Lament - Summer in the Psalms - Sermons - Josh Navey - 6.7.26

**Josh Navey** (0:00)
You may be seated.
What's up, Storyline? My name is Josh, and I'm one of the pastors here. And this week is one of the best weeks of the summer for us as a church family. Okay, let me tell you a couple of things. One, this coming Sunday, a week from today, we have our next membership class, which currently has over 100 people registered to think about taking their next step of becoming a member here at Storyline. Now, if you'll remember, just a few weeks ago, we had about 220 people in that membership class. So over 300 people in the last few weeks considering thinking and planning to take that next step of becoming a member. And there's still room for you if you'd like to be a part of that next Sunday. Second, this Sunday, today, is the only time that this will happen. But we have every person who's on an international mission trip is gone overseas this day. We have 50 people in places across the world sharing Jesus. Guatemala, Belize, South Asia, it's amazing. But we don't want to just share Jesus with the nations. We also want to share Jesus with our neighbors. And that means preaching the gospel, telling them the good news. It also means demonstrating God's love to them and what it means for God to love them. It transforms us into people who serve. And so this Saturday, this is the last thing this week, this Saturday is our annual serve day. We are spending the day serving our community. We have 11 projects all over Arvada at schools and at local nonprofits and in local parks and neighborhoods. And we've got 600 slots available over those 11 projects. Right now, almost 450 people are participating in serve day this coming Saturday. And that means, don't clap yet, because this room could finish us out. That's what I hear when I hear that, is this room could finish us out. So if you want to register for that, we'll give you a free t-shirt, which I know is why you do everything in life, is for a free t-shirt. So take your phone, tap the seat in front of you, and there's a place there for you to register for serve day, but it's gonna be a great week. Last Sunday, we began our summer in the Psalms. And today, we're gonna continue that in Psalm 13 So if you have a Bible, I'd love to invite you to turn to Psalm 13 I love that we get to be a part of a church that is generous, not just with our finances, but with our time to be able to share Jesus internationally and to be able to share Jesus with our neighbors. One of the things that I'm trying to do recently is to take a moment to be a better encourager in life. Okay, so Storyline, I haven't had a minute with you, so let me encourage you for a moment that you are a resilient people. You are resilient. You are an encouragement to me, a motivation and inspiration to the people around you by the way that you are persevering through whatever life throws at you. I know we have people in our church family, brothers and sisters, even in this room, who have gone through some of the hardest things that a broken world forces us to experience. Just in the last month, we've had brothers lose a spouse, married for decades upon decades, and having to persevere and be resilient through that. We've had people experience something that I don't believe anyone should ever have to experience, the loss of a child. Just in the last month, we've had people who are persevering and making it through the loss of the ability to walk and the loss of the ability to speak like they want to and even an out of nowhere cancer diagnosis in the prime of life. All of this in the last month. And yet, you persevere. And I know that you're not resilient because you have Storyline inside of you. You know, you're resilient because you have the Spirit of God inside of you. And as one of your shepherds, I want to spend today pastorally encouraging you in something that I've seen over the course of these conversations, not just in the last month, but over a period of years. You know, in the series that we're going through, this summer in the Psalms, we're really trying to emphasize emotion and how every emotion in the human experience is represented in this book of Psalms. And an emotion that's essential to walking, not just into, but through these terrible life situations, is in the emotion of sorrow, of grief. That emotion is the right response to going through the brokenness of the world. But the question becomes, what do we do with it? Today we're going to see how David experienced his sorrow and then directed it to lament. That's really where we're headed. What is lament and how do we do it? Mark Wrogop is a pastor that defined lament as a prayer of pain that leads to trust. Hopefully, if you're a note taker, I'm gonna have a few good things for you today. This is one of them, all right? If you're taking some notes, write this down. A prayer of pain that leads to trust. And in our hurting, in our suffering, in our sorrow, maybe in what you carried in here this very morning, I want to invite you into a prayer of pain that leads to trust. Rogoff, again, he says, to cry is human, but to lament is Christian. Do you know the difference? Because my goal today is that after our time together, you would have some handles for the difference and understanding what lament is. Look, today, if you're struggling, walking through something hard, maybe, God forbid, there's even a tragedy that's happened that no one else in this room knows about. Then I want you to know that this sermon is for you. I want to help you to persevere, to hold fast, and to continue living in God's story by knowing Jesus and loving all people. But maybe that's not how you come in here today. You're not coming in here with a lot of sorrow and grief. And I want you to know this sermon is for you too, because I want to help prepare you. I want to give you the tools to lament so that they're there when you need them. And I want you to understand God's heart for you, even when you walk through the valley of the shadow of death. So I want to help you make the deposit now so it'll be there when you need it. So here, in Psalm 13, I want you to see how David laments. And then I want to give you, maybe weave in here some pastoral encouragements for how you can lament. And then I want you to see how Jesus is in your lament. So this is where we're headed today. How David did it, how you can do it, and how Jesus is in it. Let's read Psalm 13 together. Let's read these six verses. I'll read it and you can listen along. How long, Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long will I store up anxious concerns within me? Agony in my mind every day. How long will my enemy dominate me? Consider me and answer, Lord my God. Restore brightness to my eyes. Otherwise, I will sleep in death. My enemy will say, I have triumphed over him, and my foes will rejoice because I am shaken. But I have trusted in your faithful love. My heart will rejoice in your deliverance. I will sing to the Lord because he has treated me generously. David's got a trajectory here in these six verses that I want you to check out. It's turn to God, complain. This might be the first sermon you've ever had a preacher tell you to complain, all right? So elbow the person beside you. I know some of you like, I've been waiting for this my whole life. Turn to God, complain, ask and trust. So turn to God, complain to God, ask of God and trust in God. I want to invite you into a ground breaking idea this morning as we think about turning to God. Maybe you got here and you're just trying to check this Christianity thing out. Somebody invited you or you didn't really know how to say no, and so you just showed up to be nice. I want you to hear this specifically because I think the stereotype can be a little differently, can be a little different. It is not a Christian idea to force yourself into smiling and acting like everything is okay all the time. Is that a safe place for us to start? It's not a Christian idea to force yourself into smiling and faking like everything is okay all the time. Christianity is not ibuprofen or Tylenol where it ignores the root cause and just kind of makes it feel okay for a little while. If I could disagree with my friend Carl Marx, Christianity is not an opium for the masses. Historically it's universally agreed upon. The Christians have been at the front of the line lamenting the brokenness of the world by fighting injustice and working to make better the plight of the poor and the marginalized or calling out the corruption of governments. And here in our Bible, David in Psalm 13 gives us another honest look at what's wrong, not some religious pill to make it all seem better than it really is.