Embracing Lament: The power in asking God for exactly what we need

Anyone who’s asked for a raise, or a date, or help from a neighbor knows that asking isn’t always easy. Asking comes with risk because the other person has the power. If they say no, you’ll likely feel disappointed, or hurt, or angry, or all three.

It’s easier just to endure your frustration about an inadequate paycheck, a lonely Saturday night, or a project you can’t complete by yourself.

It’s the same with God. Rather than ask him for something, we may find it easier just to endure our difficult situation. Lament can help, we’ve learned. We’ll feel better after talking with God about our troubles.  

But we dare not stop with telling him our complaints. As past entries in this series have emphasized, the ultimate aim of our laments is trust. We keep talking to God about our sadness because we are still counting on him to help us through it.

Wallowing in our woes doesn’t honor God and won’t help us for long. Instead, we must move from itemizing our complaints to telling God what we want him to do.

When we tell God exactly what we want from him, we acknowledge that he has the power. Mark Vroegop calls this “confidently calling upon God to act in accordance with his character. This step, he says, “is how lament moves from the why question of complaint to the who question of request.”

In chapter 3 of his book, he lists nine different kinds of requests to God contained in the Psalms. One of these includes verses from today’s reading.

Take time with Psalm 35, and you’ll discover an exhausted David making many specific requests of God. Some of these were for victory over his enemies. Tim Keller explains in The Songs of Jesus, “David’s call for God to punish is not personal vindictiveness but a concern for justice to prevail in his kingdom.” Always, David’s goal is for God to be glorified (see vv. 18, 27 for example) by granting his requests.

Sometimes it’s good simply to sit and ask, “Well, what do I want? What would I like God to do?” God will sympathize and strengthen us as we bring him our complaints, but we do well not to stop there. Next, let’s have a heart-to-heart with him about how we want him to act in a way that will show his character to those nearby who are watching us suffer.

Read: Psalm 35
Listen: Psalm 35 (Awake, O Lord) (featuring. Jon DeGroot), The Psalms Project
Pray: “Lord . . . I know that ultimately there is no unanswered prayer, that you hear the desires of my heart and respond to my needs in ways beyond my wisdom. So I wait for you in prayer.”*

*Prayer adapted from the March 9 reading in The Songs of Jesus, by Timothy and Kathy Keller.