LAMENTING FAITH

A person going through some difficult situations made this comment to me, “I just need God listen to me. I need to know that God hears what I’m saying. Is that too much to ask for?”

Maybe you’ve found yourself in the same situation. You’ve found yourself in a place where you are crying out to God, and the whole time you’re questioning— is He even listening? Perhaps you’ve found yourself at this stage of your life where you are looking around and asking, “God, if you’re who you claim to be, then why is (fill in the blank)                                                happening?”

If you have been there — even at this moment— you’re in good company. The Bible is filled with folks who were fought with these exact questions. In it you will encounter people who, having tremendous doubt, cried out to God, “Where are you?”
 
The Word of God uses a term for these kinds of moments. It’s called “lament.” Lamenting is having a deep cry in your soul. It is an emotion that ensues in the face of your present struggles—you remember the past goodness of God and cry out to Him to be faithful once again. It is a heart-felt passionate plea, literally “calling God out” — “If you are who you say you are and if you’re the same God who has acted in the past... then where are you now?”
 
Time and time again in God’s Word, you will come across people who cried out this way to God. They lamented to God because they knew that He had been faithful in the past, and that they needed Him to be faithful now in their present. “God, where are you? I thought you were a loving God. Where’s this loving God that I thought you were?” Have you been there? Have you asked the same sort of questions only to be told that those questions demonstrate a “lack of faith?”
 
The fact of the matter is this: When you ask hard questions of God, you are standing in the flow of an age-old tradition, one that is repeated over and over in God’s Holy Word. It is in the asking of your honest, gut-wrenching questions — the ones filled with anger and frustration — that you actually are expressing a deep sense of faith. You cry out to God, in frustration and in anger, because you believe that He is the only One able to do something about it.
 
Isaiah 65:24 says — “Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear.” It is this truth that gives you hope in your present situation. 

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