Episode 1578: For the Glory

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Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining me on episode 1,578 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

Kim Sorrelle: I am Kim Sorrelle. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time. Your talent and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to know what love is and live, it is key and one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this The Inspired Stewardship podcast with my good friend Scott Maderer.

Scott Maderer: Is really an invitation to God to walk with us through even those painful moments, even when we don't recognize that God is there, God is with us, [00:01:00] and that allows us to have those moments to stay still. To be quiet and to call upon the Lord. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the inspired Stewardship podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself. Invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

In today's spiritual foundation episode, I talk about Psalm 79, chapters one through nine. I share with you how we are drawn to knowing who to blame when things go wrong, and I also share how God is there and praise is found. Even in the midst of disaster, [00:02:00] Psalm 79 verses one through nine says, oh God, the nations have come into your inheritance.

They have defiled your holy temple. They have laid Jerusalem and ruins. They have given the bodies of your servants to the birds of the air for food, the flesh of your faithful to the wild animals of the earth. They have poured out their blood like water, all around Jerusalem, and there was no one to bury them.

We have become a taunt to our neighbors. Mocked and delighted by those around us. How long, oh Lord. Will you be angry forever? Will your jealous wrath burn like fire? Pour out your anger on the nations that do not know you. And on the kingdoms that do not call your name. For they have devoured Jacob and laid waste his habitation.

Do not remember against us the inequities of our ancestors. Let your compassion come speedily to meet us for we are brought very low. Help us, oh God, of our salvation. For the glory of your name. Deliver us and forgive our sins. For your name's [00:03:00] sake, I don't know about you, but I've had times where things have come up at the last moment.

Maybe it was a death in the family or an experience where things. Seem to be coming to a disastrous end, either in my own life or in the lives of those I care about friends and family and others around me. And the truth is that we often are faced with these desperate end times. When we look at both the things that happen to us day to day, IM personally, as well as things globally or in our country or in our churches or communities.

There's always a disaster. There's always something to look at that is going wrong. There's a lecture called Preaching your Way through an [00:04:00] apocalypse by a theologian named Cody Sanders. And in that, there's a quote that says The world is always ending for someone and that's true. Whether it's the death of someone you care about being the end in one way, or whether it's something else that's going wrong around you or in the world.

There's always rubble, there's always devastation. There's always someone that is going through that pain. Here in the writer of the Psalm 79, it, you hear that message, that idea of standing on the rubble of what was once a happy family and wondering why things have gone the way they have. Why have I been abandoned?

Why am I broken? Why am I hurt? Why am I angry? Why am I feeling that the world has ended? [00:05:00] And a natural reaction when those things happen is to look around for someone to blame. Look for the reason behind it. Why did this happen? Who caused this to happen? How did this happen to me? There in Psalm 79, it says, how long, oh, Lord, will you be angry for will your jealous wrath burn like fire?

And often that's what we do too. We lash out and we say, God must be angry. I must have done something. My sin is the source of this disaster. Or maybe if it's somebody else, their sin was the source of this disaster. There's someone somewhere that did something wrong and now God is punishing us for it. We ask those questions in difficult moments.

We tend to lash out and blame others. Or blame ourselves or blame God because we think that if we can just find that person or that place or that thing to [00:06:00] blame, then that will bring us peace. That will change it. If we can figure out who's to blame, then everything will be well again. Who is the enemy?

Or what is my sin that caused this to happen? Where should I be angry? What should I direct my anger at? Who is to blame? The truth is that's one of those lies that we tell ourselves. That's one of the practices that we as humans have practiced since the beginning of time. The idea of the scapegoat, someone who carries the sins into the desert to die and draws that wrath upon themselves.

And Psalm 79 is a moment of that raw, visceral looking for who to blame. The whole Psalm actually calls for even more. It calls for vengeance and wrath, and sometimes that may be too much. [00:07:00] We often have trouble dealing with extreme emotional experiences. We want to be the church that only loves and cares, but we also have to respect and recognize that we have to be the church for the whole person.

And sometimes crying out to God, being angry at God, lashing out at others, hurting because we are hurting, calling for vengeance. Those things are part of our humanness. We can't be shocked or offended by that, but we also don't have to defend God from this. God is capable of being the defense that is needed.

God can meet us where we are. Even in those moments of anger, God is there. And then the Psalmist asked God for deliverance, for God's own glory. Glory is often [00:08:00] seen as power, right? The glory and the power of God. It's those moments of miracles of the supernatural the glory that takes our breath away.

But here in Psalm 79, the glory, God's own glory is that which we need, which helps us. It's those moments of forgiveness and deliverance. It's those moments that soothe the anger because when God acts like God, God reveals to us God's own self in a way that transforms and can bring us back from the edge because God shows up and stands with us.

It stands with us in the rubble and in the pain. Even if we cause that pain ourselves, even if we brought it upon ourselves, God is still there and we can see and reflect [00:09:00] on God's glory. In those moments, we can be confident that God will always act as God. And that is a wonderful thing, and that's what brings us to the end of the psalm, where even in the midst of this disaster, there is praise, there is gratitude.

It's coming, it's there. It's shifting one moment away, but it is still the destination that we're headed to, that even in these moments of anger and lashing out and fear and pain, even in the midst of the rubble, even with the pain still fresh on our hearts, there's still praise waiting right there over the next corner, and that is.

Part of the lament, whether you're standing in the rubble or viewing it from afar, whether it's fresh on your soul or [00:10:00] whether it's past and long past, we have to have empathy and invite each other to have those moments of lament and then to reflect on the nature of God and recognize that what, that anger that we felt, that blame that we felt.

Is really an invitation to God to walk with us through even those painful moments, even when we don't recognize that God is there, God is with us, and that allows us to have those moments to stay still, to be quiet and to call upon the Lord. Thanks for listening.

Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've [00:11:00] heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode, do me a favor. Go over to facebook.com/inspired.

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Develop your influence and impact the world.