May 18, 2025
Lament: How to Stop Complaining and Do Something About It
2 Chronicles 7:14
Next weekend is Memorial Day, and Memorial Day is the unofficial start of summer. Since it is the unofficial start of summer, it’s the official start of the grilling season, and I love to grill out. I love to use both the smoker and the grill when I’m cooking steaks. First, I put the steaks on the smoker at a low temperature for a few hours to get a smoky flavor. Once it has a nice smoke ring, then I crank up the propane grill and sear the steaks while bringing them up to temp. Once the fat gets nice and crispy and it gets that perfect pink center, I pull them off the heat and let them rest for about 10 minutes (this is the key), and then it’s time to eat. Before you ask – yes, a pink center is the perfect way to cook a steak. Well done is for good and faithful servants (Matthew 25:21), not meat. However, grilling did not come naturally to me. My path to learning this skill was a rough one. You see, when I was growing up, my Dad’s job was to grill, and he’s the only one I ever saw do it. My job was to play in the yard or out in the creek while he grilled. Therefore, because I was busy with my job of being a kid, I didn’t pay too much attention to how one is supposed to grill safely and properly. This went on for some time until Julie and I started dating in our early teens. I’d go over to her house, and her Dad would offer to let me grill. Being young and prideful, of course, I took the opportunity to grill because I wanted to impress her parents. It took me a little time, a few burned-off eyebrows, and a loss of so much arm hair, but I soon learned not only how to safely light the gas grill but to cook on it as well. This went well for a good long while until one day they were out of propane, so they brought out this older charcoal hibachi grill for me to use. I hadn’t had any experience with charcoal, but I was willing to give it a shot, and I was able to grill up some nice burgers that evening. A while after dinner was over, her Dad asked me if I had doused the coals to put out the smoldering briquettes. However, I didn’t grow up camping, and like I said, I had never really used charcoal before. I was ignorant of the fact that you need to take care of a smoldering fire, or else it might cause a big problem. As I went outside to take care of the fire, I learned this lesson very quickly because not only was I greeted with the sight of a hibachi grill with a nice large hole in it, but I also found a perfectly round hole burned into Julie’s Father’s new deck. I learned my lesson quickly that day – you can’t let smoldering things lie. Not only do I tell you this as a cautionary tale since it is the start of grilling season, but there is a Greek word I came across this week while reading the New Testament that gives the same picture of a smoldering fire that, when left unattended, will cause serious damage. The Greek word is interpreted as “complaining” or “grumbling”. Isn’t it an interesting idea that complaints are like smoldering ashes that, when they are not dealt with properly, will cause problems. We see this in John 6 when Jesus tells a large group of people that have been following Him, seeing His miracles, and listening to His teachings that He is the Bread of Life that has come down out of Heaven. It’s at that point that many in this group start to grumble or complain that He is comparing Himself to God Himself. This grumbling was not dealt with properly and caused many of the people who followed Jesus to stop following Him. That’s what complaining and grumbling does in our walk with Jesus. It doesn’t drive us closer to Him; it drives us away. It’s also the antithesis of the Fruits of the Spirit that a follower of Jesus will show. It’s impossible for love, joy, peace, and patience to be shown to their fullest extent in the life of a believer when we have complaints smoldering. We are flat out commanded in Philippians 2:14 not to grumble. Yet we all have complaints in our lives. Some things cause us pain, hurt, or offense, and our natural response is to complain about them. Those complaints can take a variety of forms as well. They can be verbal, they can be mental, or they can be just in our attitude towards people, but no matter how it looks, when they are left alone or dealt with improperly, they are going to cause problems in our walk with Christ. No matter what issue has led us to complain, how we are to deal with them all has the same first step, and that brings us to the “Churchy Word” that I want us to look at today, that word is “Lament”. Lamenting is going to be our first step in dealing with our complaints. It’s a word we don’t hear much about today because people would rather complain about issues rather than handle them Biblically. A lament is taking the pain, the problem, the issue that is causing you to complain, and turning it into a prayer and taking it to God. When this is done properly, it will take our pains and turn them into praises and worship of God as we trust Him with what is bothering us.
In Scripture, we see those 4 types of laments are mentioned. There is a funeral lament when pain and grief overwhelm us. Instead of just letting the pain smolder and cause issues, we take our pain of loss and grief and express it to the Lord. A great example of this in the Bible is recorded in John 11:21 when Lazarus died. His sisters are grieving his death, and they take their hurt to Jesus and say, “Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask.” She shared that pain with Jesus but also dealt with it properly by giving it to Him. Sometimes we are worried about expressing our pain and anger with God, but God can take it. We just must give it to Him after we express it. The second type of laments is City Laments, like those in the entire Book of Lamentations, where we see sorrow expressed over the entire city of Jerusalem. Jesus expressed this type of lament as well when He wept over Jerusalem in Luke 19:41. The third type is individual laments, and we see those repeatedly in the Book of Psalms. At least a third of the 150 Psalms are Psalms of lament, with the most famous being Psalms 22. While all of these are important in the life of a believer and will be used at some point in all our lives, I want to focus on the 4th type of lament, and that is the “Communal Lament”. This is when a group comes together, breaking over a specific event, and deals with it Biblically by giving it over to the Lord. The most well-known of these in Scripture is recorded in the Old Testament book of 2 Chronicles in Chapter 7, verses 13-14. This morning, I want us to look at this single verse and how God tells the children of Israel to respond communally to certain events and see how we can use this example to deal with our complaints as a church.
2 Chronicles 7:13-14
At times I might shut up the heavens so that no rain falls, or command grasshoppers to devour your crops, or send plagues among you. Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land.
Solomon had just finished the temple and had it dedicated in the first part of chapter 7, starting in verse 12, the Lord answers Solomon and tells him that his prayer of dedication has been heard, and this temple will be the place where the Lord will receive the sacrifices of His people. The very next verse tells us about times when hardships would come upon the land. It might be a time of drought, it might be times of swarms of bugs, or other plagues, but instead of complaining about their circumstances, the children of Israel are called to lament.
The Community that is Called.
The first part of the lament that God gives to Solomon concerns who is to lament. He says it’s the people who are called by His name. This phrase is a Hebrew idiom that can be seen somewhat in English, but all it is saying is that those who are called to lament over these circumstances are the people whom God owns. In the Old Testament, these were God’s chosen people – the Israelites. In the New Testament, Galatians 3:13 tells us that those who have made Jesus the Lord of their lives by faith have been bought with the blood of Christ. However, even though this lament was given to the children of Israel, it is no doubt applicable to the church in dealing with their complaints and hurts as well. This is why it’s called a communal lament, because it’s the entire church that is called a lament.
The Step to Lamenting.
After the Lord tells us who is called to lament together, He gives us four steps that we must complete to lament properly. Remember, this is a corporate lament, so before there is a corporate lament, there must be a corporate brokenness and hurt. In the Israelites' case, it is the conditions that are impacting their crops, but for us, the most common thing to lament is sin. Whether it’s the sins of an individual, a group, a city, or a country, the sin doesn’t matter. What matters is that we are all broken over sin. Instead of complaining, we bring it to the Lord as a group. This breakdown must start with the spiritual leaders and flow into the congregation, but this breakdown is just the start. We must do something about it.
We must humble ourselves.
The humility that we are called to here is a call for utter and total dependence on God. It’s the realization that we cannot do anything on our own, but only through His mighty power can we do it. It’s embracing the attitude that sometimes we are wrong, and we need to admit when we are. We must be teachable in those moments.
We must pray.
The attitude of humility is a must before we come before God because it’s in these moments of prayer that we can express our frustrations to God over our situations. The reason that humility is so important is that when we express our complaints, hurts, and frustrations before God, we must be ready for Him to respond. This is what happened with Job. For 37 chapters, Job expresses his complaints to his friends and God, but it doesn’t seem that Job had the proper attitude of humility because when God answered him in verse 38, Job was not ready and was floored by how God answered his lament. However, when we come broken over a situation, we come humbled and ready. When God responds, either through His Word or through His servants who are grounded in His Word. This is the attitude that can turn those pains into praise instead of a smoldering fire that can destroy our relationship with Him.
We must seek His face.
The next step in lamenting is to seek the face of God. This means to seek His grace. There are situations in life that we can get through only by the grace of God, and God provides a special grace in those moments. To seek His face is to seek His grace, His favor, and His ways. When we are faced with a situation that brings about complaints, our first response is to deal with them, however, we feel like dealing with them or with how the rest of the world deals with them. To seek God’s face is to seek how He wants us to deal with the issue. That way is going to be different and difficult, but it’s always the right way. We must seek His face as we lament.
We must turn from sin.
Again, we must embrace that humility step if we are going to complete this last step. This is a step to realize it might be us that is causing the problem, or it might be sinful how we are dealing with the problem. It’s extremely easy for us to curse the darkness that we see and experience in this world, but it’s another thing to lament and say, “God, you have called me, called us, to be the light in this world for you” (Matthew 5:14-16), but we have failed. Lord, forgive us when we have been playing instead of praying and acting in obedience to you, show us our failures, and help us turn to you. We love to blame others for our pain and our complaints, but what if it’s just us that’s at fault? When God speaks as we seek His face, we must be ready to respond in obedience to the truth He reveals to us.
Once we respond properly, God makes 3 promises about how He will respond to our lament. The first thing He says He will do is hear us. What comfort that we often take for granted, that the Lord of the Universe, the one who is so immense and powerful and breathed the stars into existence, listens to His children's every prayer. The second promise is to forgive us. When we lament, we are seeking Him, and when we seek Him, we see that His ways and ours don’t always line up. Those things that don’t line up are sin, and we must repent and turn from those, and when we do, we have a promise that we will be forgiven. 1 John 1:9 tells us that, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness”. This forgiveness and repentance strengthen our relationship with Him. The last promise is to heal our land. For them, it would be a physical healing of a land that is wrecked with drought and pestilence. For us, it could be the same, but it could also be that since we are now right with God, God can use His church to be the light in the darkness He has called us to be. He can now use our obedience to Him to further His kingdom and address the issue we came to Him with in the first place.
Lamenting is a lost discipline but a necessary one, to take our hurts, to take our pains, to take our complaints and deal with them Biblically by placing them in the hands of God. That way, we do not let them smolder and cause untold damage to our walk with Christ and to our church’s fellowship as we remain united in spirit and mission as we serve the Lord together.
