Prayer (1): Pouring out our hearts to God

Synopsis: The answer is always God, and because it is life eternal to know him, it is essential that we know Him, and trust Him for who He really is.

The context: Out of the depths…

When my wife and I began to study emotions in Scripture, it was due to an extremely hard question that we had. It came from those darker moments in life when one feels at one’s lowest, from what Scripture calls a broken heart (Ps 69:20; Ps 109:16).

The question came from looking at the psalmists and reading about their spiritual lows and spiritual highs and wondering, how did they climb out of the depths of despair to be “set up on high” (Psalm 69:29)? How did they get from anger and frustration to trust and triumph? How did their feelings of shame and internal agony become transformed into confession and confidence? How did they get from tears of despair to shouts of joy and rejoicing?

In those dark moments, these individuals of “like passions” managed to escape being bound by those cords of death that we call depression (Ps 18:4) and were able to return to the light, to escape the drowning depths of sadness and fear, and take confidence in the steadfast love of God.

As we searched the Psalms, looking for an answer to this question, one thing became clear. There was one thing that these individuals all did. Those that escaped their depression were the same ones that were able to pour out their hearts openly and frankly to their Heavenly Father in prayer.

Through this series, I’d like to develop a confidence that prayer to God is not reserved for when we have overcome the trial. It is for those moments when we are overcome by the trial. When we are at our lowest, when we are where we feel we should not be; that is a time that our prayers will be heard.

Overcoming our fears about prayer

To give an example of what we’re talking about, let’s begin in Psalm 32. We may recognise Psalm 32 as the prayer of David after his sins of adultery with Bathsheba and murder of her husband Uriah. What this Psalm shows us that the 2 Samuel 11 account doesn’t address is that David was driven into a deep depression because of those sins long before Nathan spoke with him. Psalm 32 shows us what was going on in David’s heart. He says in verses 3 and 4 of Psalm 32:

3  When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. 4  For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Selah.

That word “roaring” in verse 3 describes extraordinarily strong, deep, and painful feelings. In nature, it is used of lion’s roaring, but three times this word is used of people in great agony:

• Job uses this in Job 3:24 where he describes his emotional and physical agony (where he says that he wished he was never born).
• In the Messianic Psalm 22:1, which describes the agony of Christ during His crucifixion, and
• In Psalm 32, in David’s internal conflict over the awareness of his sins.

Continuing in Psalm 32, we see that David is not just telling us that he felt so horrible about his mistakes or that he was in such deep pain and anger that he wanted to scream, although he surely did, but rather that he wants us to know that he felt that way because he didn’t speak to God. Let’s look at that again in its context:

3  When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. 4  For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Selah. 5  I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Selah. 6  For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him.

David tells us that when he didn’t speak to God the result was that he ached and screamed all day and night. Then, when he stopped hiding from God and started speaking to Him, being honest about what he was going through and confessing his sins, God forgave him. Because of that, he exhorts us to pray to God when we need help. Doing so will save us from drowning in our depression.

Perhaps we might respond, “But, I’m not godly”. From David’s experience, we know that to be “godly” cannot mean to be perfect, or sinless. It simply captures the fact that the word of God is at work in our hearts—the only way our conscience can recognise that we have gone astray.

He knows our frame

It may feel uncomfortable opening up to God, confessing that we are not where we should be spiritually. We feel shame, and often want to be in the right place before we confess to our Heavenly Father. What we find throughout the Psalms is that the right time to pray is at the very moment that we recognise our sins—not when we have overcome them. For that, we need to realise that we can come to God in that state.

We need only to turn to the origin of our family tree—to Adam and Eve—to see that hiding from God what He already knows, or worse, trying to rely on our own works, our own covering, to save us will always leave us feeling unfulfilled. The only way is to confess and trust.

It’s almost funny how closely we follow in the footsteps of Adam and Eve in situations of sin. They, like us, in moments of shame need to adjust who we know God to be. We don’t want to confess where we are spiritually, forgetting that He knows our thoughts (Psalm 139), and more importantly, “he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14).

I remember this fear as a child, having done something wrong. My father patiently implored me to share “what was wrong”, and I remember asking, “Will you be angry at me?” I was afraid—probably because I had let him down. I knew I had done something wrong—something that, in my mind as a child, was potentially unforgivable. Now, as a father, having heard the same words from one of my own children, and desperately wanting them to trust me—to open up to me so that I could help them and support them through their shame and fear and show them that there was a way forward—I can understand more clearly the words of David that, “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him” (Psalm 103:13). Psalm 103 is written to convey to us that message we struggle with so much—that God is a father that you can trust with your confessions.

As David realised, it is when the Word is at work in our hearts and we feel shame and need that prayer is so essential. It is at that time that God asks us to, “pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord” (Lamentations 2:19), because the opposite of that is bottling it up, and bottling up leads to greater anxiety, fear, shame, and every other emotion that we associate with depression.

What greater comfort could there be for us than to see that in those very contexts of one’s mistakes and shame, Scripture describes Yahweh as a father? He is a God that showed His love to us while we were yet sinners as Romans 5:8 says. His purpose is not to destroy life, but to give it (Luke 9:56). As a father He chastens and directs us, guiding us, refining us as we are shaped into jewels for His crown (Malachi 3:17).

Now is the perfect time to pray

God encourages us to know Him as a father who wants to help His children and give them good things (Matthew 7:11). He shows us in the Psalms that we can approach Him in reverent openness about how we are feeling—especially when we don’t know how to feel differently. He knows our frame; He understands that we’re dust. In fact, He tells us to come before Him with openness, pouring out our hearts like water “in time of need” because that’s when we most need His grace and help. That’s the truth that Hebrews 4 comforts us with.

12  For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. 13  Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.

The word reveals our hearts: it shows us what we are feeling, what we are thinking. It lays it all open and bare. Often that hurts. Our conscience pricks our hearts and we can be afraid to open up to God. The reality is that God knows, He knows before we do what is in our hearts (Psalm 139:1,2). Why should we pretend that He doesn’t know and hide it from our conversations with Him?

14  Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. 15  For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.

Christ battled the same nature we do, and He overcame, because, in those times of great agony and distress, he offered up prayers with strong crying and tears and was heard, in that He feared (Hebrews 5:7). On that basis, we are encouraged to similarly approach God in our time of need.

16  Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.

That word boldness means, an openness, a frankness, that is, without concealment, without ambiguity or circumlocution. It is a confidence that we will be heard so that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

When the trials of life abound, and if our emotions do overwhelm us and we feel ashamed about our mistakes, we can and should approach our Heavenly Father’s throne of grace with reverence and Godly fear, pouring out our complaints before Him that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.