The blog makes the case that wrestling with God grows your faith. This study is for doing the wrestling. It will not hand you an explanation for your disappointment. It will give you a way to carry it back to God instead of away from him.
Go slow. You do not have to come to this composed or resolved. The people who wrote the Psalms did not. Work it alone with a journal, or out loud in a group where the disappointment is allowed to be said in the room.
Part 1: Name your gap
Lisa Fields calls disappointment the gap between what you believe about God and what you actually experience. Before you can bring it to God, you have to say where yours is.
Read Psalm 13:1-2 out loud, slowly. David asks how long four times before he gets anywhere near trust. Read it again and let it be your words for a minute.
- Write your own 'how long,' one honest sentence. Not the church-lobby version. The real one.
- Fields names seven places the gap shows up: personhood, power, protection, provision, purpose, pleasure, and peace. Which one is yours right now? Name it specifically. What did you believe God would do there that has not happened?
- Now read Psalm 13:5-6. David does not explain his way out. He turns his face back toward a God he has not stopped trusting. Write down: can you hold the ache and the trust in the same breath today? It is allowed if you can only manage the ache.
Part 2: You are in good company
The honest complaint you are afraid to pray is already in the Bible, prayed by people God did not scold for it.
- Jeremiah told God he felt deceived, and in the same breath said the word was like fire shut up in his bones. Dr. Robert Smith Jr. points to exactly this and says the reason you can talk to God this way is that he can handle it: God is not fragile, he is faithful, so he can take it.
- On the cross, Jesus asked why God had forsaken him. Read Matthew 27:46. The sinless Son of God prayed the prayer you are scared to pray. Your version is not weak faith. It is his prayer too.
Dr. Sarita Lyons says the church handed many of us 'a faith that could not wrestle.' This part of the study is the repair. You are learning to do the thing your faith may never have been built to do: stay in the room with God and tell the truth.
Read 2 Corinthians 1:3-7. Sit with this question, do not rush to answer it: where has God comforted you in an affliction, even a small one, in a way you could one day offer to someone else? Suffering is not the absence of God. Sometimes it is where you meet the God of all comfort for the first time.
Part 3: A practice for this week, get it out of your mouth
Fields's whole counsel comes down to one move: the hurt gets out of your heart by way of your mouth. This week you practice saying it instead of managing it.
- Each day, say one true sentence of disappointment out loud to God. Not written, said. Out loud, even if your voice shakes. 'God, I am angry that…' or 'God, I do not understand why…' Then stop and let the silence be okay.
- Once this week, say one of those sentences to a safe person. Fields says healing comes through honesty and community, not solo willpower. Pick the one person who will not rush you to a verse, and let them see the unhealed part.
- Each night, take Kristel Acevedo's prayer and pray it over your day: God, what does this mean, and where are you in the midst of it? Then write down one place, however small, you think God was near. Some nights you will only find the disappointment. That is honest too.
Do not force the second half. Over a week, watch what your attention starts to notice. God is often nearer than the gap lets you see.
Part 4: Reset what you were promised
A lot of disappointment is a promise God never actually made. Read John 16:33. Jesus promises two things in one verse: trouble in this world, and peace in him. Not peace instead of trouble. Peace inside it.
- Where did your expectation come from: from this verse, or from something you were taught about how faith is supposed to pay off? Be specific. Write the source.
- Carmelyn Kinsey came to see that God's protection was her peace in the situation, not rescue from it. Where have you been waiting for rescue when what God is offering is his presence? Write one line about what would change if you stopped waiting for the storm to end.
Discussion questions
- Name one specific way you have felt disappointed by God. What did you expect that did not happen?
- Where did that expectation come from, Scripture or something you were taught? Be honest about the difference.
- Do you actually believe you are allowed to be angry with God? What happens inside you when you read that David, Jeremiah, and Jesus all cried out to him?
- Sarita Lyons says we were handed a faith that could not wrestle. Where does your faith struggle to wrestle, and what would it look like to bring a hard question to God instead of leaving over it?
- Who in your life lets you be unhealed out loud? If no one, who could you let in this month?
Leader notes
Your job in this study is not to fix anyone. It is to keep the room safe enough that people tell the truth. A few things that help:
- Let silence sit. When someone names a real disappointment, do not jump in with a verse or a story. Let it land. A good answer delivered too soon lands as dismissal.
- Do not make anyone's pain a teaching moment. If someone shares a deep loss, the goal is that they were heard, not that the group learned something from them.
- Watch for the person who says nothing. Disappointment with God usually goes quiet before it goes loud. Check in privately, gently, after.
- If anyone discloses thoughts of ending their life, take it seriously and stay with them. In the US, 988 connects to a trained counselor by call or text any time. Help them make the call; do not leave them to do it alone.
A blessing to close
May you be honest enough to name the gap and held enough to stay in it.
May you find that the God who let Jeremiah, David, and his own Son cry out is not scared of your questions either.
And when the answer does not come, may you get God himself instead. Your pain is real. It is also a comma, not a period.