Praying with Hard Emotions

A few months ago, I hosted some informal surveys asking people about prayer — what intrigues them about prayer, what is challenging about prayer, and what would help them to grow in prayer. (If you were a part of those surveys, thank you! If you want to have a conversation about prayer, I am always here for it 😀)

One of the most frequent questions I heard people ask was this: how do I pray when it’s hard? In other words, how do I bring negative emotions, like anger, fear, anxiety, and doubt, to God?

In my own prayer life, I can resonate. I often find it easier to overflow in prayer with gratitude and worship when things are going well. On the other hand, when I am struggling with anger, fear, sadness, or anxiety — it can be harder to go to God. There are many reasons for this. For instance, sometimes my anger, fear, sadness, or anxiety can feel so overwhelming it’s hard to feel anything other than those emotions, let alone the presence of God.

Other times when I am feeling these emotions, it can be hard to bring them to God because I am feeling shame, as if the presence of these emotions reveals that I’m not trusting God like I feel like I should.

Or, it can be hard to bring them to God because there’s a subtle accusation in my heart towards the Lord, where I am blaming God for allowing the presence of these negative emotions in my life or the circumstances that have led to them.

I want to propose that a wholehearted prayer life will entail just that: our whole hearts, negative emotions included!

Growth in prayer can look like learning how to honestly engage with God in the middle of whatever emotions we may feel.

If we think about it, one of the heartbreaks of the story of the Garden of Eden is that when Adam and Eve experienced shame, they hid instead of bringing that shame into the light of God’s loving presence.

We repeat the cycle of Genesis 3 whenever we hide our negative emotions — shame, fear, anger, etc — behind the fig leaves of business and avoidance.

Learning how to bring our negative emotions to God in healthy and honest ways is part of our lifelong process of undoing the rebellion of Genesis 3 — we are learning how to walk with God in the cool of the day again, in the middle of the highs and lows of our lives.

More than that, following Jesus will necessarily lead to crosses in our lives (which I wrote about last week), and crosses are by definition not filled with joy — they are, by definition, very hard. Sometimes, excruciatingly hard. There is joy to come for sure, but even Jesus weeps at the grave of Lazarus, and sweats drops of blood before his own cross.

It’s simply not biblical to imagine that following Jesus will lead us to a pain-free life, in fact, God might even lead us to circumstances that cause negative emotions.

Any time we face a cross — the death of a dream, relationship, situation, or season — there will necessarily be grief, anger, fear, and a whole range of emotions that can be hard to feel. To deny this is to deny our humanity, and to deny our Lord’s example of facing his own cross with rugged emotional honesty.

Is it possible that God leads us into situations where hard emotions are necessary, because He is jealously after our whole hearts?

Is it possible that Jesus leads us to crosses because He wants to tenderly care for us through the hard emotions of our lives, not despite them?

Is it possible that God allows negative emotions in our lives because he wants to help us relearn how to walk with him in the Garden, not through a magic wand but through the nitty-gritty circumstances of our real lives?

I want to suggest two necessary postures in prayer to bring hard emotions to God:

1. Do the hard work of bringing your whole self into the presence of God by naming your emotions with honesty.

God is not interested in us pretending in His presence. When we come to prayer, whether it’s for five minutes or an hour, God wants our whole, honest self, and not a religious veneer. If we are tempted to pretend with God, what we ultimately offer him is someone less than our whole self.

One of the best ways to bring our whole self into the presence of God is to name with honesty emotions that we are tempted to hide due to shame (Will God still love me if I feel this way? Or will he be disappointed?), fear (If I press into this hard emotion, will it overcome me? Will I be ok?), or guilt (If I had just worked harder, I could have made this emotion go away on my own).

In my own personal prayer life, I’ve found that before I can name a “big” emotion with honesty, I have to first name a smaller emotion that is sometimes trying to protect me from the weight of a bigger emotion. For example, I can often feel anxious about how sad I feel, or ashamed of how scared I feel. (For more insights into this dynamic and for helpful, therapeutic tools, I highly recommend Boundaries for Your Soul by Dr Allison Cook & Kimberly Miller.)

But, when I can name how I am feeling with honesty, even the big things I’d rather hide, I discover something incredible — God loves me anyways! And, he doesn’t love me despite my negative emotions, he loves me enough to draw near right in the middle of them.

Remember the words of David:

God isn’t concerned with the sacrifice of our time as much as he’s concerned with the state of our hearts! And, when we bring our hearts honestly — broken and contrite — we find that God doesn’t despise us, he loves us.

2. Do the hard work of bringing those emotions into conversation with God, and be okay with waiting patiently in between Friday and Sunday.

Pete Scazzero often talks about the “confusing in-between” of deaths and new beginnings. Often, this is where negative emotions live — in between the death of Friday and the resurrection of Sunday.

The hardest part about fear, anger, and sadness, is that God usually doesn’t take them away from us, instead he sits with us in them, waiting patiently with us in the grave for resurrection.

The danger in talking about praying through hard emotions is that either due to the way that our family of origin handled hard emotions or the preference for pain avoidance in Western culture and certain circles of the church, we might imagine I would write something like “If you can name your negative emotion to God, He’ll take it away!”

But, I’m not going to write that. I don’t think God is interested in delivering us from our own emotions, I think God is far more interested in discipling us through them.

He’s far more interested in the behind-the-scenes work — the Saturday work — than he is with rushing to the Resurrection.

(Caveat: Unless your negative emotion is actually spiritual warfare, in which case I think God is very interested in delivering you from it — that’s just not what this post is about 😀. If you would prefer an email around discerning between negative emotions and spiritual warfare, just hit “reply” and perhaps I’ll be influenced about next week’s topic!)

Part of the call to pray without ceasing (1 Thess 5:17) is the call to take everything in our life — negative emotions included — and bring them into conversation with the Living God. And the response of God is to take everything in our lives — negative emotions included — and use them as the soil in which he is growing Christlikeness in us, all in the context of ongoing, daily dialogue.

To put it simply: name your negative emotion to God, and then talk to Him about it, and then don’t stop talking! This is how you pray with hard emotions!

Or, in the words of Peter:

I’d love to invite us to pray today:

• Begin by taking some deep breaths in and out. Perhaps as you breathe in pray “Come,” and as you breathe out pray “Holy Spirit.”

• Once you feel settled, begin to identify: Is there a negative emotion you’re feeling today? Is there another emotion, such as shame, fear, or guilt, trying to protect you from an even bigger negative emotion?

• Then, simply invite God into your negative emotion. Talk to him about it. Then keep talking — and be okay if God chooses to sit with you in the middle of the negative emotion instead of taking it away.

I love hearing from those of you who are coming alive and living more in love with Jesus. Always feel free to hit “reply” and let me know if there is any way that I can support you in prayer.