CCC Livestream - Glenn Ballard
Live Worship Gathering: 2/8/2026
Preaching: Glenn Ballard
Text: Psalm 13
Primary Audience: Israel
CIT: The lament of Christian hearts is a cry to God that moves towards God
Proposition: Christians should understand that lament is grief mixed with hope
Purpose: I want this church to learn to lament and thereby worship well
Title: Life, Longing, and Lament
Outline:
· Last month, I started my day at Dunkin in Nashville on a particularly hard morning. There was a combination of life happenings and kids being kids and not sleeping and broken coffee cups, all before 9am. It made the world just seem to be spinning pretty fast and with so much going on I decided to go and get some coffee and sit there and work for the beginning of my day
o And while there, I’m in the word and asking God for help to do everything I needed to do that morning trying not to be too stressed by what seemed like the chaos of everything else going on.
o But as I’m sitting there, another customer walks in and it’s a mother presumably with her daughter. Putting her daughter at the table behind her with her backpack and a few things to entertain her, this mother then sat down with a Dunkin employee for what seemed very clearly to be a job interview.
o And in a pause when that employee left to help behind the counter and that mother was left sitting there, the look in her eyes left me heartbroken. She just kind of stared off into the distance with unfocused eyes and in that moment my own experiences that morning fell silent as I began to wonder:
§ What was her story? What challenges was she facing? What had happened just this morning that was shaking her world? How badly does she need this job? The list went on and on. . .
§ And all the while sitting there thinking these things, I was reminded that everyone in the world has a story and that while they are all vastly different in so many ways, there are so many elements that every story shares
§ Everyone knows pain. Everyone knows hurt. Everyone knows longing. Everyone knows shame. Everyone knows grief. To sum it up, everyone knows the effects of sin even if there are so many who do not recognize it as such
· And what I couldn’t escape was the last question I was asking myself: Where did this woman find hope? Find joy, peace, comfort that would help her get through whatever struggles she faced?
§ Because while we all have stories, as Christians, we have the greatest story of all. Not one of our own making or of our design, but one that began long before us and that through Christ we are now invited into.
· The story of our great rebellion against God, and how he has bought our redemption from our sins through Jesus Christ to right our wrongs and offer us new life.
§ And what’s more, as followers of Jesus we are now called and commanded to share this great story with others and invite them to be a part of what God has done, of what he is doing, and of what he is going to do
· Because whatever hurts and struggles are present in anyone’s life, we as people all have the experience of pain and grief in common. The difference is that in Christ, those of us who follow him have somewhere to take all of that brokenness
o But dealing with hurts and struggles and sufferings in a distinctly Christian way is a discipline that I know I seldom consider or think about cultivating until something really big happens. And then circumstances force me to confront how I myself am walking with God through my sufferings and whether or not I am doing so in a way that draws me closer to God or pushes me further away
o And walking with God and to God through something really hard is something that requires much of us. It takes a lot of discipline
· In the Christian life, we talk a lot about the disciplines of our faith. We readily think of and share the disciplines of reading the Bible, of prayer, of gathering on Sundays for worship, or for gathering together throughout the week for discipleship.
o However, there are some disciplines that we gravitate to naturally and that seem to come easily but others that are much harder. And recently, I have been confronted again with one of these disciplines and wanted to take the time this morning to study Gods Word together and see what we can learn about lament
· If you were able to be there yesterday you know that we had our yearly Pillar conference and the theme of this year was “Living as Exiles” and while there I was privileged to lead a breakout on suffering as sojourners and having joyful endurance in a hostile world.
o And in the preparation and wrestling with this topic, I began to pray and think and the Lord led me to a recipe for this spiritual discipline of lament. Because in his mercy, we are given access to the Father in Christ that is unhindered in its scope, meaning we don’t have to have it all together when we come to him.
§ And while it is a difficult thing to do well and receive the benefits of, the discipline of lament itself is something that I hope to show us today is a uniquely Christian response to the brokenness both inside and outside of us.
§ Because it not only gives a voice to our pain, our hurt, the reality of whatever it is that each of us is going through. But when we learn to lament, it also works to draw us closer to God even amidst the sufferings and hardships of our life
o So if you’ll open your Bibles and turn with me to Psalm 13, I hope to show us this morning how Gods word instructs us as believers to find hope amidst suffering. But it’s a hope that’s found in the cry of lament
· Psalm 13
“How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I take counsel in my soul
and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
3 Consider and answer me, O Lord my God;
light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
4 lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,”
lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.
5 But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
6 I will sing to the Lord,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.”
· There are three things that I hope we see here this morning and as I walk through them I want to challenge us not just to apply them to our own life, but to consider how we may use them as bridges to reach out to those around us who are also hurting and yet don’t have the hope of Jesus
· The first thing that David makes clear to us in this text in verses 1 and 2 is:
· Life is Hard (v.1-2)
o This truth is something that remains true for everyone regardless of status, wealth, health, or any other earthly factor. If you’re human, you’ve learned this fact
o Everyone has at some point, one way or another has felt “sorrow in my heart all the day”
§ This doesn’t mean that everyone experiences the same type of hardship or that life is just all around terrible, but the fact that life is hard remains for all people
§ It isn’t hard to see that life is hard for those around the world in lands facing war, famine, natural disasters, and mass poverty. We turn on the news and can see right away how life is very hard for those going through such major difficulties.
· These are hardships many of us are blessed to be spared here as we live our lives in Rocky Mount, NC.
§ But consider in our relatively easy lifestyles in America how even we are working day after day to avoid the hard realities of life
§ Most marketing professionals work to advertise and showcase their product. They tend to do it by highlighting all the ways their product will improve your life and will make hard things easier.
· This product will make you happier, more fulfilled, more comfortable, all the things aimed at easing and masking the hardships of life
· Here are just a few common slogans that you may recognize:
o “Save money, live better” - Walmart
o “Comfort is everything” – Tempur Pedic
o “There’s an easier way” – Staples
o And then there’s my favorite . . “Built to make your life easier” – Whirlpool
· Now those are all things that make our already fairly comfortable lives even more comfortable so consider David’s experience of hardship when he’s writing this Psalm
§ Most scholars believe that this Psalm comes from the times in David’s life that he was in exile with Saul pursuing him and was not really very far from being caught and killed at a moment’s notice
o We can’t all say we have experienced what David experienced. But there are still people right now that around the world do face that scenario for any number of reasons as they are on the run from those who would do them harm.
§ And while we may never face something to that extreme, all of us can and will reach that lowest point where we have to admit the reality that one way or another, life is hard and there is nothing and no one that is spared
o But the strength of his words is just that. Everyone in every age and at every time and place can relate to David’s words because even though there are those who would not direct them towards God in prayer, they have all cried out in their sufferings
§ The modern day version of this for those who don’t pray might be summed up as the phrase “why me?” or just the acknowledgment that they are facing hard things
§ And regardless of where they go to find relief from the hardship, everyone, everywhere is constantly seeking to make things easier
· Feeling abandoned and alone and in sorrow and with enemies all around him, David gives a voice to that which has been the human reality since the fall
· And unfortunately, for many this is where it ends. The fact that life is hard is simply understood to be reality and its pushed back briefly day after day with any number of self-medications.
o Food, drink, entertainment, relationships, travel, more experiences, there are many ways that we attempt to escape. And yet all of them are dead ends
o Like bungee cords, they offer a brief way out only to tighten and catapult us back into the reality we so desperately try to get away from.
§ But for those of us in Christ, this is a bridge that we can use to readily relate to those who are experiencing the pains of life and help guide them towards the solution
· Because regardless of where they look, everyone is looking for something better
· Which leads us to our second point in verses 3-4:
· Longing is universal (v.3-4)
o “Consider and answer me, O Lord my God;
light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
4 lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,”
lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.”
o Again, while David directs his words to God, these feelings he’s expressing are common to every person, everywhere
§ In his case, David is expressing his desire for rescue, for vindication, lest his enemies succeed in their pursuit of his life
§ Directing it in prayer to God, he expresses his longing
· Longing for relief and better times and a happy ending. For things to be good
o This is no different for all people today. Regardless of their severity, when sufferings come and things are bad and we are faced with the reality that life is hard, everyone everywhere responds with longing
o We each vary with what we want or think we want that would make our current situation better but deeper still is the desire that things all be made right. As if there’s a pervasive sense of the wrongness of how things are
§ Its not a coincidence that we get this feeling most often when something goes wrong in our own life or when we see the latest tragic headline or hear from a friend about something hard they are facing
§ This is by design! Because God made us in his image, there is a desire for justice for love for goodness that is still present in every human heart even if it is largely masked by sin. Ultimately, that desire is for God himself
· By his common grace, God often uses the hardest things in our life to sharpen these longings so that they make us uncomfortable enough to start seeking him as the true solution
· Not one that we attempt to create and manifest that will only end up dragging us back to where we started, but something greater. Something outside of ourselves. Someone
§ While David faced a physical enemy who was seeking to kill him, and so pleads with the Lord his longing for deliverance, there are also common enemies that everyone faces that they long to be delivered from
· And while we as Christians know that the greatest enemy everyone needs deliverance from is sin, think of how the different challenges people face are all different forms of brokenness all resulting from sin.
· And then consider how we can reach out to those all around us who are suffering because while we may not experience their suffering, we too have wrestled with our own experiences of brokenness that at its root is a result of sin and its effects on the world
o Some long for deliverance from poverty, others from disease, still others from anxiety, from depression, from loneliness, from infertility, from injustice, from persecution, from pain, from chaos, from tiredness, from hopelessness, from unrealized dreams, and all of us one day, from death
· The feeling and desire for something better. . . That is what we all share as people and yet this is where we as Christians, as the church, have something greater to offer the world.
· The hope of Jesus, of the gospel as the solution to the longings we all face. And there is a way we do that by acknowledging the reality of both our first points by our uniquely Christian response
o Which brings us to what ties this whole Psalm together in verses 5-6:
· Lamenting is Christian (v.5-6)
o While the hardships of life and the longings we all feel are areas which we stand shoulder to shoulder with the rest of humanity, the response to those realities is what sets Christians apart
o At this point we reach the heart of this Psalm which finds everything in God, regardless of how circumstances turn out
o See how David says “But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
6 I will sing to the Lord,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.”
§ Note the emphasis David makes here: Before his cries have been answered, before his situation changes, he claims the promises and peace of God that seem entirely foreign to his situation
§ This is where we see the distinctiveness of lament as a Christian discipline
§ Let me offer this definition
· Lament – A cry of suffering or complaint to God, that still moves towards God in faith
o What this Psalm shows us in the last two verses but actually throughout its entirety is that no matter what is going on in David’s life, God is a part of it and the firm foundation on which he stands and on which he has the freedom to fall
§ Consider what we have seen in the truths that life is hard and that longing is universal. It is true that both of those things have been and are felt by all people at all times but David takes those feelings and turns them to God in faith
§ In every verse of this Psalm, he is speaking to and crying out to God and so is not just feeling and crying out, he’s communicating with the only one who is sovereign over him, his heart, and his circumstances
o Lament takes the truths that life is hard and we long for something better and directs both of those things to God as an act of worship
o But more than that, lament then goes further. It doesn’t just cry out and leave the hardships and sufferings with God, it then refocuses itself in a humanly impossible way
§ Church don’t miss the very important “but” at the beginning of verse 5. It signifies a shift in thinking, a turn in David’s heart from what is going on to who is the answer
· That is what makes lament so unique, so Christian. Moving from the “what” to the “who”
§ Those without Jesus, who don’t have hope, they don’t have that turn. There is no last verse in their song that brings the hope and peace of Christ. But this is where we get to be a part of sharing the hope we have found with others!
· In these last verses, David gives us the blueprint for reframing how we deal with the truths this Psalm shares about life
· Lets revisit the truth that life is hard: Did you notice that David asks the same question 4 times in the first two verses?
o He asks “how long?” which we may not realize at first is a very faith oriented question because it assumes action on the part of God
§ In his case, it is most likely that at this point he is years beyond the moment he was anointed king and became Gods chosen leader for Israel yet he was still hunted. Saul was still on the throne. His life hadn’t gotten better, it had gotten worse
§ So in David’s cry we hear a plea for God to move as David asks how long will it be until your promises to me are fulfilled
§ Or consider how long the Israelites waited for the fulfillment of the promised Messiah? Or for the return from exile in Baylon, or the waiting to enter the promised land, and the 400 years they spent in Egypt?
· “How long” is a spiritually loaded question and only a heart with faith, even just a shred of faith, could ask that question
· If you’re in this room this morning and feel like that has been your experience these last weeks and months. That you’ve been pleading with the Lord and asking him “how long” and getting discouraged because you haven’t seen him answer yet, be encouraged
· Because while at times it may seem like your faith is weakening and you may wrestle with asking yourself whether you believe God is good or he hears you or is there, remember that it takes faith to ask that of God because your heart trusts that he will answer when you’re asking that question, even if you don’t feel it
· And while we long to see him answer our cries and to respond in the affirmative to our longings, the act of coming back to him again and again and asking “how long” is faith that honors him as being the one strong enough to catch us when we fall
o The Bible actually teaches us that there are even those in Heaven who ask that same question.
§ Zechariah 1:12 – “Then the angel of the Lord said, ‘O Lord of hosts, how long will you have no mercy on Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, against which you have been angry these seventy years?”
§ Revelation 6:10 – “They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”
§ All of these passages describe both angels and the souls of men already in God’s very presence asking the Lord “how long?” until he fulfills his promises
· And this has been so helpful for me to remember because currently whenever I think of the question “how long” I shy away from asking it because of how often that question tends to irritate me when it’s asked about something outside of my control
· Regardless of how many times my child may ask, I cannot make the car ride shorter. I cannot make the cookies be done in the oven before the timer goes off. I cannot make the sun come up
· And while these are silly examples of things that don’t classify as hardships, they do frame very clearly my lack of control over even the smallest things
· And when we consider that, how much does it honor God when we come to him. He who alone rules and reigns and is sovereign over everything and we plead with him “how long?”
o It honors his strength, his authority, and is actually a sign of our faith that he will do what we cannot. And the greatest thing we cannot do for ourselves is save ourselves from any hardships in life, let alone the looming specter of death that waits at the end of a hard life
o But when we go to the Father and cry “how long?”, we have the promises of deliverance from the sin in our hearts and the brokenness and hurts of the world in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus
§ Jesus came to face the truth and live a life where he saw and experienced its hardships and difficulties and sufferings and by his coming and living through it and dying for it, we have the gospel. We have the hope of knowing that all hardships and all sufferings will one day pass because he faced it and did what we could never do for ourselves by overcoming the sin at the root of all our troubles
· So we know how the story ends. Yet until he comes again, life is still hard. And we must remember that he never promised us an easy road.
· Yet as we wait for him, we have the freedom to cry out and ask “will you forget me forever” while holding to the promises he has made and that he will keep in his way and in his time to be with us, to give us all that we need, and to one day make all things new
· God also then reframes our longings as we take them to him. We don’t just hope for the best as many in the world do but plead with him for better things and to fulfill the longings we have for the good gifts that he bestows here and now. And we bring him our longings to be rescued from the hardships we face here and now knowing that he alone can!
· I can’t help but think of Jesus words in Matthew 7 when he says: “Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”
o Consider David’s longing and asking as he cries to God to “consider and answer him” and yet how he leaves that consideration and that answer up to God
§ He’s not just crying out, he’s crying out to someone. And not just someone, The Someone who orders the world and holds everything in his hands and is the good Father who can only be good to his people
· Like a child trusting their father, he asks and makes his longings known, knowing that whatever the answer, it will be good because the Father is good
· And as we continually cry out to him we learn that however he responds, it is from love and goodness and speaks to who he is and how he wants the best things for us, even if his answer is something that continues to be hard that we don’t fully understand
§ Elizabeth Elliot is famously quoted as saying these words which I think are so applicable here: “God will not protect you from anything that will make you more like Jesus”
o In these words, we’re reminded of the hard work involved in trusting and in believing and hoping for what we cannot see. Of that ultimate goodness that we may see glimpses of in answered prayers and longings fulfilled here and now. But also in the learning to fall on him and to continue trusting and following when the prayers aren’t answered in the affirmative or the suffering isn’t removed right away
o And how desperately we need God’s help in this! So we bring it all to him
· Lament doesn’t negate the feelings of hurt and sadness and grief. Nor does it dismiss them as irrelevant or teach us to bury whatever we’re feeling by hiding behind the phrase “God is good”
o God IS good and while that remains true no matter what we face, we are invited and allowed to bring our raw feelings and heart to him in the practice of lament
§ To give an example, our feelings (and especially the really big ones that accompany suffering and grief) often act as landmines for any significant movement in our relationship with God and being able to trust him and experience joy in Him despite our circumstances
§ And these landmines will never self-diffuse over time or turn out to be duds and so instead of just removing them and placing them elsewhere where they will go off some other day, we need to learn to purposely set them off in a controlled explosion that takes the form of lament.
· And understand church that this is a form of worship! God is not so small and weak as to be diminished or hurt by the explosion of our feelings and messes and sufferings.
· We actually make God weak in our own hearts when we think that he somehow can’t handle our mess but actually, he beckons us to come and bring it to him because he alone has the strength to bear it.
o Rest assured that all the damage, all the hurt, all the pain found in our laments that come as a result of the brokenness of sin is taken away forever. Removed by the scars of the Savior. It’s only a matter of time
· We can cry and shout and wail and groan to God and when the storm has passed and we begin to the other side of our hurt, we are able to run back to God, empty of that which has blown out of us and so able to receive more of him
o Mark Vroegop in his book Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy says it this way when describing a small group gathering where he and others gathered specifically to lament and that numerous couples prayed aloud their desire and deep longing for children
§ About this experience he writes: “Lament provided a language that anchored these grieving couples to what they knew to be true while they waited.”
o And what was amazing in that time together, is that they ended with words very similar to David in verses 5-6 of Psalm 13 when they poured their hearts out yet finished by placing their trust in God
§ We see this modeled clearly in our text this morning but also in other scriptures such as Psalm 42 where the Psalmist asks himself in verse 11
· “Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.”
o But what I love about the way the book Dark Clouds Deep Mercy describes lament as a “language” that anchored them to the hope of their faith, is that just like learning another language, it takes a lot of time, a lot of practice, a lot of mistakes, and a lot of patience as we try day after day to communicate effectively
§ Saying words like these from Psalm 42 and meaning them from the heart is hard and takes a lot of practice
o And as far as the Christian disciplines go, lament is one of the hardest to learn to do well.
§ It feels uncomfortable and unfamiliar for many of us because it brings together the things that have no harmony unless God is in it.
§ But church, I hope what we see and are reminded of today is that by his grace, God can take the reality that life is hard, and all of our longings for something better, and turn it into a beautiful song our hearts can sing
· But its tricky. And it’s a song that is beyond the capabilities of us as people to learn on our own. So God sent his own son to die on a cross to redeem all the sin and brokenness of the world so that the cross now becomes the instrument that frees us and teaches us the song of lament
· And directing the choir of his church in this song is Jesus himself who leads us in the song that he has written and perfected and now brings to life in our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
· Through the deeper bass notes of hurt, to the bars and measures of hardship and the rising notes of longing, to lead us to the final verse of triumph that echoes in an empty grave to the praise of his glory for all eternity
I’m going to pray for us here in a moment and hand it over to Jason who will be leading us in our church covenant renewal and the Lords table together but before I do that, I want to invite us to respond, invitation to the couches
Let’s pray