Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Lamentations. Chapter one, verse one through three. It says, how lonely sits this city that was full of people. How like a widow is she who is great among the nations. The princess among the provinces has become a slave. She weeps bitterly in the night. Her tears are on her cheeks. Among all her lovers, she has none to comfort her. All her friends have dealt treacherously with her, and they have become her enemies.
[00:00:28] Y'all can have a seat.
[00:00:32] So I know when we first read that, obviously, it's like, just very dark. Not a hopeful scripture or verse.
[00:00:41] But I want to give you just a little history on the book of limitations. About six weeks ago, I had come across limitations, and I had never read about it. I knew it was the book of the Bible, but I just had never dove into it. And we'll get to how that actually happened. But the book of lamentations.
[00:01:01] Basically, the Judahites had been able to think of themselves only as God's chosen people.
[00:01:09] They had felt like they were only to experience good things in life. The Lord had made covenants of blessings with them. And when we think about Judah's former blessings and strengths, so the chaos and suffering that they currently had experienced with the scripture we just read, their sin had brought wreckage on Jerusalem. And so the poems or the actual words in lamentations is they're all poems.
[00:01:34] And so God's chosen favored city had lost everything. They were in a very hopeless position and limitations. The holy city was left without a single ounce of peace left in their lives. Everything significant in their lives truly had been destroyed. And the city was hungry, starving in famine, saddened at sorrow, depressed, anxious, and felt near death. It mentions in one verse that the nations had actually become like a widow. They were mourning what was what used to be. But Jerusalem, in sad conditions, acknowledged all her sin and all the darkness that had fallen and entreated the Lord to look upon the city. It was only after the city was shown hope through Jeremiah that people of Jerusalem had humbled themselves and were able to dream of restoration, which that brought them peace. So I encourage you in your own time just to finish reading chapters one through five and limitations, because it is a lot. But for just a deeper understanding of what we're reading now, I hope I've painted a picture of how dark this holy city had been burdened and just destroyed.
[00:02:40] So about six weeks ago, like I said, I was frustrated. I had. My husband had come in my bedroom, and I don't like to wake up. I think I have talked about this before, but I'm not a giant morning person. There's a difference between being a morning person and waking up super early and then just being just an okay morning person. And so of years of marriage, I have realized that I'm just an okay morning person.
[00:03:06] But if I'm honest, life was really, really heavy six weeks ago. And I remember just going to bed the night before, and I was like, don't wake me up. I want to sleep in. And he was just like, if you know my husband, he just kind of chuckled. He's like, okay, so if I'm honest, if I would have had to face another issue at that point in my life or something that was thrown my way, it truly would have been the straw that broke the camel's back for me.
[00:03:32] So as my husband woke me up the next morning, just like I had told him not to, he woke me up at 05:30 a.m. and if you have met my husband, he is the most persistent human being I've ever met on the face of the planet. And so, if you name it, that morning, he did it for me. He wears truly the worst alarm clock I ever had. He'd come in my bedroom, he turned the light on, you know, turning the lamps on, opening the windows. You name it, he did it. Pulling the covers. You need to get up. So not only that morning did I wake up, but he also woke our son up.
[00:04:05] And truly, my day was instantly ruined, because when I have my quiet time, I like it to just be me. So in true annoyed Lindsay fashion, y'all, I had to pray about it. I get up, I don't put my contacts in, I don't put my glasses on, and if you know me, I literally. I can't see without any of the two. So I just told myself that day, I'm gonna get coffee, I'm gonna go sit on the couch, and I'm not gonna do anything else.
[00:04:33] I thought, you're not gonna get anything out of this Bible time anyways, or this quiet time. And of course, we all know how the Lord works. In my living room with squinty eyes that I could barely read God's word. That moment, he gave me such a deeper hunger for his word. He gave me a perspective about burdens and tough times and how to fully receive a precious peace. And if I cry, y'all just overlook me. Y'all know I'm a crier.
[00:04:58] But that's when the Lord started speaking to me. And he said, I know you want to feel good about your burdens. And of course, my answer was, yes, we all do. But it truly seemed impossible to feel good about what burdened my heart. It felt impossible to feel at peace in all that life had thrown me. So much sickness I was experiencing in my body, loss, fear, and anxiety that just completely crippled me. I realized that the Lord was telling me through every turn page to trust him through the very season where I felt the enemy was tormenting me every hour of every day. Or at least it felt that way. I'm a human. And just like all of you, you have a list mile long, too.
[00:05:39] So, thankfully, our burdens are not forgotten by God. Just like God's holy city, Jerusalem was not forgotten. Not forgotten. And that was my first point for tonight. The city survived their limitation moment solely by trusting God.
[00:05:55] So limitations 120 says, I'm turning within. My heart is broken. And through all the deep sorrow and suffering, that scripture really stood out to me. But it was my aha moment. Or like I've talked about my husband. It was my Adam moment. And like I said, if you know him, he's the most persistent man I've ever met in my life. He's courageous and he's strong willed, and sometimes that's a really good thing. And then other times, I want to knock him out, but there's got to be a good balance. And so, to explain my death of what Adam does is he shows me the toughest, meanest love that he could possibly give me. And although years ago, I never could relate to how he would love me when I was having my moment.
[00:06:46] Sorry, y'all, this screen just popped up. It says I couldn't relate to him, but it was just a version of love towards me that I was not. I never thought that that was a love language, but it really was. And it shifted my mindset so many times. And so a few weeks ago, after experiencing the profound moment, profound moment in my living room that gave me peace as I read limitations, I found myself sitting on the couch this time, but surrounded with friends.
[00:07:14] My phone rang, and I received not some great news.
[00:07:18] And in like true Lindsay fashion, I immediately hung the phone up, and I couldn't help but to cry. I was consumed with thoughts of what and how I was going to control my situation. My wheels were spending 90 to nothing. I went to my bedroom, where a friend followed to check on me. I stood in my bathroom crying about all the things that burdened my heart and that made me so sick to my stomach. In that moment, my husband walked into the bathroom, and he looked me dead in my eyes, and he said, stop.
[00:07:49] And although I knew that it meant to stop crying, it really spoke to me. It wasn't what I wanted to hear in that moment, but it's exactly what I needed to stop. I needed to take a breather. I needed that tough love in that moment. So as I continue to read in limitations, that morning, my husband had drug me out of bed. That exact moment of my life had come to mind. As I stood in my bathroom, God spoke so clearly to me and he said, you must get up and stop. Your heart feels so broken in this moment, but I'm here, and I'm going to make it whole. Hope is on the way, and you will walk and peace with me. Limitations 120 says, because my size are many, my heart is faint. So I began to think my heart is faint because for the last 48 hours, all I've done is groan over what was, what had happened to me. So, no wonder everything that I was carrying had felt so heavy. It's the only thing that I talked about.
[00:08:44] So if you don't want to feel overwhelmed and burdened with the things that you're carrying, you don't want to feel in your flesh, stop replaying the event that's broken your heart over and over and over, just like a broken record. Stop complaining about your situation and speaking on it, because it's making you weary. It's triggering your negative thoughts, which is making you spiral out of control. Allow God to direct your thoughts and words to prayers that are laid at his very feet. The very suffering you feel is the very thing that will direct you towards goddess. And that's our main goal, is to be directed towards God. The people of limitation. When you read his word, they weren't doing anything. They were worrying. They were filled. They were consumed in chapter one. But my point number two says, get up, stop, and pray. Your suffering will direct you toward God. The mindset of get up and stop complaining about your situation completely reminded me of this old saying, you become what you eat. And although we're not talking about healthy diet or good to fuel our bodies, we are speaking on God's word and his encouragement. So I challenge you to become what you speak through your lamentation moment.
[00:09:57] Jerusalem didn't just speak on the heart. They spoke with authority to God, and they declared that what they were asking was going to be done. So I challenge you, get up, stop, pray and become what you speak. Most importantly, if we only speak on the negative, harmful things in our life, that's just weighing us down. We're being consumed with a problem and scripture actually says in John 738, it says, out of the heart will flow rivers of living water. Pastor Jonathan has spoken on this, and it just stuck with me for so many years. But it says, salt water and living water cannot flow from the same vessel. What's flowing from your heart while you're in the valley? Is it salt water or is it living water? So as I found myself depressed and annoyed more than ever in that season, I realized I was not speaking kindly to myself or my situation. I wasn't speaking wisdom from my heart.
[00:10:51] So as we move into chapter two, it centers on the fall of Jerusalem. And verses 215 1617 says, all who pass along the way clap their hands at you. They hiss and wag their heads. At the daughters of Jerusalem is this city which was called perfection of beauty, the joy of all earth. All your enemies rail against you. They hiss, they gnash their teeth. They cry, we have destroyed her. This day we longed for. Now we have seen it, and we see it. But then 217 says, the Lord has done what he has planned.
[00:11:26] Did you hear what I just said? The Lord has done what he has planned. And his plan was refining. The enemy thought he had won. But God's plan was planned perfectly. Even through the suffering, when the enemy was railing against Jerusalem, it was still God's plan.
[00:11:44] So point number three, it says, shift your perspective on God's plan, because what is going to carry you through the unplanned? Sometimes all we see is the hard and ugly things that are right in front of our face, making us fearful instead of fearless. So in that moment, we began thanking God for the ugly, for the hard, for the impossible situations we walk through. Sometimes our season seems so much like what Jerusalem experienced. There's so much unplanned every single day, but limitations. 219 it says, arise, cry out in the night. From the first watch of the night, pour out your heart like water before your lord's presence. Lift your hands to him. And so number four, and I call this the solid advice. It says, lift your hands to him and worship him. Your praise and your worship are your breakthrough. Crying out to God is what people in Jerusalem did in chapter two. They worshiped through all the sorrow, and they begged God to change their circumstances. They begged him to change their perspective. And then in lamentations, chapter three, the city actually pivots, and they had hope, which was a precious peace that was received them. It says, yet I call this to mind, therefore I have hope in him. All this sorrow. Then a profound moment with a short sentence that hope was restored the true turning point of limitations. There was something that signified why they had hope, sheer hope, that in that very moment helped them to receive the peace and gave power back to Jerusalem again. And that's where their endurance persevered. So 322 23 says, because the Lord's faithful love we do not perish, for his mercies never end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. So I ask, what burden is the Lord calling to your mind in this moment? What's weighing heavy on you? What mercies have you experienced through God's unchanging grace and faithful love while being in the valley? And how has the Lord continued to be faithful in your life, giving you peace to face the unknown?
[00:13:51] Be reminded that through every hard thing that we face, God's unchanging grace and faithful love gives us a peace that we could never need to move forward for our future.
[00:14:04] Revelations one eight says, God is the alpha and the omega. I think so often as women, we carry such a heavy load that we forget that God had performed all these miracles before us. And oftentimes we try to perform those miracles for our life before limitations. These miracles were performed as well. We forget that the Lord's bigger than what we know of him and what our own personal experience is. Because the mess of life around us, we need to call to mind his steadfast love. We get to reach way further back than any of our own lives. We get to reach into God's word, to his stories, to his personal handbook that teaches us how to navigate hurt.
[00:14:46] Even when our cheeks are stained with tears, his word will sustain us.
[00:14:51] So point number five, it says, your suffering tears and prayers belong together to direct you to the one who can give you peace.
[00:15:01] Lamentations encourages us to pour out our hearts to God, to weep before him and to tell him all the details of pain, of grief, of frustration that you're feeling. Each chapter in lamentation, except chapter four, ends in prayer. Chapter five is an entire chapter of nothing but prayer.
[00:15:20] It is as though chapter five was making up for chapter four's lack of prayers.
[00:15:28] And sometimes I think we're a lot like chapter four. I think we're tired and we're weary and we're distraught and we're grieving in the middle of the fire. And I think sometimes we don't have a voice to even think about praying or the strength to even raise our hands to worship. But even though we feel that way, we are to remember still who the Lord is and what peace can be given to us. And so chapter four of limitations reminded me of a conversation we had in our life group last week and a member said that when we are heavy burdened, we can go to the Lord with our tears. And she believed that that was a very form of prayer. Pastor Donnie also shared something very similar to that this morning about our tears. So please know that you don't have to have the most beautiful, orchestrated prayer to pray during your lamentation moment. The Lord wants and desires your obedience. Your cry is simple enough. So I would like to believe that although chapter four of lamentations was not written as a prayer to God, that his people were still crying out to him in their lamentation momentous. And so I want to take just a quick moment to just remind us who God is right now. And so God is the creator of the universe, the one that has scripted an enormous, loving, elaborate story of love, provision and salvation through repentance for his people.
[00:16:51] So we like poem like the poem in limitations, we get to call to mind the great deeds, the marvelous rescues that God across generations had performed in our very own lives. And we get to speak scripture back to him and we get to receive that peace that he has for us. So we in our mess with our tears and our broken hearts get to depend on Shalom, the Lord of peace.
[00:17:13] He is the Lord of peace and he is the same God who slayed Goliath. He rebuilt Jerusalem, he delivered an entire nation from slavery and rescued sinners by the way of the cross. He's the same exact God who will perform all the miracles in your life too. And so now we call this to mind, just as limitations chapter three does, but as affirmations and truth over our lives. Our God is faithful. He is our redeemer, he is our protector, he is our healer and he is our provider and prince of peace. He has a track record of nothing but goodness and mercy that reaches far back beyond us, pointing us to the promises of Goddesse. This is exactly how lamentations turns from the darkest night to a light of hope. And that hope resulted in a precious peace that was carefully orchestrated and received because it points us to the promises of God, repentance, prayer and worship the city didn't have an idea of how they were going to make it out of the unimaginable. They didn't have a plan, but they prayed and they worshiped. It's such a heartbreaking place to be when you feel hopeless and you feel bombarded with the worry that you feel like you aren't worthy of receiving peace ever. I know because I was in that place. Maybe it's because something or someone told you something or the enemy put something into your mind. Maybe it's a heart wrenching issue that you're dealing with in your home life. Maybe it's just that high school is really hard, college is really hard. Being a mom and a wife is really hard, and being a widow is even harder. But remember this takeaway. God's mercies are new every day because his word tells us that great is his faithfulness, limitations. 322 24 we as sinners are to repent and ask our savior for the mercy and for mercy each day and to pray to him daily, day in and day out. So he is where our peace comes from. So when you feel lost and alone and you're hurting, God is going to use you through your fire.
[00:19:18] Mark 439 and I'm almost done. It says, the Lord spoke and said, peace, be still.
[00:19:26] Jesus and his disciples were trapped on a boat during a storm, and Jesus arose and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, peace beef, be still. And the wind ceased and there was a great calm. My prayer before you leave this sanctuary is that you receive a precious peace that only God can give you through your lamentation moment. You may very well feel alone, anxious, burdened, disobedient, heartbroken. And the wind may feel like it's spinning you out of control, just like the disciples in the boat. But remember that the boat was rocky and the winds were strong, but God was there, and he calmed the storm and the waters, and he arose and he rebuked the wind and the sea, and he declared peace, be still. So maybe you're having to experience your lamentation moment now, and you feel like your world's crashing down.
[00:20:20] Get up and be still with Jesus in the middle of the storm.
[00:20:25] The life you're living is heavy. We all have been there in that moment where it's hard to to even put 1ft in front of the other.
[00:20:33] But God is here and he wants your worship. He wants your obedience.
[00:20:38] So remember to end your lamentation moment with prayer, repentance and worship, reminding yourself of the plan that God has for you. Your prayers should always look to hope and give you peace, but your worship can do the very same thing for you, too. And so I just want to share some lyrics with you that comforted me during my time during that six weeks. And it showed me during my lamentation moment who God truly is.
[00:21:06] And so during this song, it says, he is Shalom. And when I originally had heard the song, I had really, I knew what Shalom meant. I knew it meant, you know, who was the prince of peace. But I wanted to know more about where it come from and what it meant. And so some may not know the meaning of, but Shalom is a hebrew word and it means peace, harmony, wholeness, completely prosperity, welfare and tranquility. And it can be used to mean both hello and goodbye.
[00:21:39] And so I just thought that was very unique. So whether you're fixing to embark on your lamentation moment and you know that it's here, his name means hello and it going to give you peace through that moment, or maybe you're here and you want to say goodbye and you're done with carrying such a heavy load tonight. I encourage you, cry out, say his name. This is your moment to say goodbye to what burdens your heart.
[00:22:07] So the lyrics, they say you don't ever run out of goodness. All of your intentions reach their end. You always follow through on what you'll say. You'll do. You're not afraid of this battle. You are still at rest. Through every storm the wind and crashing waves they bow to what you say. You are a fortress for the weak my covering you are the refuge I seek. I am under your wings. Shalom. Shalom. Shalom. You're my peace.
[00:22:35] You're my peace over me. You don't turn away from what's broken. You will put the pieces back in place. And I know there is more. Your longing to restore you are. Shalom. Shalom. Shalom. So I felt so strongly this week that we just need to end her place in such a special moment of prayer and worship. And so as my worship team comes, I just ask right now that you know if your heart's burdened, that you truly don't leave here until you have spent some time with the Lord. Your lamentation moment can end tonight.
[00:23:08] It can be your breakthrough moment right here, and I don't want you to miss that.
[00:23:14] And so we have a beautiful team of ladies who have been in prayer for this service. And I just asked that if our prayer team would go ahead and come forward as well.
[00:23:22] We are here for you. The Lord is here for you. And I ask that those of you who stand back right now, and you're like, I'm not going to come to the altar. That's not, that's the last place I want to be. I just pray that you would just set your flesh aside and that you would come into what the Lord truly has for you right now and that you would feel led to come pray with the girls that come forward.
[00:23:47] I pray that peace is with you, and it's received to all the lives in this room tonight. And I pray that if you have something that you need to receive peace about, that you would move accordingly.
[00:24:01] And as Miss Ashley goes ahead and they're going to worship with us, I just pray that we would just stand and just have a time of worship. Maybe that's all it is tonight is just to worship the one who can give us peace.
