God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Crying Out to God: I Surrender All

Countdown to God’s Healing: I’m excited to announce that BMH Books will release my fifth book soon (in April 2010). To read a sample section of God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting click here. To pre-order your autographed copy at 30% off, visit here.

As we countdown to the release, I’ll be sharing periodic excerpts, such as today’s post: Crying Out to God: I Surrender All.

Bargaining/Works: A Tit-for-Tat God

The typical third stage of the grief journey moves from denial, to anger, and then to bargaining and works. The dying people that Elizabeth Kubler-Ross interviewed entered into spoken and unspoken bargains with God. They believed that God would reward them for their good behavior and grant them special favors.

They reasoned that, “If I’m good, then God will be good to me.” Their unstated theology said, “Good things happen to good people.” So, of course, they told themselves, “God will stop the bad things that are happening to me if He sees what a good person I am and what good I can do.”

Job’s miserable counselors followed the identical mindset. Their God was a tit-for-tat God. “If you do bad, then God does bad back to you. If you do good, then God does good to you.”

We can summarize their entire counsel to Job as, “Behave, be good, do right, be righteous, and God will treat you right.” This is why they wrongly assumed and cruelly asserted that Job’s suffering was all a direct result of Job’s sinning.

Frank Lake has harsh words for such harsh counselors then and now. Speaking of innocent sufferers and one-dimensional counselors, Lake explains:

“These passive evils, which are not of the soul’s own making, are not accessible to a pastoral care which can talk only in terms of the forgiveness of sins. Such sufferers are usually not insensitive to their status as sinners. They have sought God’s forgiveness. But like Job, they complain of the comforters whose one-track minds have considered only the seriousness of sin, and not the gravity of grinding affliction.”

Such false counsel leads to bargaining that knows nothing of grace. It is all works, self-effort, and self-sufficiency. Bargaining attempts to control and manipulate God. That’s why it’s so vital to move from bargaining and works to cry—crying out to God for help.

Crying Out to God: Open Palms and Pleading Eyes

Crying out to God is a faith-based plea for mobilization in which I humbly ask God for help based upon my admission that I can’t survive without Him. Crying is reaching up with open palms and pleading eyes in the midst of darkness and doubt.

Psalm 56:8 teaches that we pray our tears and God collects them in His bottle. Psalm 72:12 assures us, “For he will deliver the needy who cry out” (KJV—when he crieth).

Psalm 34 reminds us, “The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles. The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:17-18).

Crying out to God is a testimony that God is responsive, while all false gods and idols are non-responsive (1 Samuel 12:20-24). When we cry out, we entreat God to help because expressed neediness compels God’s very character to act. God acts on voiced pain. He is not a deaf and dumb idol.

Crying empties us so there is more room in us for God. David wept until he had no strength left, but then he found strength in the LORD (1 Samuel 30:6). His cry, his confession of neediness, summoned God into action—supportive action.

Suffering is God’s primary way of uprooting our self-reliance and complacency. He uses suffering to gain our attention. Suffering is a slap in the face, the shock of icy water, a bloodied nose; meant to snatch our attention. Crying out to God is our admission that God has our attention, that God has us.

Join the Conversation

Why do some counselors and spiritual friends act like Job’s counselors: with one-track minds considering only the seriousness of sin, but not the gravity of grinding affliction?