Prayer & Scripture in Suffering

This post is part of an ongoing series on ministering to people in pain. Click here to see all posts in this series.

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When you walk through a season of pain, it does not take long until you begin to receive spiritual advice. Scriptures (often taken out of context) will be sent your direction. The recommendation to “pray more” or “just have faith” is quickly on others’ lips. Sometimes these well-intentioned efforts do more harm than good.

We’ve already talked about what not to say to someone in pain, which includes spiritual platitudes. We’ve also discussed why a theodicy (the answer to "why?") doesn't actually solve our problems. The emphasis so far has been, admittedly, in my friend’s words: “Don’t be a Bible basher.” 

After weeks of discussing how to help people in pain, we’ve finally come full circle - back to the Bible, back to prayer. We come to the question of the role they can - and should - play when someone is in pain. How should we use Scripture as we minister to the suffering? How do we pray, when we find raw hearts, with no words, with only questions and heartache?

Thanks be to God—the Bible is not a book of platitudes and feel-good sayings. It is the word of God to us in all times and places, including our deepest suffering.

In the Bible we see a picture of a God who draws near to the brokenhearted and meets them in their place of weakness. We see a God who came to earth and took on our experience of human suffering. We see our suffering Savior, who understands our pain and can truly empathize with us. We see a God who sees, a God who hears, a God who responds to our cries of desperation. When we’re sharing Scripture with someone in pain (again, within the appropriate relationship and context), we can emphasize these truths that point to our God of compassion.

“When we can find no words to carry our suffering and confusion to God, it is encouraging to find that God himself has provided words for us.”
— Gay Hubbard, More Than an Aspirin

Thanks be to God—the Bible gives us words to pray when we have none. It offers us prayers we can adopt, prayers that model boldly bringing our pain and desperation to God. 

These prayers, of course, are found in the Psalms. We call them “lament Psalms.” We can use them as we pray for people in pain—and we can share them with suffering people as a God-given model for their own prayers. They follow a general pattern (I’m using Gay Hubbard’s language below):

  • Protest - This is what is wrong.

  • Petition - This is how I want You to fix it.

  • Praise - I trust You, even though I don’t see it yet. I remember Your faithfulness in the past, and it gives me hope for the future. I trust You will hear and respond.

When we read some of these Psalms, we're surprised. Then we paraphrase them into our own language, our own circumstance, and we're shocked. We are uncomfortable with how bold they are, with how directly they describe our distress, how boldly they appeal to God for help. We wonder if we can do that, if we're allowed to be so forward.

“We approach God as though He were an elderly, easily-shocked Victorian maiden aunt…we behave as though God were too nice for the raw, powerful, dangerous reality of our human experience.”
— Gay Hubbard, More Than an Aspirin

Miroslav Volf says these Psalms teach us that “rage belongs before God.” So do our questions, our fears, our doubts, and our sorrow. He is not afraid of them. They do not shake Him. The safest and healthiest place to bring them is before Him, directed at Him. This itself is an expression of faith—to bring our deepest, darkest emotions to the Lord.

What do we do with this?

1. When we share Scripture, we can point them to the suffering Savior and the God who draws near in compassion and comfort. We can find hope in His pattern of redeeming the worst and most hopeless of situations into something good. The emphasis is not on "here's this Bible verse, feel better!" but on "He knows, He hears, He came and suffered to remedy this brokenness." This requires sensitivity and discernment to know what to share.

2. We can pray (and encourage others to pray) the lament Psalms. 

  • Repeat the words of the Psalm in its translation.

  • Paraphrase the Psalm into your own language, related to your situation.

  • Write a lament Psalm of your own, using the pattern we see in Scripture (for an example of this see Psalms of Lament by Anne Weems).

Lament Psalm examples: Psalm 6, 10, 13, 17, 22, 25, 30, 31, 69, 73, 86, 88, 102

Sitting In The Waiting Room

I saw her when I walked into the waiting room. Her white hair formed a soft halo of tight curls around her smiling face. She sat comfortably, her legs outstretched, feet donned with thick-soled orthopedic shoes.

I was the designated driver for a friend who was getting her wisdom teeth removed. I’d run an errand, and now it was time to address the work I’d brought along. I sat down along the wall in a nondescript waiting room chair and pulled a folder from my bag. 

A middle-aged woman turned from the nurses’ window and took the seat beside her. They sat in silence for a minute. Then, the first woman’s body tilted onto one hip, bringing her head closer to her younger companion’s. “Do you know what we’re doing? ‘Cause I don’t.”

The middle-aged woman smiled kindly. Speaking a few decibels louder than normal, she slowly explained they were there so she could get her teeth cleaned, a basic routine dental check up. The older woman listened carefully, seriously, still leaning toward her companion.

Finally she sat back upright, shaking her head. “I don’t know what you’re saying.” 

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The Child, The Mimic

In the picture, I’m standing beside my mom in front of the kitchen sink. I’m probably two or three, standing in my bare feet on the smooth dark wood of a kitchen chair. A gray and white striped dish towel is tucked into the neck of my white T-shirt like a rudimentary apron, hanging down well past the elastic waistline of my bright yellow shorts. I’m grinning at the camera, a dripping, sodden dishcloth in my little hand. The containers within my reach are partially filled with water, ringed by clumps of soap suds. A flood of water spreads over the peach counter, dripping over the edge, slipping down the front of the wooden cabinets onto the floor.

I was helping my mom “wash dishes”—and the counter and floor as well, by the end of it. We didn’t have a dishwasher growing up, so everything had to be done by hand. Her hands would be submerged in the soapy dishwater, scrubbing plates, cups, forks, and pots. Of course, I wanted to help—and I mimicked her in my own sloppy, flood-inducing way.

I cut my doll’s hair, like she cut mine. I baked miniature cakes in my Easy Bake oven, like she did in the big one in the kitchen. My little eyes and ears absorbed my world, and my little hands and mouth mirrored it back. 

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The Words Test: Do They Bring Life or Death?

Have you ever been around someone with poisonous speech? You know, the ones who always have something critical to say or someone to make a snide remark about? I leave them and have to shake off the bitterness and anger.

Have you ever been around someone with life-giving speech? Their words speak life and peace. They find ways to encourage and comfort or to spread laughter and joy. I leave them with my heart buoyed up and my spirit refreshed. I smile when I remember their company. 

We all know the power of words. It’s not something I need to convince you of.

I am always struck by the high standard the Bible holds us to with our words. Perhaps being a “words person” makes me more attuned to these statements. I think so often of the power of words—both the kind that reverberate from my vocal chords to someone else’s ear drum and the kind that are put in the black and white permanence of a book (or in this case computer screen). So often, though perhaps not often enough, I reevaluate and reflect on what sort of spirit my words embody, what sort of fruit they bear. 

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Spiritual Temperaments

Back at the end of October, I started a weekly series on spiritual disciplines. After these many weeks, I am going to bring this series to an end for the time being and shift to a different theme for these weekly more practically-minded posts. If you missed any of the spiritual disciplines series, you can find all of the posts under Tools and Resources.

Have you ever felt guilty or discouraged because your spiritual life didn't fit the mold of what you perceived to be the "perfect Christian life"? Maybe you felt you could pray more freely while hiking in the woods than in an early-morning corner of your house. Maybe your heart is stirred and convicted when you hear a dramatic reading of Scripture but not when you sit down to study it with a commentary and concordance. Maybe you've desired more embodied worship, or more traditional worship, or more silence but found yourself in a church tradition that did not value these things. 

Many of us have a mental picture of what we perceive as “best” kind of Christian spirituality, what a relationship pursued with the Lord is supposed to look like. While we should be focusing on the fruit of such a life-the fruit of the Spirit, love of God and neighbor, humility, etc.-I find it easy to give way to a particular lifestyle expression. We can easily become self-assured when we measure up to this image, dissatisfied and disillusioned trying to live up to it, or guilty that we aren't pursing it. 

But what if a personal relationship with the Lord looks different from person to person? What if we each have a way we tend to be able to commune with Him better, worship Him more freely, and so forth? 

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