Pouring Out Your Heart in Lament to God (Final Part)

Prayers of Complaining

Prayers of lament may look like prayers of complaining, but they can still be prayers of faith. This type of prayer declines to let God go even in difficult situations. God may seem to be absent, but He will still be with us.

Prayers of lament are honest before God and bring us face to face with Him as we do our best to understand what is going on in our heart.

Let us consider Job. He prayed deep prayers of lament when he lost everything — his family, friends, home, and health — yet he did not give up. He wrestled through prayer of lament with God and clung to Him as he sought for meaning to his struggles. He held onto his faith in God and turned to Him with all his heart. He wanted to see God in the midst of his pain – John 16:33.

Job did not let God go. He said:
“I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see Him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!” – Job 19:25–27

In the end, God gave him back so much more. Job was able to see God in a far deeper way than before his trial. Not letting go and bringing our heart to God in the midst of pain is an act of faith.

Michael Card, a well-known musician, tells us how we can learn faith from Job’s prayer of lament:

“Finally, we see in Job one of the most fundamental lessons we can learn from lament: that protesting and even accusing God through the prayers of lament is, nevertheless, an act of faith.
The lament of faith does not deny the existence of God. Rather, it appeals to God on the basis of His loving kindness, in spite of current conditions that suggest otherwise.
Job simply would not let go of God — in spite of death, disease, isolation, and ultimately, a fear that God had abandoned him.”
— Michael Card

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