Life is full of troubles. It seems like we’re always experiencing some kind of trouble. Some of our troubles are the everyday wear-us-down variety:
- toddler tantrums,
- teenage withdrawal,
- morning sickness,
- too much to do in too little time,
- too much to pay with too little money.
Other troubles are the dramatic, disorienting, change-the- direction-of-our-lives variety –things like
- job loss,
- cross-country moves,
- marital problems,
- adultery,
- divorce,
- deaths,
- depression,
- disease,
- car accidents,
- and financial failures.
Trials hurt.
Sometimes they hurt enough to make us wonder where God is, or why He isn’t doing something about our pain.
We have a choice in the midst of those trials. We can hurt with God, or we can hurt without Him. We can let our trials drive us into God’s arms, or we can allow them to draw us away from Him in anger or confusion or fear.
We can stoically – or bitterly — resign ourselves to the inescapable troubles of life, or we can push deeper and deeper into communion with God as we go to Him with our pain.
In this study, “Hurting with God,” we’re going to look briefly at a dozen different psalms of lament – psalms that at first glance look like a lot of complaining, but are actually powerful expressions of faith in a sovereign God who hears and cares.
Like always, we’ll be marking words, making lists, drawing a few pictures, and paraphrasing what we’ve read.
We’ll look for the common elements each psalm shares. And as we study, we’re going to learn how grieve over what is wrong in life while we learn to love and trust God even more in the midst of our pain.
Are you hurting? If you aren’t right now, you probably will be soon. That’s just the way life is in this broken world.
Come and join me as we learn how to cry out to God in the midst of our pain.
(Join the study below for access to lessons, lessons-by-email option, and bonus resources.)
Course Information
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Free for members of Mama’s Refill. (Enrollment expires after 3 months but may be renewed if you need more time to finish)
What Others Have Said
See with New Eyes
By: Susan Menzmer
This has honestly been one of my most stretching studies ever. I have a completely different viewpoint of the psalms of lament than I ever did before. I used to rather unconsciously think of them as perhaps lacking in faith, but now I see it as the complete opposite—a knowing Who we CAN have faith in, and a turning to Him and laying problems before Him while we wait for His answer.