best I knew how.

But that day, I decided to tell about a memory that I’d never really shared much with anyone. It’s too personal. My mother had come to me in my early 30s and said, “I need to confess to you that when you were a little baby on the changing table, I used to beat you, and then I would walk away.” And I didn’t know what to do with that then, my brothers and sisters.

She needed to be affirmed. She needed to- to know that I receive her confession. We needed to weep together, and I didn’t know how. So I carried that little boy, that little baby in me. I didn’t even know I was carrying him. I thought, “I’m good.” When I told that story in group, I was good. I just, this is part of my story.

I’m just telling you. And as the people started to give feedback, the lead therapist leaned over and looked me in the eye and said, “Kevin, I can’t stop thinking about that little baby who was beaten and then left alone.” And when she said those words I c- this is so raw for me, so please later line up to hug me, please.

I fell apart

I started to sob. I put my hands up to my face. And again, I’m the tough ex-college football player. I’ve been all over the world teaching the Bible and helping people heal, and I’m sitting there literally like I was on that changing table again. And this sister sitting next to me, she asked permission.

She came over and she held me. She was a mother herself. She just held me and stroked my brow while she wept with me. I could feel her sobbing with me as I wept. Romans 12. And then another sister, who happened to be a therapist, but in that moment she was receiving care, she came over and she started to sing to me, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.”

And if there was a way to fall apart further, I fell apart further But here’s the deal. I finally collected myself. We were able to regroup and receive some kind words. And so I had this habit with Carla over the years. We’re madly in love, always have been, but I had this habit of every week or two I’d say, “Are you mad at me?”

She would say, “What are you talking about?” I don’t know. Here’s what I began to realize in the aftermath of this experience with the body of Christ, that I had carried that little baby around with me. Who doesn’t love a baby? I was the baby that even my mother couldn’t love. And so I was always, I was on high alert for that moment when somebody might find me out, that I wasn’t the guy with the seminary degree, I wasn’t the former All-American, I wasn’t this and I wasn’t that.

I was just that little baby that nobody loved. And that’s what was coming out when I was saying to Carla, “Are you mad at me? Are you mad at me? Are you mad at me?” Can I tell you, since my pain, that deep pain that took me 70 years to share, came out with the body of Christ who sought and grieved with me, I have not one time said to Carla, “Are you mad at me?”

Gone, because now I know that little baby was wounded by a woman who also had a little baby inside of her that was very wounded. I have forgiven her. I have let that go. I now have this little baby not only in my arms, but my God has that little child in His arms. In that part of my journey, I’m free I don’t know how this is gonna work out at South.

I’m not the lead pastor here, I’m not the associate pastor. I’m just a guy they bring up here to speak once in a while. Can I tell you, somehow, my brothers and sisters, we’ve got to find a way to turn toward one another and say, “How are you this morning?” And literally press through that initial good.

Doing good.” Say, “Okay, maybe, but just so you know, I really mean it. How are you doing?” And let a part of our culture here become not only rejoicing with those who rejoice, but in an increasing way, I know we do it some, but in an increasing way, weeping with those who weep so we can be free

Bow your heads with me if you don’t mind. What I wish I could do this morning is bring every one of you up here from the youngest to the oldest

I wish I could hold you in my arms and represent the God who also is holding you in His arms

I can’t do that. There’s not enough time, not enough space But what I wanna say today is there is a God who can hold all of your pain. I believe His Son, Jesus, is literally sitting right next to you this morning

What would it be like right now to put your head on his shoulder? to allow yourself to feel To allow yourself to speak in the quietness of your heart to Him and to receive His love and His care, to begin the journey of receiving His beauty for your ashes

What would it be like this morning to have courage before you leave? Whether it’s coming up to me, but I’m gonna invite you to turn to one of your brothers and sisters and say, “Could you bear witness to my pain this morning? I don’t need you to fix anything, but I’ve got some stuff I’ve been carrying.

Would you just see me? Would you weep with me for a moment as I weep with you?” What would it be like today to not hold it alone any longer, but to begin the journey of opening up your heart with courage and allow him and to allow us to meet you there to begin to push back the darkness And to allow your heart to begin to be set free.