30/444 Healing from Infidelity: Straight Up, Not Shaken, Not Stirred
2011.10.05
With regards to grief we've covered that it strips away the pretenses of our lives and enlarges our souls. It also facilitates our knowing more of God.
Deep trust is realized through Christ and through suffering. Moving towards Christ in our suffering allows us to see God is bigger than our pain and to trust him more. If I trust that God is good, I can make choices to stay in pain, to forgive and reconcile relationships, and to enjoy a closer relationship with God.
Essentially, we'll know God more if we allow ourselves to hurt when there is something to hurt over and be honest with God about it.
God knows grief because he has grieved. In the Old Testament I've heard it said there is really only one sermon. The Israaelites are close to God and are blessed. They get comfortable and forget it is God who is bringing the good in their lives and begin to slide away. God hurts, life goes worse and eventually God pursues them with mercy until they return to him. The world isn't totally the same with the New Testament of Christ but in many ways we do the same thing.
Psalms of lament also illustrate this truth of knowing God more fully as we go through pain and grief.
Psalm 13
How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Look on me and answer, O Lord my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death;
my enemy will say, "I have overcome him,'
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation
I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me.
The Bible is honest. Straight up, not shaken, not stirred. It deals with every raw emotion and situation ever experienced by humankind. My paraphrase of a lament psalm like the one above, which follows the pattern of many lament psalms, is...
Life sucks...Where are you God?...I still believe in you.
If you connect with Psalm 13 and others like it you are in good company. I encourage you to pray it and pray it and pray it again. Wrestle with it all in the midst of your sorrow. Seek his answer. And even though the circumstances of your life may lead you to experience God as untrustworthy, take the next step into the uncertainly doing your best to trust in his unfailing love.