Week 2: How do I pray when life sucks?

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Prayer of lament

Introduction

Praying pre-made prayers is a beautiful way to pray. It’s where we start our prayer journey, and it’s a place we revisit all through our lives. But at some point in our life of prayer, we desire to pray our own words to God — to share what’s on our mind, our heart. Our pain, our joy, our hopes and fears. We can’t help but desire to interact with God in a more authentic, personalized way.

We break down this next stage of prayer into three subcategories.

1)         Gratitude — talking with God about what is good in your life and world.

2)         Lament — talking with God about what is evil in your life and world and how you feel about this.

3)         Petition and Intercession — asking God to fulfil his promises to overcome evil with good.

Today we looking further into the prayer of lament. Understanding how to pray in hard times is very important because every believer faces challenging times in their faith journey. Praying a lament is about the honest expression of our sorrows to God. Tragically, lament has been lost from the vocabulary of many followers of Jesus today. Lament has long been the practice of the people of God when they’re at the end of themselves.

Many of the psalms in the bible are laments. Lament psalms teach us that it’s never wrong to cry out to God. God hears us in our pain and welcomes us close.

Engaging with the bible

• Pray and ask God to speak to us by his spirit through relieving himself in our bible reading today.   

• Read Psalm 6 out loud twice to the group. Ask a different person to read it each time.

• Close the bible and ask one member of the group to retell the passage in their own words to the group.

• Re-open the bible and give people time to think about the following questions:

Q1. Lightbulb - What stood out to you in the passage? 

Q2. A question mark? – Anything that is difficult to understand in the text or a question the reader would like to ask the writer of the passage or God?

Q3. Learning – what did I learn from this passage about myself, God or others?

Watch: In this week's video tutorial you will learn to pray your lament. Praying your lament is deeply personal. These prayers allow you to freely express your feelings and experiences with God by taking time to connect with them. Remember, honesty is where the real power is with lament, so try not to filter your emotions and words.

After watching the video reflect on the following questions:

Q4 - Where did I feel resistance or what was difficult or confronting?

Q5 - Where did I feel delight or What was easy and gave me peace or joy?

Q6 - Where did I most experience God’s nearness? Where did I feel His presence and love?

Finish by praying for each other to continue to trust in God in the ups and downs of our faith journey.