Prayer of Lament

[Introduction]

What if many of the struggles we have in our life, what if our lack of passion for Christ, our lack of energy for evangelism, our difficulties in marriage, stress from work, fear of the unknown… What if they are all simply symptomatic of something serious that is lacking in our life?

What I propose is that flourishing in life comes by knowing God better

Instead of being pulled by the things and fears of this world, we would be intoxicated by the love of God that comes from knowing Him.

Knowing Him, we call - theology.

Theology - what you think and say about God.

The problem is when we keep theology in the realm of intellect. Knowing God, forbids this. It implies, in the Greek, an experiential and intimate knowledge.

Thus what we think and speak about God (theology) influences how and what we speak to to God (prayer & intimacy).

Theology and prayer cannot be separated.

Psalm 27:1 “1 The Lord is my light and my salvation— whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life— of whom shall I be afraid?”

Psalm 27:7–8 “7 Hear my voice when I call, Lord; be merciful to me and answer me. 8 My heart says of you, “Seek his face!” Your face, Lord, I will seek.”

A person’s prayers reveal what he/she believes about God and how God relates to our world.

So we can see what the apostles and even Jesus thought about God in His relation to the world in what and how they prayed.

Further, the reality that these prayers are written/recorded add an even greater emphasis to our understanding of God and how we should pray.

We can now accomplish through careful study and reflection of these prayers recorded in Scripture - both “what to think and say about God” and “what to say to God”

Through this series, we will look at:

What to pray for

What arguments to use

What priorities we should adopt

What beliefs shape our prayers

Featured Scripture

Psalm 13 “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall. But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me.”

This Psalm is an example of a prominent way of praying throughout Scripture, it is called a prayer of lament.

Prayer of Lament

A lament is a passionate expression of grief, typically expressed as a song, piece of music, or poem as prayer.

Lament encompasses our emotions: loneliness, anger, guilt, hopelessness, pain, and depression, as well as our responses to sickness, injustice, and loss.

It is the appropriate biblical, and spiritual response to suffering, pain, and crisis. Rather than suppressing difficult emotions, Scripture teaches us that we honestly acknowledge the pain which is an essential component of faith.

Lament is a prayer in pain that leads to trust.

It transforms pain into a platform of worship (We see it with Paul and Silas in the prison)

It acts as an appeal to God’s compassion, seeking His intervention in desperate situations.

It is a prayer of confidence in God - that He is faithfully listening to the cries of His own in need.

It reflects upon the human condition, but primarily reflects upon the character of God.

The Psalms reveal that Israel’s worship maintained this crucial balance—roughly 60 percent praise and 40 percent lament

This demonstrates the necessity of both joyful celebration and acknowledgment of pain and suffering.

While songs of praise honor God for good things accomplished, lament expresses the need for His intervention amid pain and trouble.

The implication for us is that the harsh reality of suffering is described rather than denied, and emotions are transformed into speech unto God. This process enables us to continue through what we face with God and ending with confidence, hope, and greater trust.

Sadly many believe that lament was discontinued with the shift from the Old to the New.

It has this incorrect stigma that it shows a lack of faith.

It’s Deeply Human

We have a rich tradition from the Hebrew faith and culture.

The Torah commanded that the people hold festivals, great feasts, fasts, and mourning, which allowed for the full human expression of emotion and passion, (not in isolation) but before their God.

It is as if the robust Hebraic expression of being “human” was itself a preparation for when God himself would become fully human in the incarnation.

The biblical characters are human beings like ourselves, who expressed themselves in poetry and narrative, as we do. All their emotions were communicated with the flow of their lives, as they danced, sang, laughed, shouted, complained, cried, became angry, confessed, lamented, and mourned.

For Jesus, we see Him feeding and aligning Himself with the emotional laments in the Psalms, He himself was experiencing the pain of humanity and recited the Psalms (unifying Himself with the human element and the divine Scriptures). As He hung naked in cruel suffering on the cross, it was with the psalm on his lips that he died (Psalm 22).

Hebrews 5:7 “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.”

We can say that in light of Jesus’ lament, that for us, to have a genuine human existence as God intended us to enjoy is to exercise lament before him.

We don’t give God the silent treatment

The prevalence of lament in the book of Psalms is an indicator that it ought to figure prominently in the experience of God’s people. That pain and suffering and injustice is to be brought before God fully.

Some do not feel that they can lay bare their true emotions to God, including their anger. They feel that such honesty reflects a deficient faith.

This timidity (as if He doesn’t know) is really from fear that God might reject them if they are too weak in a time of trial.

But notice how small children do not hesitate to make their complaints known to their parents. Only when they have been abused do they try to hold in their pain because they feel that their parents do not care. The cry of despair to God when overcome by evil and pain is a sign of great intimacy with God and a robust faith.

“How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death...”

Anguish and bewilderment are not a sign of deficient faith

It is not something to be outgrown or ignored but is rather intrinsic to the very nature of faith.

The concept of suffering and pain is not simply an intellectual one with simplistic answers. For example, Job’s friends looked at Job’s suffering as an academic problem that needed to be solved with a formula rather than

True wisdom recognizes the complexity of life and avoids foolish platitudes.

But rather at the heart of faith and worship of the Almighty God is a sense of mystery and surrendInter

This is why our rich church tradition over the years incorporated them into corporate worship.

For many in history, wrestling with suffering before God was considered spiritually mature rather than spiritually deficient.

The prayer of lament, acknowledges that we are baffled, yet we still trust Him and rest in Jesus that He will make all things right in the end.

Lament is Transition

Between sin and mercy

Between pain and hope

Between injustice and justice

Between suffering and joy

Lament serves as the “between”

Lamentations 3:19–21 “19 I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. 20 I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. 21 Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:”

Notice the deliberate choice the one suffering has made. It is in this choice that hope arises. Yet it is seen that it is not simply the choice but the content of that choice of what is brought to mind.

Lamentations 3:22–23 “22 Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. 23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

To lament, to grieve, to weep, to be in anguish itself is a gift of grace - it is to be alive.

And at that the character of God is remembered as revealed in Exodus 34:6

And from that - the character of God builds a confidence in His eventual response and vindication.

Grace in the end.

As we lament along with the psalmists Psalms 10, 13, 22, 77, or 86 are good starting points

As we take these for ourselves, we not only speak to God, we talk to ourselves.

We must ask ourselves, “Why are you down?” and pour out your heart to God and yourself.

But your must then exhort yourself, shout to yourself, “Hope in God”

We remind ourselves as the Psalmists do, that God has set us apart, we are his possession, He chose us, purchased us, redeemed us, regenerated us, adopted us. He guards us for salvation and holds us with His strong arm. He carries us with His mighty hand, even when we feel like we are barely making it. We remember that He is our Father and His mercy endures forever!

As we do this, our lament with the Psalmists, we discover that our confusion, fear, sorrow, gradually gives way to confidence and hope.

To lament before God is to see His grace, and our trust in His good purposes, and see our final destiny - transformed to the image of his Son.