The Lord Cries Out to Us in Our Distress | Lauren Chandler

Lauren Chandler is a worship leader and author of Steadfast Love.

**TRANSCRIPT**
About 10 years ago when I was in the midst of toddlers and infants and taking advantage of any nap time I could find, I started this little blog. And then we had this community that was built around this blogging thing. And I got to know some women that had their own blogs and were pouring out their hearts and little anecdotes online.

And one of those friends texted me early one morning and said, "Hey! I want you to look at Psalm 107." So I opened up my Bible and I started reading it. And I was immediately drawn to it.

It's like a really good worship song. It has these beautiful verses. It has this rhythm. This refrain of “Let them thank the Lord for His steadfast love". It was this epic worship song. And so I was immediately drawn to simply it's form. 

And then I started looking at the content. I started looking at God's steadfast love and these four different scenarios. People wandering the desert. People in chains. Those suffering from their own folly. And then those caught in a storm. 

There really wasn't one distress or one season I couldn't find myself in. I had known the desert. I had known chains. I had known what it meant to suffer from my own foolishness. And I knew what the storm was. But I didn't realize how quickly the storm would come for me. 

Maybe 24 hours later, I was sitting down at my dining room table, opened up my laptop to start blogging. My son was upstairs. I had taken him to the doctor that morning. He had had a fever. He was just not acting like himself. And I laid him down for a nap. I had sat at the table. And all of a sudden I hear this weird sound coming from his room. And so I went upstairs to investigate. And when I opened his door I knew everything was not okay. He was in the midst of a seizure. 

Thankfully and providentially, Matt, my husband, was there. Normally I'm the one that's like, if it's an emergency, I'm cool-headed. I know what's going on. But I'm so grateful Matt was there and I think because I knew he was there, I just fell apart. 

I didn't know what to do. And I immediately thought of this Psalm that the Lord had just given to me. Maybe this is my storm. That something terrible happens to my infant son.

So we pull him out. We call an ambulance. We do what we think is right with a child that’s having a seizure. And they decide, "Hey we're gonna take him to the hospital. We're gonna get him checked out." He had finally, by this time, calmed down. So I'm laying in the gurney, with him on top of me in the ambulance and they take him to the hospital. 

And I have no idea what's gonna happen. What's gonna happen to my son? Will he be the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, little boy that I knew or would he just be a shadow of that?

Praise the Lord, it ended up that he had just suffered a febrile seizure. His temperature had spiked suddenly from being sick and the medicine wearing off and that threw him into a seizure. And he never had a seizure again.

But I didn't know that at the time. I didn't know what that would ... what would happen. I didn't know how it would turn out. But I did remember Psalm 107.

And the day before when I had read Psalm 107 and I wrote a little something on my blog, the Lord had given me a picture of this heart being wrung out, almost like a damp towel. And just something flowing from it, like worship. 

In each of the scenarios of Psalm 107, there are people crying out to the Lord in their distress. It was as if the Lord was showing me, "Listen, there are going to be times where worship is easy and it flows beautifully and all is right with the world. And then there are going to be times that the worship is literally wrung out of your heart. All that you can get out of your mouth is, 'Lord I need You. I need Your deliverance. I need Your rescue.'"
**END TRANSCRIPT**