I would like to confess something from a very secret part of me. (According to James 5:16, we are to confess our sins to one another, are we not, though I don't know for sure if this is exactly what you would properly call a "sin.") Part of me hopes that at least some of you, when you hear my confession, will say inside yourselves, I'm glad someone else has finally been able to admit what I've been struggling with myself. Another part of me fears that I will be left all alone in my confession with an awkward and painful silence. But such is always the risk with confession. Nevertheless, here goes . . .

    Most times (but not every time) in the midst of the "worship" section of the church service, I am thinking to myself, When is this going to be over? I look around at people who are obviously "entering into worship" but find myself still standing alone and forsaken outside a door which seems locked and bolted from within. The feelings that so many others seem to easily enter into I find almost impossible to experience in the context of modern worship songs and services. For a long time, I responded by discounting the experiences of others as somehow less than real. But I am coming to realize that it's not their problem, but mine. The rest of the congregation appears to be able to speak another language, a language that I fear I have lost or worse yet, never knew. I have come to believe there is more that Jesus wants to teach me in this area, and for once, I am more than eager to learn. Having been one of His followers for more than forty years now, I find that my impatience to enter through that door and my ignorance of how to go about it have become unbearable. So I have begun to ask in earnest the question that many of you are asking too: What is true worship?

    Harold Best's book, Unceasing Worship, has provided more and better answers than I have found anywhere else. He teaches that I was created a "continuous out-pourer" and that there is therefore no such thing as a "call to worship." Even as I am called to pray unceasingly (1 Thessalonians 5:17), so, too, I was created to worship without ceasing. (Perhaps, in the end, prayer and worship are essentially the same thing, a reaching out and responding to God.) Though I have no final answer, my understanding of the subject of worship is growing. I have replaced the popular question, What is worship? with what I believe to be the more biblical question, What is God worth?

    But here's the rub: even as you do not learn to pray by reading books about prayer, neither do you become a worshiper by simply learning facts about the subject. My guess is that there are "experts" on the subject of worship who nevertheless do not or cannot find it in themselves to truly worship God, at least according to the popular notion. They find themselves frustratingly standing outside that same door with me, locked out of an experience which they deeply desire. And so, even with this new understanding, new categories, and new terminology, I still find myself unable to speak what seems to be a forgotten language on Sunday mornings. So what could be missing?

    Not long ago, while seeking to better understand this struggle with worship, I was working through an amazing book on the Psalms, Walter Brueggemann's Psalms, the Life of Faith. There I learned that, amongst the various categories, by far the most prevalent type of psalm was the lament, which comprises almost one-third of the entire collection. The worship book of the Bible, more often than not, begins worship with a complaint to God, sometimes even with a complaint about God. As the lament finds voice, there comes a point in every psalm (except one, Psalm 88) when lament turns to praise. It is as if, having unburdened the soul to God, the psalmist is ready to enter through the door of lament into the presence of God, which is the true answer to every lament. The psalmist seems able to speak a language that most contemporary worshipers cannot seem to allow themselves to speak. We American Christians always believe that if something has gone wrong, it must be our fault. The psalmist is willing to admit that it might, in fact, be God's fault! You see, we are fully able to go to God with our "praise reports" and worship "experiences" but have forgotten that the Scriptures encourage us to come with our complaints and laments as well, as an act of worship. Lament provides a language for the soul which allows it to navigate through disappointment with God to a place of worship before God.

    At the heart of the issue, the question is, then, not a technical one about worship but a heart-level question about God and who we believe Him to be. Is He merely
a theological entity frozen on a throne, strictly defined by the categories we have formulated about Him? Or is He someone who could actually be moved by our laments, by our own loud cries and tears? When we seek to enter into worship, what are we supposed to do with the groanings and complaints (both legitimate and not) that block and bar the way?

    Do we simply "stuff" them?

    Do we paint a smile on our faces and pretend it's all right?

    Do we stand silent before that locked door, only to someday walk away in defeat?

    The psalmist says we are to do none of these. We must come to God in lament if we are ever to arrive at a place of true, biblical worship; it is a language we need to rediscover. All around us, the creation laments, says Paul in Romans 8:22. All around us, the fallen world is lamenting as well. Just listen to the hopeless strains of secular music. The motion pictures so many of us berate contain laments more biblical than many sermons. Bruce Almighty might be one of the finest commentaries on lament I have ever seen. When Jim Carrey's character shakes his fist at heaven and shouts to God, "The only one not doing their job around here is You!" we must understand that this is not the voice of secular humanism. It is the voice of the lament psalms.

    Most significantly, all over the world, the persecuted church is lamenting. Amidst their many tribal tongues, they have not forgotten the language of lament. They, too, know a dimension of worship we can scarcely imagine. Is it any wonder that American missionaries discover they learn far more from these lamenting brothers and sisters than they have come to teach?

    And so, back to me and my original confession . . . Could it be that the key to that locked door is lament? Could it be that I (and perhaps you) struggle with worship because we are bearing a burden we were never created to shoulder, but were designed to offer up as an act of worship? Should we not go to the psalms and learn to speak this lost language of lament, which is, after all, our native tongue as fallen men and women? If we agree that the Psalms are our truest guide to worship, then the answers to all these questions are clear.

    The door is not, in fact, a locked door after all. It may even have been open all the while you and I were standing outside, trying to measure up to an American model of worship which at best is incomplete and at worst, non-biblical.

    The call, then, is to learn to worship from the Bible and join a cast of lamenting worshipers. To stand alongside our first parents, who grieved the loss of their son Abel as well as the loss of their entire world and ours. To stand with Moses, whose table-pounding complaint to God in Numbers 11 would make even the psalmist blush. To stand with Jeremiah, the lamenting prophet, or with Ezekiel or any of the others who sought to speak for God in a deaf world. To stand with Paul, who agonized over the struggle between his carnality and his spirit (Romans 7:19-24) and who groaned over the fact that the "thorn in his flesh" would never be removed. (2 Corinthians 12:7-8) Or even to stand with our brothers and sisters throughout the world whose voices are raised up in lament continually to the Father—in China, in Sudan, in Pakistan, and a thousand other places. To join in even with the creation which laments and groans all around us at the lamentable fallen-ness we share in common with stars and starfish.

    Most of all, we might come to stand and walk with the One who was most used by His Father at the moment He was lamenting. It was with the words of Psalm 22, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" that Jesus cried out, after all. (Matthew 27:46) And if the real question of worship is, What is God worth? He answered that question once and for all at Calvary. The lament that came from His bleeding lips—His final word from the cross—became the inarticulate shout of victory. That earth-quaking shout could have come only after the pity-full, God-forsaken lament. It was then that the door you and I foolishly, faithlessly thought was locked swung wide open.

—Michael Card

This article is a product of the author's ongoing study of biblical lament. For more information, visit his website, www.michaelcard.com.