Intro: Clip from Lord of the Rings

I love a good story. And truly everyone does. Whether it’s princesses and dragons and knights in shining armor, or superheros saving the day, or romantic comedies where the main guy and girl finally work out their differences and confess their love, or even the drama of a sports game where both teams are playing as good as they can and we are on the edge of our seat wanting our team to win, we love the passion and excitement a story brings to our lives. And if the story is good enough, without realizing it we find ourselves inside the story. We invest our own lives in it because it has captivated us so much. It’s why people cry at the movies or even reading a book, why people scream and jump and set things on fire with someone wins a basketball game. We have become a part of the story. It becomes our story.

We have been been in a series on prayer based on the book “A Praying Life” by Paul E. Miller. It’s a great book that has some wonderful insight on life and how prayer is so crucial for us and serves as excellent supplimental material alongside scripture. If you have been following along, I am going to be working through and referencing section 4 of the book: Living Your Father’s Story

Our Story and God’s Story

Throughout my life I have treated my story and God’s as if they are seperate, parallel things. And consequently I have approached prayer the same way. This is what I mean. When I read scripture, I have thought along the lines of “How does this apply to MY LIFE?” When I pray, I pray with the mindset, “God, help me to know your will for MY LIFE”, or “Grant me patience and peace as I deal witht this difficult situation in MY LIFE”. Even the way we often approach salvation, it’s about “asking Jesus into MY HEART OR MY LIFE”. Making Jesus a priority in OUR LIVES.

But this has never been apart of God’s design. In the begin, God made us in HIS IMAGE, IN HIS LIKENESS. Our lives were meant to look and act and be like HIS LIFE. Our lives, our story was God’s life, God’s story. And it was perfect. But the design, the image, the story was broken when we insisted on it being our story, on having it our way, on directing the story of our lives instead of trusting our loving Father God to know and lead and guide and direct.

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it but whoever would lose his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?” —Luke 9: 23-25

We find this idea of losing our lives, our story to gain Christ’s story in the center of Jesus’ teaching. It’s in all four gospels! And we see it echoed throughout the rest of scripture:

Ezekiel 36: 25-27
2 Corinthians 5: 21
Ephesians 4: 20-24
Colossians 3: 3, 9-17

These are simply a few references to the fact that God’s design has always been for us to have His life, His story. He wants to give us His heart and His Spirit, wants to make us His righteousness, to die to our old self of greed and hate and bitterness and come alive in the new self of love and grace and peace!

What’s So Wrong with “Our Story?”

You might ask the question “What’s so wrong with our story?”, or “Why is having plans or desires for my life so bad?” Truly, there isn’t anything all that bad… at first. The problem with our desires, and our plans, and our story and our lives is that there is never enough of it. Seeking our desires and our life leaves us wanting, trying to fill a pit that is endless. It keeps us a slave to our own desires and trains us to look at every aspect of our lives through the lens of those desires. This is how people end up in places of addictions like pornography, substance abuse, entertainment, debt.

Even if that isn’t our life and we are trying to follow Jesus, we still often end up finding ourselves trying to follow Jesus in the context of OUR LIVES. We chase careers, money, better neighborhoods, higher status and all of that is fine as long as we attend church or small group a couple times a month. We pray for our kids to succeed at academics, athletics, to generally behave themselves, and to even love God but in the context of what WE WANT for THEIR LIVES.

The real problem with our life and our story is that eventually something goes wrong. Something is too big for our life and our ability to fix it. Even when we begin to pray about it and ask God for help, it’s still asking for help on our terms, what we want and need to fix our problem. Ultmately the problem is our story always ends up in the desert.

The Desert

All good stories have “a desert”, a part when the main character must suffer through something, go on a difficult journey to learn something and become who they are supposed to be. The desert is the ultimate reality check. It’s where the problems of our lives become so very real and upfront. Where we are forced to confront the fact that whatever we are dealing with is bigger than us. Loss of a job, a loved one’s sickness or death, broken relationships, personal sin. The desert looks different for all of us.

The whole bible is filled with desert stories. Abraham’s journey, Joseph’s struggle, David, the Prophets, all of Israel. Even Jesus started His ministry by spending 40 days in the desert. Our story always ends up there because the reality of our lives being too big to order and control comes crashing down around us. No one wants to be in the desert. And so we fight to get out of it with everything we have. We use all of our own strength to try and maintain, we rely on the help of every ally we can think of, we even pray to God for the strength to get out and overcome it. And still we are sometimes met with the reality of our situation, the reality that we may be here for awhile.

But God allows us to march through the desert and uses it to meld our story into His story. The desert has an awful and incredible ability to purify us, to strip us bare of our pride in our own strength to overcome hard times, of the dependacy of our addictions to success, to show us the falsehood of our idols of our own plans and desires, and to humble us enough that we might actually let go of those idols and simply seek the presences of the living and loving God of the Universe.

Lamenting God’s Story

“As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.
2
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?[b]
3
My tears have been my food
day and night,
while they say to me all the day long,
“Where is your God?”
4
These things I remember,
as I pour out my soul:
how I would go with the throng
and lead them in procession to the house of God
with glad shouts and songs of praise,
a multitude keeping festival.
5
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.
6
My soul is cast down within me;
therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
from Mount Mizar.
7
Deep calls to deep
at the roar of your waterfalls;
all your breakers and your waves
have gone over me.
8
By day the Lord commands his steadfast love,
and at night his song is with me,
a prayer to the God of my life.
9
I say to God, my rock:
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why do I go mourning
because of the oppression of the enemy?”
10
As with a deadly wound in my bones,
my adversaries taunt me,
while they say to me all the day long,
“Where is your God?”
11
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.” —Psalm 42

The desert forces us into a place of absolute humility, dependancy and helplessness. It forces us into a place where our only choice is either defeat by the reality of our circumstances or absolute faith and need of Jesus. Not our want or desire for Jesus to answer our prayers the way we want Him to but our helpless need for just Him. Remember, God’s design isn’t really for our lives to be perfect or successful or even for them to look moderately Godly or religious or right; God’s design is for us to be like Him. To be the image of Him. To act and speak and think and feel like Him. For us to be people of boundless love, to value compassion and peace and justice above all us, for our lives to be characterized by love/joy/peace/patience/kindness/goodness/faithfulness/gentleness/self-control, for our story to be His story. And we will never get there chasing our story. God’s story ,”the desert”, forces us to lament.

A “lament” or “a lamentation” is not just a cry of grief. A lament is a vow of praise to God, a confession of trust and confidence in Him to hear/deliver/vindicate, and a distressed cry of the reality of our circumstances and utter helpless need of God. (Paraphrased) A lament often seems brashly emotional and even disrespectful but it is actually one of the most power weapons we have against the enemy of our souls. Laments actually used to be a major component in worship as seen in most of Psalms and in particular, Psalm 42.

Notice the language and ideas used about panting and thirsting for the living God, their tears being their food day and night. This person has come to the end of themselves. They are helpless and in desperate need of God! Their need has pushed them not to their desires but to God’s desires. They long for worship, for the love of God. They are broken completely and know that nothing will help their downcast soul except for the hope of God.

The verses are in a pattern: verses 1 through 4, 6 and 7, 9 and 10 references the utter hardship of their reality. The verses following those, 5 and 8 and 11, references their need for the hope of God. This is a person that has such astounding faith that they can be completely open and honest with God over their deep frustration and broken lives and then respond with the heartfelt dependence on His reality of hope. This is a person that is so humbled that they don’t just want their life fixed, they want the heart of God.

The desert, prayer, lamenting, they are not just about getting what we want or need or even simply talking with God. They are about us being stripped of everything in our lives that would keep us from being raw and completely transparent with the heart of God. God wants us to be like Him, for our story to be His story. And the story of God is Him humbiing himself, taking on the nature of a servant, denying Himself, and suffering His own desert in the form of the cross so that He would rise again and raise us up with Him, new and free from sin and death. So that that we would be like Jesus, His sons and daughters.

It may mean that our prayers are not answered the way we want them to be answered. It may mean that we have to suffer and struggle in the desert for awhile, maybe even most our lives. I don’t know. But it does mean we will look like Jesus. Our story will be His and it will be the greatest story ever.

You are loved: believe it.