I had a long season of grief a few years ago… there was a death but there was also a ‘living’ grief – and it was the living grief that brought me the most pain. I wept and wept for many nights – long into the nights and often felt guilty – or like a failure for crying through the night AGAIN.
You see I’d think to myself “I wasn’t going to do this anymore… I was going to ‘think on the good deeds of the Lord and remember all His goodness to me'” – and I failed that AGAIN.
BUT…
God brought me to a place where I truly and fully understood that all those nights were in fact WORSHIP. They were grief TURNED TOWARDS the face of my Father who not only heard but shared my sorrow. I was in fact lamenting – and over a third of the Psalms are laments. They’re not “woe is me” kinds of laments – they are “HOW LONG OH LORD?! HOW LONG?!” kinds of laments – exactly what my heart was – and what I suspect your heart is – expressing.
We want to worship on the mountaintops but sometimes it IS in the valleys. But in either place – it’s still worship.
To see the sermon that liberated me from this false guilt – watch Michael Card’s sermon on Youtube here.