Learning To Cry Before God Series

Maybe -- if we were to provide space and opportunity in our gatherings for people to cry out to God, question God, and even get mad at God -- we might just end up nurturing believers with an authentic faith that’s stronger and more resilient than we have ever seen in our time.

What are Lament Psalms?

1. Laments, prayers as we would call them, are cries to God in times of need, whether sickness, affliction, slander, war, or some other crisis. In ancient Israel, the worshiper would normally go to the Sanctuary to offer the petition, and in many cases the officiating priest might offer the prayer on his behalf.

Our lives are not all joy, happiness and strength. At times we experience exactly the opposite. We know brokenness and pain, alienation and confusion, doubt and the absence of God. Then we lament. We cry: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (Psalm 22:2).

Just as praise is not the same as thanksgiving, so lament is not identical to petition. If praise is a spontaneous response to happiness in life, lament is a spontaneous response to pain. If praise is a religious “Wow!” than a lament is a religious “Ouch!”

2. Laments are the single largest type of psalm. OT scholars identify at least 57 laments composed of individual laments and communal laments.

3. Some of us may be unfamiliar or uncomfortable about this type of psalm and prayer but lament is a thoroughly biblical form of prayer, occurring in both the Old and New Testaments. I have a friend who can easily be verbally rough on others – sometimes I wish I could be more tough with my words. The Bible is full of God’s people crying out to God, questioning God, even accusing God, doubting God. What is so amazing is God does not take His people’s words against them. He does not rebuke them for thinking that way – He answers them instead, and His people are healed.

Did Jesus ever Lamented in Prayer?

Matthew 26 and Luke 22 records Jesus in the Garden of Getsemane praying with so much weight on him that he started to hemorrhage – sweat of blood.

Hebrews 5:7 is the single most important Scripture outside of the Gospels that describes Jesus in prayer. The unknown writer of Hebrews reveals to us that Jesus must have been engaged in “lament prayers.” The Letter to the Hebrews contains a passage that might surprise many of us – the way Jesus prayed. Hebrews 5:7, “in the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.” This passage unparalled anywhere in the NT in terms of their intensity. Since “prayers” and petitions are plural, our author may have known several incidents in Jesus’ life when he prayed with such intensity. This sound like Jesus in agony in the Garden of Getsemane (Matthew 26:31-46 Luke 22:41-44). Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus. He wept when he was face with human suffering and grief. Guthrie comments, “Our high priest was not so far above us that tears were beyond him” (1983, 129). He truly and completely identified with our human plight of suffering.