Do you Feel it?
Permission and Courage to Feel!
The Psalms are a study in understanding God and us. They are chock full of feelings. They go from joy to despair, from praise to gloom, even in the same psalm (Psalm 4 for example). They express every feeling between the extremes.
Why the variety? Why not all praise and celebration? Because the world is not as it should be. Our outer and inner worlds are not what we desire. We know and feel the pain of it. Psalms gives us clearance to feel. How can we help but feel!
Typically, our gathered worship experience is celebrative and instructional. The great omission? Permission to feel and grieve how things are. Is there room to bring lament into our gathered worship settings? Couldn’t we also learn to feel the darker sides of our experiences with God? The time is coming where tears and sorrow are distant memories, but it’s not yet here.
Church, change is needed! Church is not an escape from reality. It’s the womb of it!
Let’s have permission to feel. Not a day passes without a multitude of emotions. Fear, betrayal, frustration, hopelessness, hope, exultation, praise, peacefulness. From the heights of the Everest of joy to the deepest Grand Canyon of affliction, it’s all there! Welcome to the human experience. When We go to worship, We go as heart, soul, mind and body. At times all of We is racked with pain!
I’ve said and heard it said, Leave your troubles at the door of the sanctuary so we can worship God. Woe is me! I repent!
It’s time to give ourselves and fellow worshippers permission to feel in worship. The Psalms validate our emotions and our faith.
Let’s have courage to feel. I’ve heard this too often in my training in ministry: Don’t trust your feelings. Somehow this has become a mantra for not feeling at all when we enjoy the company of God and others and sing to the Audience of One.
Leaders need clearance and courage to model grief, complaint and prayer in pain. Our model? Jesus, grieving over Jerusalem, at the entombed Lazarus. Why not follow Jesus? When we deny the reality of grief and heartache we neglect our God-sanctioned emotional well-being. Lament is prayer in pain that leads to trust. Joy is on the other side of the Valley of Baca (Ps 84:6).
Any church with courage to voice its hidden, darker side before God is in touch with reality. Resistance is futile. Worshippers end up living lives of quiet desperation for lack of courage to grieve corporately. It’s an essential fact of living in America today. Grieve deliberately, O church! Trust deliberately in the midst of pain.
Church folk end up in counselors’ offices weeping their grief away. Thank God for that! Better yet: giving permission and encouraging lament in worship. It ought to be a primary outlet and form of worship! Let the leaders lead the way in pain on the path to trust.