YOU HEAR, O LORD, THE DESIRE OF THE AFFLICTED
The Lord sets His face against the proud, but He is for the humble, the outcast, the afflicted. I’ve seen it again and again. This is my just born granddaughter, Sadie. She is a gift of God to my daughter Sally and her husband Phil. She was a much prayed for baby. (Many of you know Sally through her Aslan painting which you can see through this link: http://www.deebrestin.com/products/aslan-posters-prints/ Sally was led to paint Aslan because she wanted to try to get an answer to why a good God allowed so much suffering. He did give her a surprising answer.
Often we don’t know why He allows suffering, and we are called to accept the mystery of suffering, but we do know God is good.
We also know, according to the psalms we will be studying this week, that “He hears the desire of the afflicted; He encourages them, and listens to their cry.” That is the next lovely song on the CD that goes with A Woman of Worship. Sally and Phil cried out to the Lord during their three years of infertility. Sally had resolved that if God never gave her the desire of her heart, she would trust Him. But in this case He said, “Yes.” Sally and Phil are filled with gratitude. Sadie was rushed to intensive care because Sally had an infection and a fever — but all is fine now. She came home Saturday night and Phil celebrated his first Father’s Day with great joy. Sally is overwhelmed with emotion — saying things like, “This is the most amazing experience of my life. I can see how motherhood is going to keep me on my knees. Sadie is going to be my little buddy everywhere I go! I appreciate you so much more Mom — how you love me. I have soooo many emotions of joy, love, gratitude, and —oh!”
Many of you have read The God of All Comfort, or even worked through it on this blog — and you know that God often allows suffering, and we must accept that mystery. But it is important to know that when He allows suffering, it isn’t because He doesn’t care or doesn’t hear. We are going to be meditating on some passages this week that demonstrate that. Let your roots sink deeply into this truth, into the living water that will nourish your parched soul and reassure you of His love.
Take a question or two a day. Meditate. Memorize the song or, if you don’t have it, the verse the song is based on, which is Psalm 10:17. Sink your roots deep into His Word.
1. Use Psalm 9:1-2 as a way to begin your time of worship. List a few of His wonders here. Sing praise to His name, either using the song on the worship CD or another. Worship shapes you — remember — you become like what you give worth to.
2. Meditate on Psalm 9:9-10. Find three truths about the Lord to remember in times of trouble.
3. Psalm 10 is a classic psalm of lament. The following passages show the progression. Describe what you find:
A. What is David’s opening lament in verse 1? What is troubling him according to verses 2-9? Have you ever felt this way?
B. Describe David’s turn in Psalm 10:12-14. What does he remember about God?
C. Meditate on Psalm 10:17-18 and list what you learn about the Lord and your contemplations.
3. How have you seen the truths of Psalms 9 and 10 in your life? How will you apply them to your life right now?
4. Read all of Psalm 34. This psalm is filled with beautiful word pictures. Tap into your right brain as you look at them. If you were to paint them, what might you paint to depict each of the following?
A. Psalm 34:5
B. Psalm 34:6
C. Psalm 34:7
D. Psalm 34:8-10
5. Peter quotes Psalm 34:12-15 when he is addressing believers facing persecution. When others are unkind to us, persecute us, or speak evil against us, how should we respond? How might you apply this to your life?
6. The promise you are memorizing from the song (Psalm 10:17) is repeated in other words in Psalm 34:15 and Psalm 34:17-18. What new insight do these passages give you?
7. It is important to put Scripture in the context of the whole Scripture. Psalm 34 standing alone could lead us to believe the righteous won’t suffer, or at least, will have any suffering removed fairly quickly. Yet the whole of Scripture teaches that God’s rescue might look quite different than we imagine. The disciples surely didn’t expect Jesus to be crucified. My daughter Sally has suffered so much in the last fifteen years of her life — so her rescue wasn’t fast, and there may be more suffering ahead. But I am seeing a character in her that has emerged through the fire. I’d like each of you to reflect on this in your own life.
A. How has suffering in your life resulted in perhaps a “different kind of rescue?”
B. What have you learned? How will this help you when you face suffering the next time?
A Different Kind of Rescue
It’s a mistake believers often make. We want to be rescued from our circumstances instead of sin in our lives.
I made it. We kept thinking that God’s rescue would mean that Steve would be healed on earth and restored to his family.
I realize now that we truly have experienced a rescue, but it was a different kind of rescue.
At the close of The Lord of The Rings, after a long journey filled with suffering, Sam realizes they are still going
to die. This is not the kind of rescue he imagined:
“But even as hope died in Sam, or seemed to die, it was turned to a new strength. Sam’s plain hobbit face grew stern, almost grim
as the will hardened in him, and he felt throughout all his limbs a thrill, as if he were turning into some creature of stone and
steal that neither despair nor weariness nor endless barren miles could subdue.”
Transformation. Suffering can help us let go of our idols and cling to God, and in so doing, we become creatures of beauty –
we become like Christ.
As we review our journey over the next several posts, I want to begin with these questions:
1. We are always looking for a rescue from circumstances. Read Luke 24:13-35.
A. What kind of rescue were the two on the road to Emmaus expecting?
B. What humor do you see in this passage?
C. How was this a real rescue, even though it was different than they expected?
2. Think about a time of suffering in your life.
A. Did you at first hope for a rescue from your circumstances? Can you identify
with the feelings of the two downcast disciples in the above account? What do you
remember feeling?
B. As you look back now, how did that suffering work in your life to produce transformation?
3. Read Romans 8:28-29. What promise is given — and what will a real rescue look like?
4. If suffering produces character, why do we so long to avoid it?
5. Has your attitude toward suffering changed? Explain.
When bad things happen to good people
Do you remember Rabbi Kushner’s bestselling “When Bad Things Happen To Good People?” His thesis was that we must forgive God for losing control.
How different from the dialogue at the close of the book of Job.
So if God knows what He is doing, if He has not lost control, why do bad things happen to good people? Why does a godly man like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who had the courage to take a stand against Hitler, die naked by hanging when victory is just about to be announced? He was but thirty-nine. Why are there martyrs at all?
Here are the questions for your next quiet times.
1. According to Job 38, what are some of the reasons we should respect that God knows what He is doing?
2. Sometimes God does deliver — and sometimes He does not. What do you learn from Hebrews 11:30-40?
3. What are the flaws in Rabbi Kushner’s argument?
4. What do you learn from other materials about the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer? If any of you have read his books, watched documentaries on his life, or have something encouraging about him to share — please do!
5. Bonhoeffer certainly left a legacy. His book, The Cost of Discipleship, has transformed so many lives. Certainly his model as well. His book on the Psalms is amazing, and has impacted me. Here is a quote from Bonhoeffer that I’d like you to meditate and comment on, because the next things we are going to do, in three days, in learn how to start praying the psalms.
It is a dangerous error, certainly very widespread among Christians, to think that the heart can pray by itself. …Prayer does not mean simply to pour out one’s heart. It means rather to find the way to God and to speak with him, whether the heart is full or empty.
…If we wish to pray with confidence and gladness, then the words of Holy Scripture will have to be the solid basis of our prayer. For here we know that Jesus Christ, the Word of God, teaches us to pray. The words which come from God become, then, the steps on which we find our way to God.
Now there is in the Holy Scriptures a book which is distinguished from all books of the Bible by the fact that is contains only prayers. The book is the Psalms.
[i] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1970), pp. 9-13.