Unshakable Faith:
Remember
your best friend from when you were a kid? That person who you did EVERYTHING
with? Brian was my best friend. We rode bikes, built forts, played with those
little plastic army men, had sleep-overs virtually every weekend, watched
Saturday morning cartoons – back when they still had them… Brian was my
all-time best friend.
In the summer between 6th
& 7th grades I lost Brian - my best friend.
Brian went up to Alaska to visit his
dad for the summer. They went out on a boat to do some fishing. A storm came up
on the lake out of nowhere. The boat flipped. They swam to a buoy, but the
crashing waves were relentless… Brian’s
dad couldn’t hold on to Brian… the crashing waves took him. Brian drown and his
body washed up on the shore some days later. Brian’s mom called our house when
she got the news. I remember that day like it was yesterday.
Psalm 88 was written in the midst of
those kinds of crushing, suffocating, overwhelming circumstances of life.
One biblical scholar notes “Psalm 88
is a wintery season of unrelieved bleakness.”
The author of 88 wrote about his dire
circumstances saying:
(v.3) “I
am overwhelmed with troubles…”
(v.4) “I
am like one without strength…”
(v.8) “You
have taken from me my closest friends…”
(v.9) “…my
eyes are dim with grief.”
(v.15) “I
have suffered and been close to death…”
Then, the
psalm closes in v.18 with “…darkness is my closest friend.”
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It would be a tragedy if that’s
where we left it.
It would be a greater tragedy if
that’s God left it.
Thankfully He didn’t – Graciously God
doesn’t.
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Psalm 88 is NOT about “a wintery
season of unrelieved bleakness.”
Psalm 88 is about UNSHAKABLE FAITH in GOD amidst the often terrible, ominous,
catastrophic, overwhelming, and dreadful circumstances of life.
Psalm 88 was written by a man named Heman,
whose name literally means “faithful”
in Hebrew.
Being faithful IS about an unseen certainty that goes well beyond
philosophy, logic, reason, and religious formalism – to authentic relationship
with God Almighty – and trusting that COME WHAT MAY… God has got this.
Faithfulness isn’t prosperity gospel
– the foolishness and absurdity of ‘name it and claim it’ garbage preaching,
which promises wealth and abundance this side of eternity.
What Psalm 88 reveals is that
despite the bleakness of our circumstances, regardless of the veracity,
frequency, and duration of the inevitable torrential storms and crushing waves
of life…
God is always and forever worthy of
our praise.
God is always and forever worthy of
our FAITHFULNESS.
Unlike other stories and psalms in the
Bible Psalm 88 is open ended. That means we don’t know how things turned out.
There is no story of rescue…
there is no feel-good ending of
defeated enemies, no victory parade,
and no songs of jubilation.
All we know is that Heman, “Faithful,” is:
Overwhelmed, depleted, dim with grief,
suffering, close to death, having darkness as his closest friend…
YET despite all this Heman, “Faithful,” still had the resolve to preface
his bleak and dire circumstances with a bold prayer of faith and hope-filled worship:
We know this because in verse 1 we
read:
“Lord,
you are the God who saves me…”
Heman, Faithful,
had no offensive sense of entitlement for earthly prosperity.
Faithful
has no pretentious expectations for God to DO anything.
The bleakness of the wintery
landscape of psalm 88 is transformed by Heman’s unshakable faith and hopefulness that IF God chose to deliver him – Heman
would use that gracious and unmerited opportunity to praise God (v.10) for His faithful love (v.11) and share God’s
wonders and righteousness throughout the land of the living since they can’t be
known in the land of oblivion (v.12).
This side of the Cross of Christ we
know more about a God who saves. We know about Jesus – whose name in Hebrew is
Joshua, which means “The LORD saves.” Jesus truly is our God who saves because of His faithfulness.
Know today that if you are in a
place of troubles, without strength, filled with grief from loss, feeling close
to death, and that darkness is your closest friend...
Know that we have a God hears faith
and hope-filled prayers that spill forth in the honesty of brokenness.
Know that we have full-on,
unhindered, and complete access to Jesus – who indeed is The LORD who saves.
Salvation in – through – and by Him is not always of the earthly, temporal,
circumstances variety, BUT it is ALWAYS of the eternal variety – saving us from
ourselves in our depravity of sin.
Like Heman, “Faithful,” you can lift
up a song of faith-filled praise that let’s God know that your faith in Him - as our God who saves - is
UNSHAKABLE. And IF God chooses to
deliver you from those circumstances in the here-and-now…
Then use the opportunity to sing and
speak of His faithful love, His
wonders, and His righteousness with every remaining moment you have left upon the
wintery landscape of life this side of eternity.
Use it to live a life of UNSHAKABLE FAITH in Jesus - our God who saves!
Blessings,
-Kevin
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