You bring a wound to God honestly by saying what it has made you believe about him, in plain words, using the permission Scripture already gives you to complain. You do not have to clean up the picture first. This guide follows that path in a set order: a slow look at the picture of God you actually carry, a lament psalm read line by line, a lament of your own, and then the cross. Comfort comes last, because that is where the sources put it.
You can work through it alone over two or three sittings, or with a small group over two meetings. Every written exercise is private unless you choose otherwise. If a section stirs up more than you can carry today, stop. The guide will still be here.
The picture you are actually praying to
Dr. Sarita Lyons, who counsels individuals, groups and families in private practice, begins her Jude 3 Project conversation with Lisa Fields from a plain clinical observation: “I think it’s important to first realize that trauma changes us.” She means body and mind, and she also means belief. In her words, “the impact of trauma has this ability to create a distorted image of God and a distorted image of the self.”
She names two distortions, and they usually bend together. Lyons describes the thought a hurting person often lands on: “somehow I must have done something to deserve this”. That one sentence shrinks the self and makes God harsher at the same moment. A person who believes it will pray carefully, the way you speak to someone who might punish you again.
She also says this happens “whether it’s conscious or unconscious”. You may hold a picture of God you have never put into words. So the first task here is noticing, not fixing.
An exercise in noticing
Take a sheet of paper. Finish this sentence five times, quickly, without editing: When I am hurting, God is the kind of God who… Write what your gut says, not what you would say in church. Then, beside each sentence, write where you think you first learned it: a person, an event, a church, a long silence. Leave a blank where you do not know. Lisa Fields observes in the conversation that “sometimes people don’t know what their issue is.” A blank is an honest answer.
Do not correct anything yet. You will feel the pull to cross out the harsh lines and write the right answer underneath. Resist it for now. A picture you hurry to correct is still there. It has only gone quiet.
Psalm 13 gives you the words before it gives you relief
Psalm 13 is poetry written to be prayed, and it is one of the shortest laments in the Psalms. Read all six verses aloud before going further. Here is how it opens, in Psalm 13:1-2:
How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? how long shall mine enemy be exalted over me?
Count the questions. Four times the psalmist asks “how long” before he asks God for anything. He says God forgets him and hides from him. Because this is lament poetry, it records how abandonment feels from the inside; the rest of Scripture does not teach that God actually forgets his people. Yet the Bible keeps these words as prayer. It does not edit the accusation out or scold the tone.
Look at the middle line. In the KJV, to “take counsel in my soul” means to deliberate inside yourself; other translations render it as wrestling with my thoughts. Lyons makes a point in the conversation that sheds light on this: “we’re always being counseled whether we know it or not.” The psalmist has been counseling himself, alone, with sorrow every day. The psalm is the moment he takes that same private argument and turns it toward God. He does not swap it for a nicer prayer. He moves the complaint to a new address.
Then comes a request in verse 3: “Consider and hear me, O LORD my God: lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death” (Psalm 13:3). And then a turn in verse 5: “But I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation” (Psalm 13:5). Notice what has not changed. Nothing in the psalm says the enemy is gone or the face of God has appeared. Trust is spoken while the questions are still open, and the rejoicing is something he expects, not something he already feels.
Not every lament reaches that turn. Psalm 88 ends with friends far away and darkness for company. Scripture holds both prayers. If you cannot reach verse 5 yet, you are still praying a biblical prayer.
Before moving on, sit with three short observations:
- Which of the four “how long” lines is closest to your own?
- What does the psalmist accuse God of, and does he apologize for it anywhere?
- Between verse 4 and verse 5, what changes, and what stays exactly the same?
Write a lament of your own
Use the shape of Psalm 13 and the lines from your noticing sheet. Four movements, each a few sentences at most.
- Address him. Use a name you can actually say. Lyons acknowledges that “for God to call himself Father is often very difficult for people.” If that word is hard right now, the psalm’s own address, O LORD my God, is enough.
- Complain. Take the harshest line from your sheet and say it to God in the second person: You seemed… or How long will you… Lisa Fields says in the conversation that she loves “the fact that God allows us to bring our anger and frustration towards him”.
- Ask. Name one specific thing you want from God. It can be small.
- Trust, only if it is true. If you can honestly write a sentence like verse 5, write it. If you cannot, leave the line blank and write nothing there. Lyons describes good care as “with allowing people to go through and express and experience the depth of hurt and confusion that they have and feel” before walking them through the gospel. The blank line is part of that process.
What you do with the page is up to you. Keep it, tear it up, or read it to one person you trust. No one is owed your story.
A word of care. If what you write involves abuse that is still happening, your safety comes before any study. Reach a trusted person, and in the US you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233. If the pain has turned into thoughts of ending your life, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Jude 3 teaches that seeking therapy is not a failure of faith. If you have tried to get help before and it did not hold, Lyons tells the people who come to her office, “this isn’t your first attempt at trying to figure out the complexities of life”.
Where the lament leads: the cross
The Bible’s laments do not stay in the Psalms. Matthew 27:46 reads: “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Jesus is praying the opening line of Psalm 22, a lament. At the center of the Christian faith, the Son of God uses the same kind of words you just wrote.
Look at what this says to one of the pictures Lyons describes. She explains that a hurting person can conclude “my suffering, my hurt, my trauma, does not move the heart of God,” and that this “flies in the face of the idea that God is acquainted with our grief, that God grieves, that God is sorrowful at sin.” The phrase comes from Isaiah 53:3, which describes a servant who is “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” Christians read that passage as fulfilled in Jesus, and the New Testament applies Isaiah 53 to him in Acts 8:32-35. That is a reading of the prophecy, and a well-grounded one. The cry in Matthew 27 needs no such reading. It is simply what he said.
The cross also speaks to the punishing picture. Lyons points out that God allowed suffering to fall on his own innocent Son so that the way back to relationship with God would be opened. At the cross, the one who suffers most is the one who deserved it least. Whatever else that means, it breaks the link between suffering and deserving that so many wounded people carry.
Lyons describes the order plainly. She says “conflict can lead to correction,” and then that “through the cross is where we get comfort.” The cross does not explain why your particular harm happened. It does not hand you an answer to the question of why God did not stop it. Lisa Fields admits this in the conversation: “he might not give us all the answers, but he comforts us in it.” What the cross shows is that God did not stay outside of suffering, and that his Son also asked why.
A second look at your sheet
Return to your five sentences. Read Matthew 27:46 and Isaiah 53:3 slowly, then read each sentence again. Ask one question of each line: Does this still hold up next to the cross? Mark lines that change. Mark lines that stay the same. Do not force any line to change. A picture formed over years rarely shifts in an afternoon.
When the true picture is uncomfortable too
Three cautions keep this work honest.
First, not every hard line on your sheet is a distortion. If you were harmed, the harm was real and it was wrong. Lament does not ask you to pretend otherwise. The distortion lives in the conclusions about God’s character, not in the facts of what happened to you.
Second, the God of Scripture may unsettle more than your wounded picture. Lyons says “we like God to be what we want God to be,” and she hears God answering, “no, I am who I am”. A corrected picture will not always be a softer one. It will be a truer one, and that takes time. Lyons compares it to a woman hurt by one man learning, through actually knowing other men, not to project that injury onto all of them. Getting to know God works the same way. She is careful to add, “God knows what we’ve experienced. God knows what we’ve been through.”
Third, asking these questions does not put you outside the faith. Lyons describes the person in the pew who thinks, “I have some serious issues and questions about God and about his word and about truth that I am afraid to ask, because somehow that disqualifies me as a believer.” Psalm 13 was sung by God’s people. Its questions were never a mark of disqualification.
If you are leading a group
Split the material across two meetings: the noticing exercise and Psalm 13 in the first, the written lament and the cross in the second. Have people do the writing on their own before or during the meeting, and never ask anyone to read a sheet aloud. Invite responses to the text rather than to personal history. Ask what people notice in the psalm, and let silence last longer than feels comfortable.
Resist the urge to correct someone’s picture of God in front of the group. If a person discloses abuse, follow up privately, focus on their safety, and never press them to reconcile with someone who harmed them. Know ahead of time which counselors or pastors you can point people to. Lyons is direct about this limit: “we need to have enough wisdom and enough humility to send people to people who are better equipped to deal with things”.
Questions to carry
- Which line on your noticing sheet surprised you, and where do you think it came from?
- Psalm 13 complains to God rather than only about him. What difference, if any, does that make in a prayer?
- What would it cost you to leave the trust line of your lament blank? What would it cost to fill it in before it was true?
- Jesus asks why on the cross. How does his question sit beside the questions you have been afraid to ask?
- Which part of God’s character in Scripture is hardest for you to accept, and does that difficulty seem to come from a wound or from somewhere else?
- Who is one person, whether a pastor, friend or counselor, you could trust with part of this, and what would you need from them?
Keep your sheet somewhere you can find it. In a month, read your five sentences again beside Psalm 13 and Matthew 27:46. Some lines may have moved. Some may not have. The ones that have not moved are where your next lament can begin.