Grace full mama

As I peruse my Bible in my typically unorganised fashion, I find so much that I relate to. Today, I was reading in Psalm 109, where David spends a lot of time praying that God would take vengeance on his enemies and cause their sins to return to them with all the force of Satan. So often those of us who were raised in the faith avoid these chapters, kind of like the way we avoid the hard stuff in our own lives. We turn our face away from it because it feels too real.

Can we really talk to God like that? Can we really tell God our pain not from a “God I am not going to talk to you about what’s really in the depths of my heart… I am just going to ask you for a blanket of comfort to tuck in around the well of infected pain that is roiling in my gut,” place? Can we really come to him and say “God! They are lying about me! Show him how it feels! Let accusing liars rise up like Satan himself standing right next to him!”

Psalms is beautiful because it is literally David’s own personal prayer journal. He has prayers from every one of his passionate emotional states written in this book. There is worship. There is contrition. There are prayers asking God to vindicate him or take vengeance on his behalf. His prayers are raw and honest. He isn’t trying to make himself righteous before praying to God. He isn’t censoring himself. David comes before the Lord in his most real state. He brings God into every emotion.

“Break the teeth in their mouths, oh God!” Psalm 58:6

“Let death take my enemies by surprise; let them go down alive to the grave!” Psalm 55:15

“My tears have been my food day and night.” Psalm 42:3

“Why, LORD, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?”Psalm 10:1

“I am worn out from groaning. All night long I flood my bed with tears.” Psalm 6:6

“Let the wicked fall into their own nets” Psalm 141:10

“Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure.” Psalm 73:13

“Let them be blotted out from the book of life.” Psalm 69:28

All these raw, unsanitized prayers, and yet God says about David in Acts 13, “God raised up David to be king, for God said of him, ‘I have found in David, son of Jesse, a man who pursues my heart and will accomplish all that I have destined him to do.”

David sinned some pretty big sins; but these honest, raw, real prayers were not sinful. David wasn’t a man after God’s own heart in spite of these prayers, but because of them. He didn’t edit himself before God. He came to God uncovered.

In the Jewish temple, there was a room called the ‘holy of holies.’ This is where the ark of the covenant sat, and where the presence of God resided inside of the beautiful temple that Solomon built. It was protected by a veil, and only the high priest had access. When Jesus died, that veil tore right down the middle; signifying that we have access to God the way that the high priest did. We are not locked away from his presence. We have never been worthy to stand in his presence, but the blood of Jesus declares us redeemed, and that redemption makes us worthy.

1 Corinthians 3:16, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s spirit dwells in you?”

We are now the living, breathing, walking temples of God. Yet how many of us have locked our innermost selves in our own holy of holies and offered God only the front rooms of our temple?

It is almost as though we want God to see us a certain way, so we hide the depth of our pain. We don’t pray “that” prayer about “that” person, because we aren’t sure if it is a holy enough prayer to bring before our Lord. We try and become holy before we pray instead of becoming holy through our prayers. We stuff our trauma instead of fully exposing it before God, and then we wonder why our prayers aren’t changing us.

Psalms is unique in the bible, because instead of it being a book about God speaking to people, it is an entire book showing us how to speak with God. Over and over David goes from absolutely beside himself, asking God for help, to praising God for that very help. He never stays in a state of destitution. His utter honesty with God is exactly what he needs to come to a more beautiful place.

How many times have you edited your heart before you bring it to God? How many times have you watered down your prayers? Maybe you have even told someone else “Um, I don’t think you can pray that.”

My friend. I am here to tell you, you can pray that.

God isn’t some numbskull who is going to smash the teeth out of Suzy Brown because she hurt your feelings. He is not at the mercy of your prayers. Your transformation is going to happen when you come to God in the depths of your pain, raw and real and honest. You want vindication? Tell him. You want revenge? Tell him. You are depressed and broken, and you feel like a failure? Tell him. Let him into your holy of holies. Jesus is not going to go barging into these areas if you don’t get real and let him in.

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” Revelation 3:20. Understand that in the ancient Jewish world, “eating with him” meant intimate fellowship. You didn’t eat with strangers, but instead sealed relationships with a meal.

So in summary, we are missing out on a deeper level of healing, and yes, even the reversal of epigenetic healing, because we struggle to trust Jesus enough to pray ugly prayers. Never again tell someone, including yourself, “I don’t think you can pray that.” Trust me. You can. Your prayers are not about performance. They are a conversation. They are a deep expression of the most important relationship in your life.

You can’t catfish God. He already knows the pain, sin, and struggle hiding inside of you. He wants access to it. So don’t bring your prayers to him wearing a Snapchat filter and hoping he can’t see that spiritual forehead wrinkle! Come to him tear stained and unfiltered. Pray risky prayers. Pray angry prayers. Prayer is how we are called to process our emotions with God, so that he can transform us. If we censor our emotions in prayer, we are not processing them. They get stored up in that room in the back of our heart.

Nothing is too messy for God. Nothing you say is going to shock him. He isn’t suddenly going to strike someone dead because you admitted your level of anger at them.

So many of us crave intimacy with God but are afraid of the vulnerability that intimacy requires.

Get vulnerable with God. Get raw. Get honest. Start packing boxes out of your holy of holies and going through them with Jesus. Remember that you don’t have to be sanctified to come before him. You become sanctified by letting him in.

Pray some ugly prayers, my friends.