Prayers of Complaint

Attn: Complaint Department. 777 Heaven St. Urgent Message.

This is how a lot of our prayers would be addressed if Heaven were a business where we could mail our complaints! Our outgoing mailbox would be pretty full wouldn’t it?

When we are majorly inconvenienced, when things don’t go as planned, when we see others suffering, when we face loss and grief, we turn to God in prayer with all our “why?”s and “how long?” and “this is unfair” complaints.

I’m not here to shame you for sending up prayers of complaints. We all do it. And for many of us, we do feel a sense of shame and immoral behavior when we complain. We tell ourselves we should just be grateful. How dare we express any hurt or anger towards God. Then we knock ourselves down for not being a better Christian and, suddenly, shame has us believing that we don’t deserve to talk to God anymore. Our communication with God dies and the relationship suffers because we think He can’t handle our complaints.

Take a deep breath...

You are not a bad Christian and it is okay to share your complaints with God. He does not cut off communication or love you any less because of these complaints. He’s a pretty powerful and gracious God, He can handle our raw emotions! So go easy on yourself. Let go of the shame attached to any less-than-perfect prayers because:

It is in honest prayers with God that we strengthen our relationship with Him.

Anyone can recite a beautifully worded prayer that follows a sacred pattern of worship, thanksgiving, praise, and repentance. But, if there is no heart behind that, it is a hollow prayer. Our most honest prayers, even if they’re full of complaints or negative emotions, reveal to God our heart behind the prayer.

The more that psychology brings to light new information the better we understand that people’s words and behaviors are rarely, if ever, surface level actions.

Let’s take, for example, a couple out to dinner. A husband and wife of 10 years are on a date and are waiting for their food to arrive at the table. While waiting, the husband pulls his phone out and starts scrolling through apps and texts. Suddenly, the wife is enraged and says “can you put that thing away and talk to me?!” The husband is taken aback as this behavior seems out of place and escalated from 0 to 100. After communicating about the issue, the husband realizes that the wife had been feeling for a while like their marriage was lacking connection. She thought this date night would be an opportunity to reconnect and, when he got on his phone, she felt unimportant to him. Her fears of their lost connection were confirmed by his attentiveness to things other than her.

See, the wife’s “sudden outburst” was not actually sudden, nor was it irrational. It was not about him being on his phone this one time on this one day. It was about the continued lack of connection in their marriage and the fears and insecurities that arose from that. Her verbal complaint might have been “put that phone away!”, but her heart was shouting “please reconnect with me! I miss when we would gaze at each other longingly and it felt like nothing else in the world mattered as long as we had each other. I need to feel that again. I need to know you still love me and value me.”

When we shout our anger and our complaints to God, there is always something deeper contributing to the words and behaviors we show. Our words might say “God, I can’t believe you would let this happen”, but our heart behind those words reveals to God our desire for justice, healing, redemption and grace. Though the words may have seemed harsh and the complaint disrespectful, they were rooted in a righteous longing to see evil eradicated from this world.

Thank God that He does not judge our surface level behaviors but looks, instead, at the depths of our hearts.

In Psalm 64:1a David prays, “Hear my voice, O God, in my complaint;”. David may have felt the same shame we do for complaining to God. But in His prayer He asks God to hear his voice, or his heart, behind his complaint. David asks God to search beyond the complaint and into the depths of his heart.

Not only is it okay to complain to God, it can also be beneficial for our relationship with Him.

When we are hurt or angry over something it can push us towards God. (We can’t really complain without communicating, can we?) Complaining to God forces us into prayer and conversation with Him.

It won’t be a fun conversation at the beginning. There will conflict and misunderstanding and some uncomfortable moments. But if we continue to return to the conversation, even if we are wrestling with God over things, we will grow in our walk with Him.

In the husband and wife example above, if they never communicated about the problem they would never understand the root of the problem and be able to work towards a solution. They would both become bitter or indifferent towards each other as their connection continued to diminish over time.

Communication is an absolutely vital part of every relationship; including our relationship with God. Not just communication about the good and happy things, but communication about the problems and the hangups.

Some days our prayers will be full of gratitude and praise. Some days our only prayer will be a complaint, and that’s okay. We can still honor God in our complaints by keeping the lines of communication open with Him and by keeping our heart open to Him.

-Stephanie Lauren Auman