Can we be sad and still worship God? What about angry? Confused?
Based on many worship gatherings I’ve been to, it seems like some people think the answer is no. When even the slower-tempo songs are about how happy we are to be worshiping God, when worship gatherings are touted as times to leave behind the rest of your life and be swept away by joy, when you look around you and see the rest of the congregation jumping up and down, it can sometimes feel like happiness is what makes worship true worship.
While it’s certainly true that worship can be a time for us to express our joy in the Lord and that worshiping God can lift us into a state of happiness, it’s not true that God wants us to suppress our other, messier emotions when we come before him. Intellectually, we understand this—we know that God knows us too well for us to hide our emotions from him, and that his vision for our obedience doesn’t include pasted-on smiles. So why do we act like God would be unsatisfied if we came to him with our less-than-beautiful feelings?
Avoiding the Self-Pity Pit
Often, I’ve felt like I didn’t know what to say to God in my messy moments. Whenever I tried to come to him with my fear or sadness or anger, it turned into a rant about what was bothering me. And as satisfying as we often find ranting, I didn’t feel better after doing it to God. It focused me on myself rather than on him—the exact opposite of how prayer should work. Surely, I thought, there’s a way to talk to God about these emotions without falling into self-pity or bitterness.
It turns out that God has provided a model that can help us express all our emotions in a prayerful way, one that brings us nearer to him and away from our focus on ourselves. It’s the book of Psalms.
Teach Us to Pray
In the Psalms we find a wide range of emotions in the prayers of David and others: laments, cries for help, anger, thanksgiving, and yes, rejoicing too. Like all books of the Bible, the Psalms are the inspired word of God, and thus we can pray them in confidence because we are giving back to God the praises that he himself has inspired.
I could spend days analyzing Psalms to find the many things that God has to teach us on prayer. But one key element is particularly important for the problem of how to express our messier emotions to God. Take Psalm 130 as an example:
1 Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. 2 Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my supplications!
3 If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
Lord, who could stand? 4 But there is forgiveness with you,
so that you may be revered.
5 I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope; 6 my soul waits for the Lord
more than those who watch for the morning,
more than those who watch for the morning.
7 O Israel, hope in the Lord!
For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
and with him is great power to redeem. 8 It is he who will redeem Israel
from all its iniquities.
The psalmist begins this psalm in a place of sadness. He is in “the depths”—an image that expresses how far he feels from God—and wants God to listen to his prayer of pleading. But even in his sadness, the psalmist still remembers God’s character. His prayer isn’t just one of supplication—it’s also one of remembrance for God’s goodness in the past, and it acknowledges that even when we feel alone or sad, God’s character never changes.
Out of the Depths
When we’re sad, angry, or confused, it’s often tempting to stay in the depths, feeling far away from God. But the Psalms teach us that even when we don’t see evidence of God’s goodness around us, we still need to remember the reality that God is good. This is one way we can keep prayers from being self-centered: by turning our focus back to who God is, no matter how we feel.
There’s much more that could be said about this—whole books have been written on the way that the Psalms teach us to pray (see recommendations from InterVarsity Press in the sidebar!). But as I’ve delved more deeply into the Psalms, I’ve been reminded of one particularly important truth: that God is still great, even when I’m feeling not-so-great, and there’s a way to acknowledge that in every circumstance.
Kathryn is InterVarsity’s newest editorial intern. She graduated from Barnard College at Columbia University in May, where she studied English and co-led her chapter’s large group. Her list of things to visit in Madison is 50 percent coffee shops. She compiles the ultimate reading list for times of transition at http://sustainingbooksforwedgedbears.wordpress.com/.
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