2. EXTREME AND EFFUSIVE Psalms 102:1.

GUSHING GRIEVANCE

BE ATTENTIVE TO MY COMPLAINTS Hear my prayer,

Prayer is actions of communication that has many facets. One component of prayer is to pour out our complaint before the LORD. As we dispense the feelings we dump out of our heart all the disorder in our lives. We can feel sapped and depleted. We can feel weak and bled. With this self-emptying comes the exhaustion of extreme intensity and loss. The discharge is a great amount and a lavish discarding, leaving in its wake emptiness and weakness both emotionally and physically. The end results being that we lose our grasp, slip in our footing, stagger in our position, and can easily slide in our character.

We see this hollow container void of precious life juices portrayed with its results in Psa. 22:14-15

I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my insides. My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaves to my jaws; and You have brought me into the dust of death.

How intensely severe it is to be vacated of all life force and have our soul refilled with the dust of death. This can be a personal experience but also it can be an entering in to the loss of others in a deep piteous compassion and grief.

Mine eyes do fail with tears, my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people; because the children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city. Lam. 2:11

The psalmist expressed the slippage he felt in his life when he saw his own devastation and drain and sensed others were not as exposed to the wreckage and waste he was enduring: Psa. 73:2

But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped.

But in all this drain and loss what has been the cost? There are the shed tears, the invested emotions and feelings, the seemingly exploited gifts and treasures, the unappreciated sacrifices of care, love and devotion. Do we pull it all back in, as a collection of our spirit? Or do we pour it out before the Lord as done for Him and to Him and through Him?

He will store it all in his eternal storehouses, for His glory; for in Him there is not loss but gain, for that which we counted gain is loss until it is given up for His glory.

Trust in Him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him:

God is a refuge for us. Psa. 62:8

Others can mock and ridicule and declare our emptying as a wasted sacrifice and blood vainly spilled but we can bring this to our God also and plead for vindication. We may look and feel like the only thing that we have left on our schedule is an appointment with death but our victory and reenergizing is letting Him be known, that must be our goal to proclaim Him in all his wonder and beauty.

He does hear us, each of our complaints are precious to him.

wherefore should the heathen say, Where is their God? let him be known among the heathen in our sight by the revenging of the blood of thy servants which is shed. Let the sighing of the prisoner come before thee; according to the greatness of thy power preserve thou those that are appointed to die Psa. 79:10-11

This word complaint means lament and it’s an expression of one’s discontent and displeasure. We are all by nature grumblers and grippers.

I poured out my complaint before him; I showed before him my trouble. Psa. 142:2

Hannah was accused of drunkenness because of the weight of her grief. The emotional expression of her complaint in prayer appeared delirious to Eli. She defends her outpouring.

And Hannah answered and said, No, my lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit: I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured out my soul before the LORD. Count not your handmaid for a daughter of Belial: for out of the abundance of my complaint and grief have I spoken hitherto. 1Sam. 1:15-16

The Psalmist expresses the same bottled up feelings and explosion of emotion.

Psa. 55:2 Attend unto me, and hear me: I mourn in my complaint, and make a noise;

After we have given it all to God and complain to The Lord over and over, we return to the fact that He is really all we want, and need, He is the one we adore:

My meditation of him shall be sweet: I will be glad in the LORD. Psa. 104:34

Rise my soul behold tis Jesus, Jesus fills thy wondering eye, see Him now in glory seated, where thy sins no more can rise.