Practicing the Way - Learning Lament - Anthony Garcia

Today Anthony Garcia walks us through Psalm 142:1-3 and Lamentations 3 as we discover how following Jesus includes learning lament.

Sermon Notes/Quotes:

“In her book Journey through the Psalms, Denise Hopkins examines the use of lament in the major liturgical denominations in America. The study found that in the Lutheran Book of Worship, the Episcopalian Book of Common Prayer, The Catholic Lectionary for Mass, The Hymnal for the United Church of Christ, and in the United Methodist Hymnal, the majority of the Psalms omitted from liturgical use are the laments.” “This trend is not only in the mainline traditions but in the less liturgical as well. In Hurting with God, Glenn Pemberton notes that lament constitutes 40 percent of the Psalms, but only 13 percent of the hymnal for the Churches of Christ, 19 percent of the Presbyterian hymnal, and 13 percent of the Baptist hymnal emphasize lament. Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI) which licenses local churches in the use of contemporary worship songs and tracks the songs that are most frequently sung in local churches. CCLI’s list of the top 100 worship songs in August of 2012 reveals that only 5 of the songs would qualify as lament. Most of the songs reflect themes of praise.”—Soong Chan Rah, Prophetic Lament

“Lament is the space between brokenness and God’s mercy where the song is sung. Think of it as the transition between pain and promise. It is the path from heartbreak to hope.” — Mark Vroegop, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy,

“God is immutable in His essence. His nature and being are infinite, and so, subject to no mutations. There never was a time when He was not; there never will come a time when He shall cease to be. God has neither evolved, grown, nor improved. All that He is today, He has ever been, and ever will be. “I am the Lord, I change not” (Mal. 3:6) is His own unqualified affirmation. He cannot change for the better, for He is already perfect; and being perfect, He cannot change for the worse. Altogether unaffected by anything outside Himself, improvement or deterioration is impossible. He is perpetually the same. He only can say “I am that I am” (Ex. 3:14). He is altogether uninfluenced by the flight of time. There is no wrinkle upon the brow of eternity. Therefore His power can never diminish nor His glory ever fade.” A.W. Pink, The Attributes of God

"I walked a mile with Pleasure; She chattered all the way, But left me none the wiser For all she had to say. I walked a mile with Sorrow; And ne’er a word said she; But, oh, the things I learned from her When sorrow walked with me" — Robert Browning Hamilton

 

“What affected Jerusalem on a corporate level has affected Jeremiah on a personal level.” Soong Chan Rah, Prophetic Lament

 

Questions:

This pandemic is going to pass but do we believe sin is the great infection?

Is Jesus the cure? If so, how?