I had a friend whose prayers made me uncomfortable. Listening to them praying often made me feel like I had walked in on an argument between two close friends. They’d say things like, “I’m pretty mad at you right now, Lord,” and, “I get so frustrated wondering what on earth you’re doing!” The emotions were raw and unfiltered. There was anger, impatience, sadness and pain. And when there was joy and gratefulness, you knew it was coming from the heart. Their prayers made mine feel very polite and superficial, in comparison. They made me question the depth of my prayers and the freedom I felt in my relationship with God. While this kind of prayer has a time and a place, if we never learn to talk to God honestly about the depths of what we think and feel, then we’ve probably never really learned to pray. There are several reasons that God seems to prefer honest prayers to polite ones.

1. Honest prayers show the security of our relationship with God.

Many of the psalms are known as laments. They give us words to express deep pain and disappointment. For instance, the psalmist prays, “Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever” (Psalm 44:23). At first, it feels rude and unrestrained. How can you talk to God like that? But these are words of intimacy. This is the way that family members speak with one another in times of sorrow and discouragement. You can only speak like this in a relationship where you feel secure and safe. It’s hard to imagine prayers like this in any other religion.

2. Honest prayers help us deal with deep pain and disappointment.

The honesty of laments gives us a healthy alternative to deal with pain in our lives. If we don’t bring our complaints to God in humble prayer, we turn in one of a number of dangerous directions. One option is to bury the pain and pretend that it’s not there. But buried pain only becomes more bitter with time. If we don’t bury the pain, we’re likely to complain to others and slander God in the process. Or we grumble, sulk or withdraw from God, refusing to trust that He will meet us or answer us in our pain. There’s a world of difference between a prayer that says, “Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble” (Psalm 10:1) and a complaint to a neighbour that says, “God’s never there for me when I need him!” The prayer believes in God’s faithfulness and trusts Him to make clear what feels inconsistent. The complaint doesn’t trust God with an answer at all and instead condemns Him as unreliable.

3. Honest prayers lead to hope and resolution.

The great encouragement of the honest prayers of Scripture, is that over time they lead to hope. Almost without fail, the psalms of lament which start with complaint end with expressions of hope and confidence. The psalm that Jesus quoted on the cross, for instance, in that excruciating time of shame and agony, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” (Psalm 22:1), ends with these great words, “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you. For kingship belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations” (Psalm 22:27-28). Not only do individual laments move from complaint to hope, but the book of psalms as a whole shows this shift as well. In the first third of the book, more of the psalms express honest disappointment. But in the final third of the book, psalms of praise and thanksgiving dominate. And when you get to the final five psalms, they’re all praise and worship. The message seems to be that even the deepest agony when expressed humbly and sincerely before God is transformed by God’s peace. Seeing our troubles in light of who God is and what He’s done gives us strength and perspective and grace to meet them.

How honest are your prayers? When you’re hurting, do you tell God that you’re hurting? Does He get the real you or a sanitized but more superficial version of who you are? Bring all of your emotions to God in prayer, but as you do remind yourself of who He is and what He’s done. And listen as much as you speak. Let Him speak to you through His Word and invite Him to meet you in your pain.

In awe of Him,

Paul