God’s Lamentation Story (An Open Letter from David Hahn)

 (The following is an open letter my father, David Hahn, wrote with great physical and spiritual difficulty as he faced his final battle with brain cancer.  His desire was to share his love for God with his church when he could not but type with one trembling hand.  He wrote this letter to his congregation as an explanation of how God was drawing him into a greater intimacy and worship.  Please read and be blessed as I am blessed by his words.)

To my church family, 

First Let me thank you all for your faithful prayers and wonderful support for our family. Our Faith Alliance Church family has rallied behind us wonderfully -- we thank you with all our heart.

But I Just want to steal a few minutes to share a little of what the Lord may be trying to teach me. Forgive me for taking so long.  Getting the access and ability to write has taken a long time, but it has been God’s timing.

I was truly being blessed even while in hospital and in the rehab hospital after my initial brain biopsy surgery.  I'm was surrounded by a cloud of angels and many are in the wonderful support family who took care of me there. I am a blessed man and have nothing to complain about. The Lord has always provided and I have a wonderful family walking with Me.

Libby has always been an Amazing wife and she has always supported me through extremely difficult situations like this. She carries an enormous burden with patience and dignity.

But I really don't want to talk about me. I think you already know what is going on with my health. If not, feel free to ask us. But I wanted to talk more about what the Lord has been trying to teach me as I go through this experience. 

When Sam was here from France for a couple days right after surgery, we went through a Youtube video series from Michael Card called ​“Lamentation as Worship​.” It has challenged my entire understanding of Christian life and I want to try to share it a little as it relates to my current situation.

 Just let me try to sum up what I'm understanding about the idea of lamentation as worship. When God created the world, he created it so that He could have fellowship with us, but as we all know that was broken by sin. His lamentation story has always reflected His desire to restore His intimate fellowship with his creation. That is His lamentation. But it’s not just for the creation. He passionately wants to restore his fellowship with us personally. All scripture is the story of God's attempt to restore his fellowship with us and let us experience His love as He intended it to be.

When you look at Job, you see a man that walked closely with God, yet God allowed him to be grievously oppressed. The story of Job is not about patience. It is about Job's walk with God and His trust in God to continue to love him. And Job continued to worship God. When he was laying on a bed of ash in pain and extreme grief. He was more in misery than we can imagine, but he did not curse God. He didn’t rebel against God. He still trusted God as he sought to understand. Meanwhile he was being blamed for the sin that they assumed must have been the cause of his pain. Or they wanted him to curse God and die. He trusted God every minute and in the end his fellowship with God was restored. Job experienced a journey from pain and despair to an intimate fellowship with his Father-God.

God's goal for us when Jesus went through history and then went to the cross was to restore intimate fellowship with us.  He went asking if His pain and grief could be taken from him.  But he trusted His Father completely.  It was His closeness with God that made Him finish what He had to do. 

And there are many other narratives in Scripture associating lamentation and wilderness experiences to the restoration of closeness to God. The whole story of God’s grand plan to restore His beloved Israel goes from Genesis through Revelation to let us know how deeply He loves His people.

So, what does this mean to me?  I believe that my own journey has brought me a better understanding of His overwhelming love for me and how trust in Him answers my every discomfort or stress. My earthly journey is getting closer to its final destination, but Let me never forget that my loving Father is right there with me.

Our trials and pain and stress are permitted and sometimes sent by our Father, regardless of whether it is our health or a family member’s distress that we are facing.  Or maybe it is financial or marital stress, or our kids (if you are young, it may be a parent or a friend).

What is God teaching you?

We want to call out to Him to be our on-call healer and handyman to remove our pain.  And yet, He does ask us to bring our issues to Him because He knows what we are going through and wants us to turn to him. He will bring us through sometimes letting us see miraculous healing.  Calling out to Him when we are in pain is expected, because it changes our focus to Him instead of on our pain. 

Our temporary troubles should be reminders that we need our Father close by so we can fellowship with Him (2 Corinthians 4:16-18). Fellowship is about sensing His presence and affection for us.  We are His wandering bride and he wants us back to hug and comfort and love us, not just fix our problems.

So how do you get restored fellowship with God.  The answer is simple. Trust Him. When you first met Jesus and gave your heart to Him what did you really do?   You simply trusted him to fill the void in your heart.

Trusting Him through difficulty is no different.  He knows your pain and He is waiting for you to trust Him to fill your heart while you go through it. It’s hard not to focus on pain, but the answer is in trusting Him to be there with you every minute.  Enjoy the Peace of God while you are in pain. He is right there with you walking with you.

And don’t forget that if you let the Holy Spirit work in you, you will have​ peace and joy and patience, as well as kindness, goodness, faithfulness, joy​ ​gentleness, and self-control. That is a promise that is not conditional. Anger, impatience and fear bocks your ability to see God’s hand at work, and may even prolong your anguish.  If you try to fix your issues without Him, you might be making them worse, and you will miss a chance to feel His presence and see Him work. 

But even more vital to our peace​ is the knowledge that sometime soon we will see Him face to face.  We will run to our Father for a long hug and feel overwhelming love as we worship Him.  We will then understand why He directed all of creation and history and gave His life to save us.  Our intimate fellowship will finally be restored and all our pain forgotten.

​

Romans 8:37-39 says, “Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

-David E. Hahn