|| Psalm 143:1 ~ Hear my prayer, O Lord, give ear to my supplications: in thy faithfulness answer me, and in thy righteousness. ||
We have all been in that place. The one where you feel like you can't even get through a single prayer without a breakdown. Your emotions weigh so heavy on the forefront of your mind, that it's difficult to even pray. All you can think about is your pain. Your mind is filled with anxiety even when you know you should just trust God. Sometimes you even wonder,
Should I be trying to pray right now? Is this disrespectful to be bringing my raw, unfiltered emotions before the Lord like this? Doesn't He deserve only my best, not my questions & sorrow & frustration?
*** "Unfiltered emotions": emotions such as sorrow, pain, frustration, disappointment, confusion, etc. that we often try to hide when we pray, assuming it is disrespectful to show God anything but positive emotions; one can remain respectful of God while at the same time not hiding their emotions
Somehow, we have come to believe that our "best" is filtering out all the negative and only presenting God with a facade of contentment and happiness. We forget that He can already see right through us, to the very core of our heart & emotions. We think that all God wants us to come to Him when we're living our best lives, full of joy and peace. When really, He wants us to come to Him.
That's it. Just come to Him.
Still think you shouldn't be presenting God with your unfiltered emotions?
The Bible actually provides a tremendous example of this very thing:
In the Psalms, we see several verses, and whole chapters, where David is crying out to the Lord, begging that God would not hide His face. Begging that He would hear David’s cries and answer his pleas. We can easily draw the conclusion that these pleas came from a place of deep sorrow, regret, & confusion.
We hear so often that we are to trust in God and not question His Will. While this is definitely true, and we should trust that His ways are best even when we don't understand His reasoning... we should also not be discouraged from offering the Lord what is on our heart. We should not be discouraged from crying out to the Lord. We are His children. He already knows our heartaches & frustrations - He sees our heart!
He knows the heartaches in your past, the ones you haven't yet overcome, and the ones that lie ahead.
Crying out to the Lord is not always to be mistaken for distrust or disrespect. Letting God know what is on our heart is one way we can exemplify humility to Him.
These verses in Psalms caused me to realize that we are not wrong for having times when all we can do is cry out to God and beg Him to hear our prayers. Obviously we are to treat God with respect, not demanding that He do this and that. He is our Friend, but He is also our Almighty God. Our prayers should not be taken lightly.
|| We can beg Him to answer us, but we must also understand that God’s Will will ultimately take place in a surrendered life - despite what we may want the answer to be. ||
But when your heart is hurting, and it’s all you can do to get on your knees, bury your head in your hands, and sob, asking God to please hear your prayers…that is not wrong in the very slightest.
David was ever so respectful of God in his psalms. He even tells Him in so many words, “Lord, you said to seek your face, so that’s what I’m doing! Please hear me!”
>>> This itself proves that there are going to be times when even good, grounded Christians struggle to hear God, feel God, and know that He is listening.
Sometimes we doubt, sometimes we need reassurance, and sometimes we’ve grown cold and are no longer sensitive to God’s voice when He does speak. The fault of growing lukewarm lies solely upon us.
However, Christians are certainly not exempt from times of hardship. While this is not welcome, it is normal. We are fooling ourselves if we think this walk is only made up of only mountaintops & blessed assurance. Granted, if we are staying in the Word and praying like we ought to, we should not be at constant war with the peace God has promised us. But even the best of Christians, the ones who walk with God daily, still experience the lowest of times.
***As long as we are careful not to find identity in our pain, but rather surrender it into God's hands.
So what can we do?
We must do our part in maintaining the friendship and relationship (our walk) with God while simultaneously understanding that there may come times when we are frustrated and feel like we can’t hear God.
How do we do this? Reading His Word that He has provided for us, as well as taking advantage of the ability we have to pray at any time are two of the BEST ways to maintain our friendship & relationship with Him.
There are still times when we don't know if God is really listening to our cries. We feel as though our prayers are hitting the ceiling, doomed to never reach any further.
Our pain can overshadow our faith. This is never a place in which we desire to be.
But when we do find ourselves in this place, we are not wrong for crying out to God as David did, begging Him to hear our prayers.
(Even though God hears His children whether or not we feel it.)
One song writer put it so well:
Pray when it looks like the Heavens are brass
Pray when petitions seem too much to ask
When hope is all gone and your back's to the wall
Get down on your knees, and your mountains will fall
(Miracles Happen Whenever We Pray - Beyond the Ashes)
Personally, I have found that crying out to the Lord,
releasing every human emotion that burdens your heart to Him, is such a humbling experience. It is a symbol of our surrender to Him.
As we unburden our hearts, our trust in the Lord begins to grow.
My personal experience:
There have been countless times that I have knelt by my bed and sobbed uncontrollably-not in pity for myself, but in surrendering my pain to the Lord. I simply could not hold onto it any longer. These moments became my outlet, my release after the day had become too heavy for me to carry. I found that the more that I cried out to Him, the more often I craved to do so.
It can almost be a sort of worship to Him, a heart's surrender of the flesh and desire to feel His presence. It is in those quiet, humbling moments that it is almost as if I can feel the hand of Jesus on my shoulder.
Oh, how amazing and precious it is when a child of God prays through a dense fog of human emotions to a God who is Sovereign and ready to meet their needs.
Please, do not misunderstand me, it takes praying through the barrier of my emotions that desire to blind me from God's healing touch, and it takes God quieting my mind and helping me to focus completely on Him, to reach these precious moments.
When emotions weigh that heavily on your heart & mind, it is hardly ever an easy process from start to finish. It is one of loud silence, frustration, tears, thick fog, questions, pain, and then... a release.
Remember, there is beauty in the tears of frustration, pain, and surrender as much as there is in the moments when you break through to God's presence.
What was David's reasoning for crying out in the Psalms?
Too often, our pain is self-inflicted. We plead with God to ease our pain and comfort our souls, when it is our own disobedience that has caused it all. This is not to suggest that God does not wish to comfort a repentant soul, because He does and He will. However, sometimes we wallow in anguish and self-pity because of the mistakes we chose to make.
I think we're all aware of David's sin with Bathsheba. For a good portion of the Psalms, we see David crying out to the Lord for forgiveness of this sin. A lot of his sorrow was rooted in his thirst for forgiveness.
In one sense, some of us may be able to relate to this feeling. The guilt and heaviness that weighs on our chest when we know we have sinned.
We know that unrepented sin causes a void between us and God, and sometimes after committing a sin we feel like the air has been sucked out of the room - a lonely chill seeming to hang in the air as we feel God's presence leave our side. It is an empty, torturing feeling.
Imagine David's experience, in the day before grace, when he did not have that reassurance of instantaneous forgivness when he repented, of Jesus's remission for sins on the cross. David's heavy heart and sorrowing after repentance seems moreso justified after examining it from this angle.
However, we do live in the day of grace! We live in such a day that the moment we truly repent and turn away from sin, we are forgiven! The devil would like to keep us in a place of shame and guilt, but we don't have to stay there. That is exactly why Jesus died on the cross for our sins. We no longer have to complete a ritual sacrifice in order to receive forgiveness. It is immediately granted to every truly repentant heart.
This does not mean that we will never feel shame or sorrow for our sins, but that we do not have to feel that way forever. Even if you don't "feel" forgiven, have faith. You will not always feel forgiven. There may very well be scars from your sin - memories and consequences you may have to live with.
But once forgiven, God chooses to forget even the things that we are not yet capable of forgetting.
>>> We can therefore view David's cries through this context. He had a deep longing for God's forgiveness - that God would not turn away from David but instead hear his cries.
We can learn from David's sorrow and shame that our sin causes grief and heaviness. Sin does not fulfill, it only leaves us feeling emptier than ever before. If unrepented sin is what is causing our grief, the best thing we can do is repent, turn away from our sins, and trust in God's forgiveness.
We can learn from David's repentant spirit that a truly repentant heart is one that both feels the sorrow and shame but also has an equally strong desire to turn away from sin.
We can learn from David's longing for forgiveness and remember that we now have the gift of forgiveness waiting for us when we repent.
And we can learn from David's cries unto the Lord that it is good to invite God into even the deepest, most painful parts of our life. It reflects our humility as well as our trust in Him.
A Biblical Example of Jesus's Response to Sorrow:
I want to share a familiar but touching passage in John during the time when Lazarus died & was raised up.
John 11:31 The Jews then which were with her in the house, and comforted her, when they saw Mary, that she rose up hastily and went out, followed her, saying, She goeth unto the grave to weep there.
32 Then when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.
33 When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled.
34 And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto him, Lord, come and see.
35 Jesus wept.
We see here a picture of a grieving sister, at the grave of her brother, tortured by the pain of a death that she thought would never come. Surely we can imagine some of the thoughts that may have been racing through her mind...
Why didn't Jesus come? If He is a Healer, why did He choose not to heal my brother? Was this on purpose? Why didn't He leave on time? This is so unfair!
Obviously pride had not consumed her, as she is seen falling down at Jesus's feet when He finally arrived. In my opinion, this is both a picture of humility and great sorrow. She does not stand afar off and call out to Jesus from a distance. She does not make sarcastic comments about his "late" arrival. Instead, she runs to Him and casts herself at His feet. She weeps.
How does Jesus respond when He witnesses her tears? He groans in His spirit, and then He does the one thing we would not expect an all-knowing Savior to do.
He cries with her.
This has always been one of the most touching pieces of Biblical history to me.
Here we see a heart wrecked by confusion and pain, and Jesus's response is to understand the pain. To go along side His child and comfort her with His own weeping.
He could have responded very differently. After all, He is God. He had reasons of which she wasn't aware. He could have easily set her straight.
He could have watched her solemnly and simply explained His reasoning behind letting Lazarus die. He could have scolded her for not trusting that He knew best.
Often times we hold back from crying out to Him because we assume this would be His response.
However, the Bible clearly gives us a different picture.
You may say, wasn't Jesus crying because of Lazarus's death? Well, Jesus did feel human emotions and therefore would have been affected by the death of His close friend. However, I believe the Bible purposefully acknowledges first that Mary wept, and then that Jesus wept. It could have said simply that Lazarus's friends & family wept with Jesus. But instead it intentionally depicts how Mary ran and cried to Jesus, and how He then wept along side her.
Even if His weeping was instead meant to imply that He was simply grieving over Lazarus, we still see a side of Jesus that understands our pain. He came to this earth in the form of a human, feeling real emotions, real grief. He can understand our pain, even now.
The Lord does not stand idly by while His children suffer. We have a high priest that is touched with the feelings of our infirmities! (Hebrews 4:15)
He sees every sparrow that falls to the ground. (Matthew 10:29) How much more does He see what His children go through?
But does God even hear me when I cry out to Him?
1 John 5:14 ~ And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us:
>>> Here is one Biblical example of proof that God really does listen to us. He HEARS us! How wonderful is that? That the One who created the earth, poured water into the vast oceans, put the universe into order, performs miracles, and died on the cross to save the very ones who put the nails in His hands, hears our prayers! And not just that, but He wants to!
This is the CONFIDENCE. We may not always feel it, but that does not make it untrue. As Christians we can have confidence, a faith that God hears us even when we don't feel a thing.
Who does God hear? John 9:31 tells us that "God heareth not sinners", but that He DOES hear those who worship Him and do His will. This simply means that the only prayer He hears of a sinner's is the repentant one. However, He does hear every prayer prayed by any person that is living a clean, sanctified life according to God's will, with all of their sins under the blood of Jesus.
What the Bible Says:
Psalm 77:1 ~ I cried unto God with my voice, even unto God with my voice; and he gave ear unto me.
Psalm 120:1 ~ In my distress I cried unto the Lord, and he heard me.
Jeremiah 29:12 ~ Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you.
13 And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.
Psalm 66:17 ~ I cried unto him with my mouth, and he was extolled with my tongue.
18 If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me:
19 But verily God hath heard me, he hath attended to the voice of my prayer.
20 Blessed be God, which hath not turned away my prayer, nor his mercy from me.
Another Faithful Servant who Cried Out to the Lord: Job
Though it's good not to get caught up in the comparison of trials, I think most of us would agree that Job faced more hardship in one single span of time than most of us have faced in a lifetime. Or at least ours seems to be a little more spread out! Still, we can relate to his struggles. Still, we find comfort in his testimony.
The whole world seemed to be rooting for Job to curse God and die: His wife, his friends and closest confidants - the people he trusted the most and had probably both confided in and counted on in the past.
Oh, how many lessons we could learn from the story of Job! Despite having others around him turn their backs on him, he never turned his back on God. Just because we may seem to lose friends and loved ones, does not give us an excuse to walk away from God. It pays off to keep the faith and keep moving forward.
Job's response: In the midst of his stress and utter agony, Job turned to God. He spent his time in prayer, even if it was only begging for God to hear him. He spent his days in mourning and conversation with God.
May we also let our trials teach us what and who to turn to. Do not let your hard time push you towards the wrong group of friends or things that you’ve been delivered from. Do not let the trials God puts you through make you bitter and frustrated towards God.
Instead let them push you toward Christ. Learn to lean on Him, to let Him be your best friend and closest confidant. Sometimes that it why God allows us to go through hard times - just to see where we will turn.
Let us be counted faithful!
Let the Lord be your comfort just as Job did!
On the Flip-Side:
Proverbs 17:22 ~ A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drouth up bones.
I wanted to add one last thing:
We must be cautious to never get to the place where we feel comfortable in our brokenness - that crying out in sorrow to the Lord is the only form of communication with Him. As much as He wants to hear our cries, He also deserves our PRAISE.
There are time when all we can do is cry to Him. It's all we can do to even utter our prayer out loud. But if we get to the point of laziness and complacency where we don't even try to push through the pain and simply praise Him for what He has done, we have cheapened our relationship with God just as deeply as if we were to try and hide our pain from Him.
I would even say it would be selfish of us to only come to God with our pain, anger, and confusion, and never our gratitude or worship.
In this passage in Proverbs 17, we see one instance in which God gives us a reminder that it is not good for us to have a broken spirit all the time. A merry heart is to us like medicine! What a beautiful, and even convicting reminder that as Christians, it is not good for us to always be filled with sorrow.
Conclusion: Remember The Purpose of Our Sorrow
When we choose to find the joy in the midst of our sorrows, to cry out to Him with our frustrations, and to handle our difficult seasons in a Christlike manner, then we can glorify God with our pain.
When we keep our hearts in a posture that is focused on God and what He wants to teach us in this season, we allow Him to use our pain in ways we can't imagine.
Instead of opening our hearts up to bitterness and hatred, we must intentionally choose to forgive and allow God to work in us.
I'm not suggesting we plaster on a smile and pretend that everything is okay all the time when it's far from that. I'm not suggesting we come before God and pray a nice, beautiful, formal prayer, all while trying to hold back tears.
In fact, the intention of this article is to remind us that it is okay and even beneficial to our walk with the Lord to come before Him with reality, our raw & unfiltered emotions.
We can come to Him with nothing but tears, and still have a heart full of worship. We can come to him with our frustrations & disappointments, and still remain respectful. We can come to Him begging that He will hear our prayers, and still acknowledge that He is our Almighty God.
It's okay to come to the Lord completely broken & unable to even gather the pieces, much less put them back together.
It's okay to tell Him what is on your heart.
He already knows, but you will find how greatly it deepens & strengthens your relationship with God to intentionally release your burdens in prayer to Him.
It is a beautiful, humbling experience to learn how to cry out to the Lord.
by Allyson Million
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