Prayer

Learning to Lament

Learning to Lament

The word “lament” means “to express deep sorrow, grief, or regret about someone or something that is lost, gone, or unfortunate.” But it’s not a word we use a lot, is it?

We so often shy away from speaking about sorrow, grief, and regret. Nor do we honestly express these emotions, even to ourselves. Yet, the Bible doesn’t ignore the complicated emotions that accompany life in a fallen world. Prophet Jeremiah wrote an entire book on his lamentations!

Lament in the Bible

Scholars say 40% of the psalms are pure laments and about 70% include some form of lament. They express desperation, distress, questions, cries for help, and sometimes just plain confusion. I used to skim through such passages, but I’m slowly learning to appreciate their inherent beauty.

The poetry in these psalms is sad and melancholy, and frankly, quite depressing to read. But it poignantly captures the raw emotions of real human beings. The Bible doesn’t gloss over the pain and suffering that God’s people have endured over the ages.

“Why, Lord?” asks the psalmist in Psalm 10:1.

“How long, Lord?” wonders David in Psalm 13:1.

Their plaintive cries may go unanswered, yet most lament psalms end on a positive note. Although the circumstances may not have changed, somewhere in the process, there was a change in perspective. That’s evident in how the psalmists often end their tales of woe with confidence that God had heard their prayers and He’d give them the strength to endure.

Job is another person in the Bible who had many questions and complaints that were never really answered. But when God finally revealed Himself (Job 38:1), Job repented for speaking about things he didn’t fully understand (Job 42:3). Job hadn’t received “double for his trouble” yet, but God’s word was sufficient to silence his doubts and bolster his faith.

Questions and Trust

It’s natural to question God when experiencing anxiety, depression, disillusionment, intense grief, loss, chronic pain, or long-term sickness. Lament lets us voice our grief and direct our angst to the Lord who is sovereign over all and who loves us like no other.

Sometimes, God miraculously changes our situation and makes us feel better. But sometimes, He does not.

Sometimes, God patiently answers our questions, comforts us with His Word, and leads us to trained counsellors who can help.

But sometimes, the pain lingers, the darkness remains.

Do we still trust God’s sovereignty then?

Does our sadness sap our faith? Or does it make us more reliant on God’s strength to get us through another day?

Our emotions are often a barometer of our mental health. Yet, when something feels off, we don’t always try to process it with God. We want the easy, albeit temporary, fix – a funny reel, uplifting music, fresh air, retail therapy, or someone to vent it all out to.

But perhaps we need to stop numbing the sadness and learn to bring it to Christ.

Processing Pain With Christ

The best place to cry is in God’s presence. It’s really quite cathartic. When we pour out all our grief at His feet, we make room for His grace to envelop us.

We can find comfort in Jesus Christ, who also experienced intense grief and anguish. We know that He sees our pain. He hears our cries. He understands our complex emotions.

People may not always understand the extent of our grief. They may comfort us for a while, and then expect us to snap out of it. But God is patient with us. He is a safe refuge. He heals the brokenhearted (Psalm 34:18) and strengthens the weary soul (Isaiah 40:29).

If you’re going through a season of sadness, ask yourself what’s really pulling you down. Take time to lament as the psalmists did. Bring your questions to the Lord. Cast your cares on Him. Let Him help you make sense of it all.

And then… like the psalmists, turn your thoughts towards what you already know about the Lord.

Remember who your God is. Recall what He’s already done for you.

His character hasn’t changed. He is still kind and faithful to keep His promises. His grace is sufficient. It will always be enough to get us through another day.

Because we have Christ, we have hope.

Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.
– Psalm 30:5

Photo by Valentin Efimov on Unsplash

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What Hinders Prayer?

Prayer is the language

One of the areas I am working on this year is prayer. Last year, I shared what a blessing praying for others is and specific steps to get started. I’m making it a habit to take some time off every day to just pray. However, making a commitment to pray is way easier than actually doing it. Over the past few months, I’ve come across three specific hindrances to prayer in my own life.

1. Lack of Time

This is without doubt the #1 reason we can’t spend time in prayer. Our days seem so full that there is simply no time left in the day to pray. Sure there may be several whispered prayers during the day, a family prayer or a simple prayer when we wake up or go to bed. If that is you, I encourage you to set apart a solid chunk of time in your day just to pray.

I’ve found that waking up before my family gives me a solid hour to read the Bible and pray. However, if you’re in a season of life where waking up early is not an option, look at your day and see where you can set apart just 5 – 10 minutes to pray. I realize you may be on a very tight schedule, but you cannot afford to not take time to pray.

2. Bitterness

We’ve all experienced the pain of a hurting heart. Sometimes it’s easy to overlook an offense, but when it’s someone we trust, the bitterness remains for a while and erodes us. While thinking about the offense might help if we’re trying to learn something from the experience, it usually doesn’t do us any good to keep thinking about it.

I’ve been there, harboring bitter, unforgiving feelings that totally wrecked my prayer life. God soon taught me that I was to forgive and bless the person who hurt me. Was it easy? No. And the memory still hurts sometimes. But it is something I have prayed about and put behind me, so it doesn’t hinder me from praying.

3. A Distracted Mind

Anybody else have a problem where you sit down to pray but end up thinking about what you need to buy at the supermarket? Nope? Well, it’s just me then :). There are three things that usually distract us – a situation that causes us worry, things we need to get done & inspiration/ideas we need to remember.

My solution for worry is two-fold. I ask myself the question, “Can I do something about the situation?” If the answer is no, I pray about it. If the answer is yes, I ask God to help me do it! I’ve also found that if I plan my day before my prayer time, I am less likely to be thinking about my to-do list during prayer. And then there are those thoughts that cross my mind – usually something God has taught me or a blog post idea. For those, I have a journal beside me where I jot my thoughts down, so I can elaborate later.

I still haven’t got it all figured out. I struggle everyday when my flesh threatens to ruin my prayer time. But I believe, God appreciates the effort we take in spending time with Him. And on those occasions when we sit down to pray but are overwhelmed, “…the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.” (Romans 8:26)

What hinders your prayers? And how do you overcome those hindrances?

Photo Credit: Lel4nd

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Let The Children Come ~ Encourage Them To Pray

So far in this series, we’ve emphasized the importance of praying for our children and how to teach them about God. Today’s post is all about encouraging our children to pray on their own.

If we’ve established the habit of praying for our children, next in line is teaching them to do the same. For my husband and I, it started with praying together with the kids. For a while, they were silent spectators; but they soon realized that prayer meant just talking to Jesus, Whom they were well aware of. As parents, all we have to do is be vigilant and look for opportunities to encourage our kids to pray. Here’s what worked for us.

1. Before a meal

I have to give my husband all the credit for teaching our kids to pray before meals. As soon as they could speak, he would pray and ask the kids to repeat the words after him. Eventually, they started praying on their own. But when their meal-time prayers became repetitive, my husband would remind them why we’re thanking God for the food and encouraged them to use different words to convey their gratitude.

2. Before leaving the house

Another habit, again enforced by my husband was praying every time we left the house. Whether we were leaving the house for a social call, the park, church or school, we would pray together and ask for God’s grace and protection on our family. It’s no wonder that now, all the kids want to individually pray before we leave our home; and we have to cut them short if we’re running late.

3. Prayer for physical healing

Whenever a child had an ache or a bruise, my husband or I would hold the child in our arms and pray with him; asking Jesus to heal him. Eventually, the kids started asking us to pray for them every time they had some discomfort; which we gladly did. Over time, we started prompting the kids to ask Jesus for their own healing. Here’s a sample conversation.

Child: Mama, my stomach is paining. Pray and ask Jesus to heal me.
Mother: Baby, you can ask Him yourself? Just talk to Jesus, like you’re talking to me.
Child: Ok.. “Jesus, my stomach is paining.. please heal my stomach. Let the pain go. In Jesus’ Name, Amen!”

When the ache/bruise subsided, we would remind the kids to thank God for their healing; which they were only too glad to do.

4. Family prayer

There’s no better place to teach our kids how to pray than during our family prayers. Find a time that works for your family, when everyone can gather together. For our family, this is just before the kids’ bedtime. We read from the kids’ Bible, sing a few songs and end with prayer.

After several months of hearing us pray, our kids insisted on doing it on their own. They had learnt the semantics of prayer by hearing us pray every night. They usually start their prayers with “Jesus” or “Father” and end with “In Jesus’ Name, Amen”. But none of that matters as long as your child learns to express himself/herself to Jesus in a personal way.

5. Just talking to Jesus

The greatest joy we’ve experienced as parents is to hear our kids praying without any prompting from us. Yes, that might include them asking God for a pool. But it might also include a child gazing up at the sky and saying “Jesus, where are you?” or “Jesus, I want to see you”. And sometimes a more profound “Jesus is opening the clouds and looking at me!”.

Closing thoughts:

  • At times your child may simply not be interested in praying, and that’s ok.
  • If they need to be prompted, you could just ask them what they want to thank Jesus for.
  • There may be days when the kids insist on praying really long prayers; let them :).

Let’s remember to teach our kids to “Pray without ceasing.” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). As I mentioned in my introductory post, I am learning alongside you. How do you encourage your kids to pray? Would you care to share with us in the comments below?

Other posts in this series:

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Let The Children Come ~ Pray for Them

“I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him.” (I Samuel 1:27)

The easiest, and yet most important way we can lead our children to Jesus, is by simply praying for them. Ideally, we should start praying for them from the moment we realize God has given them life. A positive pregnancy test or seeing the child’s heart beating on the monitor for the first time is a reminder of the responsibility God is entrusting in our hands.

Initially my husband and I prayed for our kids’ lives, because we knew the risk of losing one or all of them. When we realized they were going to be premature, we prayed specifically that their organs would develop in time and that they’ll be the height and weight that God wanted them to be. We even prayed that they’ll be born on the day that God intended them to enter the world.

We prayed through the NICU days and quite a few major ailments, literally pleading with God for their lives. During trying times when their development was delayed, we prayed that they would progress at the pace that God wanted them to. But somewhere along the line, with all the exhaustion of mothering triplets; I stopped praying for their specific needs and started praying for more grace and strength to help me deal with them instead. Nothing wrong with that, except that I was not specifically praying for my children.

Over the past year, God has been moving in my heart, teaching me how to pray for my sons – for their physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual growth. I recently read Warrior Prayers and that book spoke to my heart. I learnt that while we can train our kids to behave well, it will mean nothing if God doesn’t work in their hearts. We can pray that God will change our kids’ behavior, but isn’t it their hearts that truly matter? Isn’t it our ultimate desire to raise children who will learn to love God and follow His plan in their lives?

Through Warrior Prayers, I learnt to pray God’s Word for my kids. In simple terms, it is to read a verse from the Bible and fashion it into a prayer for your children.

For example the verse:

“…I have found David son of Jesse a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.” (Acts 13:22b)

…becomes a prayer such as this:

“Lord, I pray that Jason, Jon and Judah will grow up to be men after Your own heart. May they choose to do everything You want them to do.”

I’ve made it a point to pray a verse over my sons at least once a day. And this is apart from praying for their other needs – good health, divine protection and (physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual) growth.

There are quite a few prayer calendars out there to help you pray for your children everyday. Here are the links to some of them:

  • The MOB Society {They publish a new prayer calendar every month. It’s tailored for sons but you could use the same for your daughters as well.}
  • Inspired To Action {Look for the link named “A Mother’s Prayer Calendar”, under the section “Downloadable Resources”.}
  • Time-Warp Wife {Free printable prayer cards}

If you are on Facebook, you may want to “Like” the following pages that post a prayer for our children everyday. You could simply pray along, when you see the prayers in your Facebook newsfeed.

You could use any of the resources I’ve linked to above, or you could simply adapt a verse from your daily Bible reading and pray it over your kids. If you aren’t in the habit of praying for your children, it’s not too late to start today. It doesn’t matter how old they are. Let’s make a commitment to pray for our kids everyday, that they will grow up to be men and women who will love Jesus and seek Him above all else.

Other posts in this series:

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The Blessing of Prayer

Lord, thank you for today. Bless this day for us.
Be with the kids, let them not fight or cry a lot today.
I pray that my husband’s work won’t cause him to stay late in office today.
Keep us all in good health. Use us for your glory. In Jesus’ name, Amen!

A year ago, that would have been my typical prayer on any given day. My prayers revolved around me, my husband, our kids, our problems and our plans. Sure, we would occasionally pray specifically for someone who requested our prayers – but I’m ashamed to say, it wasn’t a regular happening in our home.

In the beginning of June 2011 however, God reminded me to start praying for others on a regular basis. I made a list (of course!) – the first half of it contained specific prayer points pertaining to our own family. The latter half was a list of our extended family members and friends who had specific prayer needs.

I started replaying the list in my mind during my regular prayer time or when I walked to pick the kids up from school. Over the months, I found myself crossing several prayer requests off the list; marking them YAAP (Yet Another Answered Prayer) and adding new prayer requests in their stead.

It took me a while to realize that praying for others was more a blessing for me, than it was for the people I was actually praying for. Doesn’t the Bible say “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35)?

When I prayed for someone else, God taught me to empathize with them. He taught me to pray with love and compassion. And as the number of YAAPs increased on my list, so did my faith.

Sick grandparents were healed.
A mother grieving the loss of her son was comforted.
Pregnancies resulted in healthy babies.
Surgeries were successful.
A baby struggling to breathe was healed.

The baby I mentioned was from our church. This was his second stint in intensive care and his parents had been through a lot. The entire church was praying for him. God didn’t “need” my prayer to heal him. But He wanted me to pray so that I may be blessed, just by praying for that sweet child. And I was!

I don’t want to give you the impression that every item on my prayer list has been crossed off. Nope! There are some people/situations I am still praying for, over the past 9 months. I believe in God’s time, in His own way, according to His will – He will bring it to pass someday. Until then, I will pray.

I urge you to start praying for someone else’s needs today – you will be blessed. Here are some pointers…

  • Start with just one other person – ask them if you can pray for something in specific.
  • Make a prayer list with specific prayer requests.
  • Memorize the list or carry it with you, so you can pray over it anytime, anywhere.
  • For each item on the list, take a few moments to actually pray for specific details related to that prayer request.
  • Take your time and don’t rush through the list.
  • When the prayer is answered, cross it off; but keep the original list. Crossed off prayer requests are great faith boosters.
  • The next time someone asks you to pray for something in particular, make sure you add it to the list before it slips your mind.

Are you praying for someone else today? If you have a specific prayer request, I would like to pray for you. Feel free to leave your prayer request in the comments below, or e-mail me at sheensteve@gmail.com. It would be a blessing to pray for you. Enjoy your weekend, people!

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