I Want to Be Where You Are (Psalm 84)
How sweet the place where You dwell, O Lord
My soul longs and faints for You
My heart sings out a loud song of joy
For I have known the living God
I want to be where You are, O Lord
I want to be where You are, O Lord
I’d rather have just one day with You,
Than be anywhere else
There’s no good thing that You will withhold
From those who live to follow You
I’d rather be Your servant, O God
Than have the riches of this world
Those who follow You go from strength to strength
Those who trust in You are filled with joy
From Sovereign Grace Music - Psalms; written by Stephen Altrogge.
Blessing the Name of the LORD: When He Gives & then Takes Away
Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
The people of God have always had their laments. The Psalms are filled with a whole host of intense emotions and expressions towards God. So many of them were birthed in times of suffering and struggle. Psalm 3 was written as King David fled for his life from his own son Absalom. Psalm 56 was inspired when the Philistines seized him in Gath. In Psalm 57 he’s on the run again, this time from King Saul, and wrote the song whilst hiding in a cave. These are songs formed in the fire of affliction. They are the desperate cries of a worshipper on the road marked with suffering. In fact, Eugene Peterson estimates that around 70% of content in the Psalms is lament-based.
Blessed be Your name:
In the land that is plentiful, where Your streams of abundance flow;
When I’m found in the desert place, though I walk through the wilderness.
When the sun’s shining down on me, when the world’s ‘all as it should be’;
On the road marked with suffering, though there’s pain in the offering.Every blessing You pour out, I’ll turn back to praise.
When the darkness closes in, Lord, still I will say:
blessed be Your glorious name.
Clearly therefore, songs of lament are a very biblical thing to sing in worship. Yet they are also a relevant thing to sing, for we live in a world full of anguish and heartache. As Christians, yes we live in victory, but in paradox we also exist as strangers in a foreign land, aching for home, and knowing deep within us that the world we see before is not as it should be. So the question is this: if songs of lament are firstly thoroughly biblical, and secondly extremely relevant, then why on earth are there not more songs to help us voice these heart-cries? As Frederich W. Schmidt Jr. writes, these Psalms do three things:
They give us permission to ask our own questions about suffering. They model the capacity to ask questions we might otherwise suppress, but can never escape. And they model how those questions might be asked without fear of compromising our relationship with God or with other people.
--Matt Redman
Trying to make this Truth a Reality
From Reading the Psalms with Luther (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 2007):
The 116th psalm is a psalm of thanks in which the psalmist is joyful and gives thanks that God has heard his prayer and has rescued him from the distress of death and the anguish of hell. Like several other psalms before it, it speaks of the deep spiritual affliction, of which few people know.
He laments in this psalm that things are so bad, yet he confesses his faith and the truth of God. He calls all human holiness, virtue, and confidence only falsehood and emptiness. This world will not and cannot hear nor tolerate. Thus it comes that the godly suffer, tremble, and fear all kinds of misfortune.
But despite all, he is comforted by this, that God’s Word is true and will only motivate us the more: “They give me to drink from the cup of their wrath. All right, then I will take the cup of grace and salvation and drink myself spiritually drunk (and through preaching) pour out from this cup on those who will drink with me and who draw their grace from the Word.” This is our cup, and with this cup we will worship God and praise His name. We will fulfill our vows, namely the First Commandment, that we receive Him as the one God and praise Him as the only God worthy to preach and to be called upon. You find here also that giving thanks, preaching, and confessing God’s name before all people is the true worship of God. (more…)
Let Us Trust in the Lord
Psalm 125
A Song of Ascents.
1 Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion,
which cannot be moved, but abides forever.
2 As the mountains surround Jerusalem,
so the Lord surrounds his people,
from this time forth and forevermore.
3 For the scepter of wickedness shall not rest
on the land allotted to the righteous,
lest the righteous stretch out
their hands to do wrong.
4 Do good, O Lord, to those who are good,
and to those who are upright in their hearts!
5 But those who turn aside to their crooked ways
the Lord will lead away with evildoers!
Peace be upon Israel!
Worship through Questioning and Doubting
Why have you rejected us forever, O God?
Why does your anger smolder against the sheep of your pasture?
How long will the enemy mock you, O God?
Will the foe revile your name forever?
Why do you hold back your hand, your right hand?
–Psalm 74
O LORD God Almighty, how long will your anger smolder against the prayers of your people?
–Psalm 80
Will you be angry with us forever?
Will you prolong your anger through all generations?
Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?
Show us your unfailing love, O LORD, and grant us your salvation.
–Psalm 85
How long, O LORD ? Will you hide yourself forever?
How long will your wrath burn like fire?
Remember how fleeting is my life. For what futility you have created all men!
What man can live and not see death, or save himself from the power of the grave? Selah
O Lord, where is your former great love, which in your faithfulness you swore to David?
–Psalm 89
These prayers, daring as they may be, are still very much worship. They are not the cries of people who have given up on God. They are not sarcastic or rhetorical questions. Instead, they are songs of intercession, from a people whose only hope is found in their God. They are honoring to Him, because they show their need for total dependence on Him. The Psalmists cry out with these searching questions because they know God is powerful enough to change the situation. And they also know He is a God whose heart is full of compassion for his people. In other words, he is strong enough to intervene, and he is kind enough to do so too.
–Matt Redman
How Long, O LORD?
The 13th psalm is a psalm of prayer against the sorrow or sadness of the spirit that comes at times from the devil himself, or at times from those who act against us with spite and evil tricks. As a result, we are cast down and grieve when we see such evil aligned against us. But prayer is stronger than all misfortune. This psalm gives us an example by which we certainly may be comforted and learn in every kind of calamity not to become anxious or downcast, nor let these troubles eat at our hearts. Instead, we learn to turn to prayer, crying to God about all of these things. We know that we will be heard and finally be delivered, as James 5:13 also says: “Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray.” This psalm belongs in the Second Commandment and the First and Last Petitions, that we may be delivered from evil.
To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.
1 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.
Lord Jesus,
who by Your incarnation was a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief, graciously remember us who are yet walking in this vale of tears and who must enter Your kingdom through many tribulations.
As You have promised to be with Your own and to support them to the end, grant us Your Holy Spirit, the Spirit of joy and of peace, to comfort our hearts and the hearts of all Your afflicted Christians with Your everlasting comfort.
Amen.
(Source: Reading the Psalms with Luther. St. Louis, IL: Concordia, 2006.)
