Not long ago during my morning time with the Lord I was sitting before Him and reading through Psalm 77. As I look back in my journal, it was actually my last quiet time with the Lord on December 31st, 2017. I can’t remember why I landed on Psalm 77 that morning, I just know that it is exactly where the Lord intended me to be… or He simply met me there and took what I had, and used it to tell me what He knew I needed to know personally and also that I would need it to share with others.

Psalm 77 is titled on Bible Gateway as “Comfort in Trouble from Recalling God’s Mighty Deeds.” The last few years grief has been a struggle in my heart. Grief at the loss of my Daddy, Daddy-in-love, and Sister-in-love. Grief at the loss of friendships and trust in others. Grief at the losses I have watched others face. Grief at seeing loved ones choose paths of destruction over and over again. Grief at seeing my children hurt by those that we allowed in their lives because we thought they would have been in their lives to build them up not tear them down.

I have lost count of the times I have asked, “Why?” I have lost count of the days that I have sat before the Lord and all I could do was just sit there, because I was too overwhelmed with grief to even remember how to pray or to even believe that prayer was anything but a pointless endeavor. I have lost count of the times that I picked up my phone to text someone to ask them to pray for me because I couldn’t, and then heard the whisper in my ear that their was no one in my life to text to ask. Grief has a way of pushing you in a dark corner and convincing you that the only safe place you have is somewhere where you can’t move and no one can ask why you are in that corner. It is in seasons like this when having verses memorized like 2 Corinthians 5:7, “for we walk by faith not by sight“ and Hebrews 13:5, “I’ll never leave you or forsake you” are vital to our survival.

In Psalm 77:1-10 we read, “My voice rises to God, and I will cry aloud; my voice rises to God, and He will hear me. In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord; in the night my hand was stretched out without weariness; my soul refused to be comforted. When I remember God, then I am disturbed; when I sigh, then my spirit grows faint. You have held my eyelids open; I am so troubled that I cannot speak. I have considered the days of old, the years of long ago. I will remember my song in the night; I will meditate with my heart, and my spirit ponders: will the Lord reject forever? And will He never be favorable again? Has His lovingkindness ceased forever? Has His promise come to an end forever? Has God forgotten to be gracious, or has He in anger withdrawn His compassion? Then I said, “It is my grief, that the right hand of the Most High has changed.”

As I read Psalm 77:10, It is my grief that the right hand of the Most High has changed, the Lord spoke to my heart and I realized He was about to teach me. He was about to show me how our grief could deceive us and how the enemy of our souls can take this legitimate pain and use it to cause us to turn away from Him instead of too Him. He was about to teach me that He was not ignorant of the devil’s schemes and that He saw me and knew right were I was in the midst of this grief and He did not hold these thoughts against me… I was forgiven and I was His and He had hold of me even when I screamed at Him to let me go.

 

As I continued reading in the Word and read through the rest of Psalm 77, the Lord spoke to my heart and He said this is how you get through. Psalm 77:11-14 says, “I shall remember the deeds of the Lord; surely I will remember Your wonders of old. I will meditate on all Your work and muse on Your deeds. Your way, O God, is holy; what god is great like our God? You are the God who works wonders; You have made known Your strength among the peoples.” 

In our grief we have to choose to remember WHO our God is and ALL that He has done. We have to choose to remember what He has done from the beginning through the lives of those recorded in Scripture and we have to choose to remember what we know that He has done through our own personal lives and the lives of those we know. We have to cling to Him through His Word even if we are struggling to believe one iota of it is true. Our grief deceives us. God’s Word is the only weapon that cuts through deception. 

Then I began this prayer in my journal…

Oh Father, In our grief it is easy to feel as though You have abandoned and forgotten us. It is tempting to feel as if You have rejected us and that Your Word cannot be trusted. Oh Father, let not our grief overtake us or destroy us. Though our hearts ache and our insides quake, though our eyes rain down tears and our cries thunder deep within our souls, do not leave us in our affliction or doubt. Bring to our remembrance the truth. Rise up Your Holy Spirit within us and be our Comforter and guide us out of this valley of the shadow. Help us to remember all Your mighty deeds and set us up on the Rock that is higher that we might get the right perspective and therefore have victory over these emotions that want to control us. Give us Your peace. My Jesus, Prince of Peace, capture and rule our hearts and take Lordship over our minds. We love You. We praise You. We lift up Your precious and most holy name and we look forward to the day that You come again. My Jesus, it is in Your name that I pray, AMEN. 

You know many times when we are in grief some well meaning people tell us to not ask why. The enemy of our souls can even heap guilt on our already overwhelmed hearts because we do ask why. Sometimes even when we know why… we STILL can’t help but ask why. If you are in a place right now where you are asking why, let me unburden your heart from any guilt or false condemnation and remind you that JESUS ASKED WHY.

About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why haveYou forsaken Me?”

Matthew 27:46

Jesus knew this moment was coming. He came for this moment. He had worked out His questions with the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane as He asked, “My Father, if it is possible let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will“ (Matthew 26:39). Yet, when push came to shove and He was toe to toe with the greatest pain of His life in this flesh Jesus asked why.

However, He didn’t stay in His why… He asked why and then He chose to remember.

After this, Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished, to fulfill the Scripture, said, “I am thirsty.” A jar full of sour wine was standing there; so they put a sponge full of the sour wine upon a branch of hyssop and brought it up to His mouth. Therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.

John 19:28-30

The way out of our grief precious ones is to remember. Remember who Your God is. Remember all His promises. Now the question is have you spent enough time with Him in His Word to know Him? If we are to remember Him, His mighty deeds, and His promises, we have to first learn them. Oh beloved, learn them.

 

The dangers of misinterpretation of the Word of God by mankind are real. In my sixteen years of studying the Scriptures I have learned to hold fast to the simplicity of the direct commands and precepts of God in His Word and take lightly any interpretations by man given on passages that are not directly, “Thus sayeth the LORD.” There are things in scripture that are quite clear and then there are things that anyone can twist and distort to make them say what they want them to say in order to prove their own point and grant themselves authority and power over the hearts and minds of others.

Some mis-interpretations may seem like a little thing, and I do believe that there are many times that they are, because they don’t change the big picture all that much. However, some can be life altering. Some can be chain breaking and freedom delivering, or they can be chain binding and freedom stealing.

I once sat before a young girl who was sitting in front of me in tears nursing a newborn. She had been abandoned by her husband because he had decided this marriage and baby thing really wasn’t for him. As I asked her about her relationship with the Lord, she shared with me that she believed in Jesus and wanted to be saved but her pastor said she wasn’t accepted by God until she had spoken in tongues… and so far she hadn’t and couldn’t. At that moment I wanted to throat punch a so called pastor. Instead, I took her to 1 Corinthians 12 – 13 and Ephesians 2:8-9 and prayed that God Himself would teach her truth as I prayed with her that day.

I was reminded of this as I watched a sermon from the book of Esther on my computer not long ago. Now I have studied the book of Esther and have taught from this book countless times. I learned this book from trusted teachers who also had learned it from trusted teachers. However, the other day as I went to JD Greer’s church website, pulled up a sermon to listen to, I chose the one from the book of Esther because this book has always been a place of strength and encouragement for me as it reminds me of God’s sovereignty. I listened to Greer share from this beautiful book of Scripture. I listened as he brought attention to Queen Vashti as he introduced the background of the story and I heard something I had never heard before.

I have always been taught to compare Vashti to Esther in this book in every study that I have seen on it. Vashti was always depicted as a rebellious, stubborn, and arrogant woman and Esther as an obedient, respectful, and humble woman. In these studies I was encouraged to be an Esther and not a Vashti. Yet, I had never been taught that King Ahasuerus was not simply asking Vashti to leave her own party and step in and wave at those in the king’s banquet, but according to JD Greer was ACTUALLY being asked to walk into a room filled with her drunken king and all his drunk buddies wearing nothing but her crown.  If this is the correct interpretation of this moment in history… then Vashti should be celebrated along with Esther in this story, not used as her antithesis in comparison.

If she is compared to Esther, then her comparison should be taught as the woman who said “I will NOT go to the king and if I perish, I perish.” This is how from this day forward that I will teach this book. No longer will Vashti be taught from me as a woman not to imitate, but she will indeed be heralded as the woman of courage that she proved herself to be. A woman who in her willingness to say, “NO, I will not go” made the way for Esther to be a woman who could say, “YES, I will go…” We need more Vashti’s in this day.

We need more Vashti’s to say NO and when they are removed, when they do suffer the consequences of that NO, then let their be Esther’s there ready to come in behind them and fill those royal shoes with as much backbone and dignity and power and strength in the Lord as she who made the way for her to be there. In this world our No’s can be just as powerful as our Yes’s. Our No I won’t can mean we perish just as much as our Yes I will. 

We need Vashti’s who are willing to say I don’t care if I lose my career. I don’t care if I get mocked. I don’t care if this means I become a one passage story that is buried. I don’t do this for my own well being, but for every woman, every girl, every single person that didn’t get the opportunity to say NO. If I perish, I perish, but I will not come at your bidding and be commanded to walk before you wearing nothing but a crown.

You see I know a Man who would never ask that of me or any other woman. I know a Man that instead said I, I will be lifted up in front of the entire world for you wearing nothing but a broken bloody crown of thorns so that you, YOU, can be FULLY clothed in robes of righteousness.

I will rejoice greatly in the Lord, My soul will exult in my God; For He has clothed me with garments of salvation, He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness, 

(Isaiah 61:10)

This is why we must never stop learning. This is why as people who profess to know God we must never take one man’s interpretation of the Scriptures as the only interpretation. I believe with all my heart that God’s Word is infallible. It is indeed absolute truth. However, when it begins to be filtered through the fingers of fallible mankind it can be misconstrued, misused, and even abused. This is why we must never turn our brains off when we listen to or read man’s opinions and interpretations of God’s Word. We must never stop learning the Word, never stop reasoning the Word, and never stop applying the Sword of the Spirit to the word of any person, especially any who proclaim the Word of God.

Yes, Esther was born for such a time as this… but so was Vashti, and beloved of God, so were you. 

and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation

Acts 17:26