When Worship is Difficult

I have a PhD in disappointment. Before going into college, I had my entire life planned out. From my college days, my five-year plan was to be and full time ministry and a family. At 36, I am still working on my five-year plan and still nursing the wounds of the many bumps and chasms in the road I have experienced. The word "no" or "You are not capable" has become a common phrase that has persisted. The desire to have a family has been left unfulfilled. What I desired to be is quickly slipping through my fingers. The last decade and a half has not been easy.

Outwardly, I have raised my hands in worship, bowed my head in prayer, sung songs I have struggled to reconcile my current circumstances with what I believe. Sometimes instead of raising my hands in worship, sometimes I want to throw my hands up in the air and ask "Why?" And therein lies my problem, my turmoil, my struggle, my inner conflict. What lies beneath the knowledge of what is true lies these questions that I fear if spoken will become truer than if they remain hidden.

What lies beneath the knowledge of what is true lies these questions that I fear if spoken will become truer than if they remain hidden.

So instead of addressing the questions. Instead of voicing the disappointment and struggle. I bury it. I hide the struggle. Because if I voice my disappointment, my frustrations, my struggle, it becomes real. I have to deal with the shadow of my disappointment. I have to be vulnerable with myself. I have to be "less than" what I desire to be. But, at the heart of it. My greatest fear is that I am somehow letting God down. And I know I'm not the only one who experiences this.

I had the opportunity to go with some students to a retreat a few weeks ago. And as I stood their during worship, looking over the multiple students from different churches, I wondered how many of them have struggled with worship. How many of them had inner turmoil that they were afraid to speak? How many of them feared letting God down.

A old phrase from a pastor echoed through my mind a pastor in college told me. He told me "God's not up in heaven scratching his head saying, 'I didn't know Zach had it in him'." So often we believe that we can hide our struggles from God. And, if the struggles we have do make their way to the surface, they might make us less of a follower of Jesus. After all, we have to have it all together, right?

"God's not up in heaven scratching his head saying, 'I didn't know Zach had it in him'."

One of my favorite passages of Scripture is found in the Psalms. Psalm 13 is a psalm of a lament, but it might as well be a psalm of anguish. David writes:

13 How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2 How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? 3 Consider and answer me, O Lord my God; light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,4 lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,” lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken. 5 But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.6 I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.

Do you hear the anguish? Do you hear the disappointment? Do you hear David shouting? A better question, Do you skip right to verse 5 because the prior verses make you uncomfortable? David was struggling, and though he knew that God was good, he was not afraid to share his true frustrations with the Father. And God called him "a man after His own heart" (1 Samuel 13:14).

We somehow think that we have to have it all together. We aren't allowed to struggle. Even looking at this passage, we could easily skip the "ugly stuff" and jump right to the "good stuff." "Out of sight, out of mind," right? However, we don't know how long David had to sit with the first four verses before he was able to finish it. As a writer, I can tell you, there may be times months will go by before I can finish a project. What if David had to wrestle with his frustrations and disappointments longer than it took him to finish the psalm.

However, we don't know how long David had to sit with the first four verses before he was able to finish it.

It may be messy, but at some point in our lives, we might struggle with a PhD in disappointment. The question we have to wrestle with is not the frustration or disappointment we wish would go away on its own, but whether we will be bold enough to bring it before the Father. David was a man after God's own heart. He did not stop being a man after God's own heart because he wrote this psalm. Could it be that by writing this psalm, being real before God, gave him the experience that he was able to declare in psalm 34:18 "The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit"?

Wherever we are. Whether we have a PhD in disappointment, or whether we are just going through a difficult season. God encourages us to bring everything before him. He does not promise to remove the disappointment. But he promises to help us carry the load (Matthew 11:28-30). In those times we struggle to worship; in those times we experience disappointment, maybe in those times when we feel we can't worship are the very times where the worship we have to give is the most powerful. Maybe, worship is an opportunity to surrender our disappointments to God and allow Him to give us rest.