PRAYING WHEN IT HURTS

“He sent from above, He took me; He drew me out of many waters.” — Psalm 18:16

Praying when it hurts changes something inside you.

It forces you to pause and stare at your reflection.

There’s nowhere to hide, nowhere to look, just you, God, and the chaos inside you.
Like a volcano, it all seems to be erupting, seeping into every crevice of your life, influencing every thought, every dream, and every action.

You mindlessly scrolled, you overworked yourself, but every distraction was just a coping mechanism, a silent remedy. So you found yourself back at the feet of Jesus, hanging on to the hem of His garment. You hoped He would numb the pain, but He actually asked you to confront the spirit behind it. Addressing the root of your troubles is never easy.

When you bow your head and pray, there’s nothing to conceal.
The canon comes loose, and your emotions no longer have a place to hide.
At least that’s how it’s supposed to be. Yet, still, even in this sacred moment, you try to suppress them.

In an attempt to seem holy and put together, you downplay your pain.
His word says to come boldly to His throne, but you’re afraid to open up, to be truthful even in your broken state. A broken and contrite heart He does not despise (Psalm 51:7).

You worry that the burdens you carry aren’t heavy enough to move His heart or that they’re too heavy to be unravelled in His presence.

Even our unarticulated prayers are enough to trigger His hand. In the midst of this confusion, He responds to the sincere meditations of your heart. He looks past the frailty of our humanity, and in this moment, mercy speaks louder than shame. What a kind God.

He’s teaching you to pray when it hurts, to push through every uncomfortable feeling so you can exalt Him above your emotions. When His name is exalted, you’ll fall in alignment with His perfect will. He’s allowing you to experience discomfort, not to punish you, but so He can strengthen you at your point of weakness.

You have to choose to let Him in. You’ve compartmentalized the parts of your identity that you don’t want Him to touch, but like wounds that need to be undressed, He’s ready to operate on them. The Bible says we should cast our cares unto Him. But how do we cast our cares? We pray.

1 Peter 5:7

“casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.”

Psalm 55:22

“Cast your burden on the Lord,

And He shall sustain you;

He shall never permit the righteous to be moved.”

When we’re suffering internally but still choose to pray, we’re giving Him the consent to do what He does best: healing us, reviving us, disciplining us, building us, loving us, sustaining us, empowering us, and the best part is He gets the glory through it all.

Jesus didn’t suppress His pain in the Garden of Gethsemane. He expressed real human emotions through a moment of anguish.

• “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” (Matthew 26:38).

He was sincere in His pain, yet He still understood His assignment.

• “Again, a second time, He went away and prayed, saying, ‘O My Father, if this cup cannot pass away from Me unless I drink it, Your will be done.’” (Matthew 26:4)

In the same way, we can express the grief in our hearts and still choose to walk in obedience to the Lord, understanding that if we endure these heavy moments, we will bear much fruit.

Intimacy and oneness require honesty. God loves honest hearts!

When you don’t invite Him into your pain, you’re facing it on your own and usually lying about how much it’s affecting you. Handling it all on our own is what most of us are used to, yet not equipped for. Many of the issues we deal with would be solved if we received the right counsel. This counsel could either come from God, wise brothers and sisters in Christ (who hear him), a friend, or a therapist. Nonetheless, carrying the weight on your own could be detrimental. Even Jesus didn’t carry His cross alone.

Luke 23:26

“Now as they led Him away, they laid hold of a certain man, Simon a Cyrenian, who was coming from the country, and on him they laid the cross that he might bear it after Jesus.”

Because we don’t have the tools to handle these feelings in isolation, we end up bitter, apathetic, angry, frustrated, guilty, ashamed, numb, depressed, or in some cases, envious. These emotions build a home in our hearts, buried under our perfectly curated masks. Letting God into your inner struggles through prayer will actually allow you to protect your heart from being overwhelmed by these deceptive feelings or thoughts.

He’s the light that extinguishes all darkness, and that includes the darkness that creeps into our minds.

At times like this, what you need to do is apply the word of God through prayer. If you choose to suppress your pain and pray shallow prayers that don’t reflect your reality, you’re forfeiting your growth and preventing healing.

I want to address the elephant in the room. Sometimes the pain you’re experiencing might be due to an unanswered prayer. Honestly, it’s hard to stay consistent in prayer when life is going as planned, but it’s even harder to pray when your life is complex or unpredictable. During seasons like this, it can be difficult to navigate your relationship with God.

How do you approach Him when you’re angry or confused? And what if it seems like He’s the reason you feel that way? The sickness that won’t seem to leave, the job that looks like it’s never going to come, the constant warfare your family faces. You know it’s not His fault, but you wish He would stop it. Sometimes we can’t see past the whirlwind of our emotions, and it’s easier to blame Him. But in those moments, how can we still pray?

The truth is, we can be honest with Him. He can handle the worst of us because He created us. The creation is not too much for the Creator to handle. In moments like this, we have to have faith in his word, to have faith that he is who he says he is.

That he’s Jireh, your provider even when the bills are unpaid, Jehovah Raphha, your healer, when you're still attending your doctors' appointments, and Jesus, your saviour when you feel like you have no way out.

Your situation does not change his nature. It’s a battle between faith and fear, and you have to choose to stand on his word. Wait for the promise to be fulfilled. Believe that your life will not be a contradiction to his word.

Even when it feels unbearable to talk and we can’t come to terms with the truth, our tears can speak for us. Like Hannah, we can say a prayer in our hearts.

The parting of our lips as we cry out, our prostrate frames, and our surrendered arms can all be evidence of our choice to still submit to Him. When we can’t utter words, His Spirit can give us the power to speak with wordless groans.

1 Samuel 1:10

“And she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed to the Lord and wept in anguish.”

And then…

At the entrance of His light, every lie that the enemy has used to keep us captive is revealed. His light addresses our distorted thinking, our pain, our trauma, and every toxic pattern or ungodly root.

Now our eyes are on Jesus, and the enemy can find no foothold, because we are children of God who pray even when it hurts.

Prompting

• If you're going through a difficult season, take a few minutes right now to talk to God and release every burden to him, not in performance but in honesty. If not, pray for a brother or sister who needs it.