Lent begins on March 5th this year. If you're looking for a companion for yourself, your family, your small group, your staff, your church, etc. Here are two options:
“Your path led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters, though your footprints were not seen.” (Psalm 77:19) Oh, how great it would be if your path, O God, always led around the sea. If life with you meant that we would never experience heartache or chaos or pain or loss. But your path does not lead around the sea, but straight through it. It is only by going through the sea that we are forced to depend on you. You teach us something by taking us through the sea of pain and loss, of sorrow and sadness, that we could learn no other way. Walking through the sea is what you use to form our lives and shape our hearts. It is how you make us more like Jesus, who “learned obedience through what he suffered.” (Hebrews 5:8) So, thank you.
Loss is inevitable in this broken and fallen world. How we deal with that loss is something else altogether. We can live our lives trying to avoid or deny it, or we can face our losses, grieve them, and embrace what God wants to do in us through them. The fact is that we can never arrive at joy by going around sorrow, but only by going through it. It all comes down to trust, really. Do we trust his heart when we cannot see his hand (or, in this case, his footprints)?
“I have stilled and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.” (Psalm 131:2)
“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord; O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared.
I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in
his word I put my hope. My soul waits
for the Lord ore than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait
for the morning.
O Israel, put your hope in the Lord, for
with the Lord is unfailing love and with him is full redemption. He himself will redeem Israel from all their
sins.” (Psalm 130:1-8)
Have mercy, wait for the Lord, put your hope in the Lord, and trust in the Lord are all interconnected. If you take out one of them out, the whole thing falls down. Thus, all are essential, and all are interdependent as we walk with God.
Mercy involves the realization of my immense
need for Jesus—not merely in salvation (which is huge), but in all things. It involves me realizing that I cannot do or
accomplish anything of eternal value on my own.
Not one thing. I am totally
helpless and dependent on God and his power.
If I can do nothing (as Jesus tells me in
John 15:5), then I am totally dependent on God’s mercy for anything and
everything. Which is not a good look for
us. We do everything we can to make sure
we never have to depend on anyone. But
the truth is that all of us are totally dependent on God and his mercy. Therefore, our only recourse is to wait for
the Lord.
But we can’t really wait for the Lord if
our hope is not in the Lord. This is
where the lines get a little blurry, because it is hard for us to see, at
times, what our hope is really in. Sometimes
our hope is in our gifts and abilities.
Sometimes it is in the gifts and abilities of others. Sometimes it’s in our circumstances, our performance,
or the opinions and affirmations of those around us. All of which point to our hope being in
ourselves instead of in our God.
So, it all comes down to trust. We can’t possibly hope in the Lord—or beg him
for mercy or wait for him—if we do not trust him. It’s as simple as that. Which brings us right back to begging for
mercy. For when we cry out for mercy,
God gives it to us 100% of the time. It
may not look like we want it to—which is a mercy in and of itself—but it is
exactly what we need.
Hope in the Lord, O my soul; wait for him. Do not take matters into your own hands, but trust in him to move, speak, and act in whatever way he sees fit. That’s what walking with God is all about; he leads, and we follow.
Praying Psalm 131 every Saturday for the past eight years has been one of the most formative things for my soul that I can remember. It continues to change the way I see, think, and operate. I'm just hoping that someday it will be 100% true of the way I live my life. Here's today's response:
