Well, welcome again to a podcast of Struggling Well, and we're now into 2025. hard to believe. And it's a new year and this is the time that people make New Year's resolutions. I here's what I find to be very interesting. By the way, Tim Briggs is going to be joining me some this week. And I think that there's a lot of people that treat the new year, flipping from one year to the next, kind of like the start of a new season for a professional team. Like the slate gets wiped clean. Like the Yankees, Tim, we made it to the World Series last year. We lost to the Dodgers. But guess what? 2025 starts with a clean slate. There's no record of what happened in the past year. And that's true for you as a Detroit Tigers fan, too.
Yeah, things are looking up as a Tigers fan.
well, we'll see about that.
But we don't we turn into a new year. it's not that way. The slate doesn't get wiped clean. The things that were going on in 2024 most likely carry into 2025. And may maybe you're a person who makes New Year's resolutions. we stopped that a number of years ago. In fact, I went back and tried to trace it back. I think it was seven years ago that we stopped doing New Year's resolutions and formally said, let what can we have as a verse for the year? And as we were going through different things over the years, we had different verses in scripture that kind of became Suz's and my verse for the year. And, we've got another one for this year and it comes from the 116th Psalm. And it probably represents some of the realities that we've had for the last year, which has been a hard year in so many ways. And I don't know how it is for you, but when life gets hard, I sometimes can wonder, does God care? Does he listen at all? Does he hear my prayers? maybe that's my weakness as a believer, but that's something I feel. And so the 116th Psalm became a psalm towards the end of last year that really began to stir deeply within my heart and my soul. And I happen to like it in the NLT version because of these phrases. The psalmist says, "I love the Lord because he hears my voice." There's a great reminder that he does here in my prayer for mercy. But here's the verse. Because he bends down to listen, I will pray as long as I have breath. It's that visual picture that is in these words of God bending down to listen to my prayer. prayers. How kind the Lord is. The psalmist goes on to say, how good he is, so merciful this God of ours. Let my soul be at rest again, for the Lord has been good to me. It's just a great reminder. I think some of the things that have been so hard for Suzi and me over this past year, they're not going to go away as we go into 2025. But I want to continue with this posture that God has been good to me. And it really later on in the psalm he says I believed in you. He believes and I want that to be the posture of my heart. I believe in God and so as long as I have breath I will pray. Doesn't mean he's going to answer it the way I want him to answer it. Just simply means that is the posture I want to be in my life as I go through this year. As Suzi and I go through this year and we encounter whatever we encounter. Any thoughts, Tim?
Yeah. I love that language in the psalm
that he bends down to here.
Yeah.
That he's eager to be with us. I mean, sometimes we think of God as like he's this cooly, detached, you know, figure in the background, not really interested in our lives. But I love that language that he's
he wants relationship.
He's bending near toward us. He wants to be close to us.
Yeah. And it's and I know this is something that you and I have talked about many times. You practice it personally. You practice it in your church. later on in that psalm, he said I in my anxiety, I cried out to you. He cried out to the Lord. The idea of lament
it's part of it. I mean it's not praying with a sense that everything's going to work out good, but it's understanding the situation I'm in. And we don't know the author of the 116th Psalm. but whoever he is, he's in a tough place in his life, a difficult place in his life, and he's not afraid to cry out in the midst of his anxiety to the Lord. He's not afraid to lament. And we've said this many times on the podcast. I think lament is something that we don't do well.
Yeah.
We do celebration good, but we don't do lament well.
Yeah. Well, isn't that good news, too? I mean, that we don't have to clean ourselves up and put on a smiling face when we're talking to God. We can just
be who we are. I actually think we're pretty good at lament to ourselves. We like complaining.
but then when we talk to God, we think we got to tidy ourselves up and
put on that smiling face, but he's big enough to hear it and he's loving enough to care
Yeah.
about it and care for us. That's just such good news.
It is. What would you say is the difference? between you just use these two words, complaining and lamenting
if you had to sum that up. because I think you're right. I think I do a lot of complaining to myself.
Yeah.
About the way life goes. But I think that's different than lament.
Yeah. So I would think, you know, you're putting me on the spot here, but complaining would be
probably a little more self-centered.
more about, you know, this is inconvenient for me. Let me tell you all about it. lament is more of there's a brokenness in the world. this is not the way it's supposed to be. It's not just maybe inconvenient for me, but there might be just something cosmically wrong about this.
And I'm going to bring it to the Lord and he's going to make it right one way or another. It may not be this side of heaven, maybe the next, but he's going to make whatever is wrong, he's going to make it right.
Yeah. And I would say it this way to me complaining be is when I shift the desires of my heart which I have desires for things to be right
and that's where I think God is the one who can like you said make a difference whether it's now or whether it's in eternity. complaining is when those desires turn to demands
and I demand that God does a certain thing. and it's just not it's not right to demand of him. It's but I believe in him and I want to be desiring. Yes. And that's the meant when I realized it's not all that it's supposed to be.
Yeah.
So, well, I don't know how you're going to start 2025, whether you're going to do your New Year's resolutions. If you do, more power to you. or let me just suggest, find a verse in scripture, a verse that means something to you, to your family, to you and your spouse, or just if you're single, just to you, and claim that verse for the year. Mine and Sus's is going to be the 116th Psalm verses 1 and 2. I love the Lord because he hears my voice and my prayer for mercy because he bends down to listen. I'll pray as long as I have breath. And that's my desire for 2025 and beyond. Have a great week.