How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting
Post 12: Your Dark Night of the Soul
Whether you are reflecting on your past suffering or experiencing current grief, here are a few suggestions and questions. I’ve designed them to help you to move from anger to complaint—vulnerable frankness about life to God in which I express my pain and confusion over how a good God allows evil and suffering.
Don’t try to address every suggestion. Pick a couple that connect with you.
My Complaint/Lament Journey
1. Biblical complaint/lament trusts God’s good heart enough to bring everything about us to Him. Where would you put yourself on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being anger that pushes God away because I doubt His good heart, and 10 being complaint/lament that invites God in because I trust His good heart?
2. Here are a few complaint trialogues. Pick one or two to explore personally.
a. “What do you think the Bible teaches about feeling anger or
disappointment toward God?”
b. “What verses could you ponder to discover how God’s people have talked to God when they experienced loss?”
c. “What does Psalm 88 suggest about expressing your anger, disappointment, or complaint toward God? How could you relate this to your response to God?”
d. “If you were to write a Psalm 13 or a Psalm 88 to God how would it sound? What would you write?”
e. “Suppose Satan sent someone to you to say, ‘Curse God and die.’ How would you respond?”
3. In past or current suffering, how did you begin to move from destructive anger to biblical complaint/lament?
4. Psalm 62:8 indicates that when we trust God we openly pour out our whole heart to Him, believing He is our refuge. Pour out your heart to God—everything and anything—in prayer, or in a journal, or in your own lament Psalm.
5. Write a Psalm 88—a Psalm of the Dark Night of the Soul—and rehearse before God all the badness of life as you are seeing and experiencing it.
6. Thinking of the examples of Job, of the Psalmists, of Jeremiah, of Paul in 2 Corinthian 1 and 4), and of Jesus (in the Garden), do you believe God invites our complaint and lament? A simple “yes” or “no” will say a lot . . .
7. To deny or diminish suffering is to arrogantly refuse to be humbled
(Deuteronomy 8:1-10). Remember your suffering and rehearse it God for the express purpose of admitting that God is indispensable.
8. Find a trusted, safe friend and take the “baby steps” of sharing with him or her some of your complaint.
What Next? What Now?
So what’s next? You’ve been candid with yourself. You’ve complained/lamented to God. Now what?
For the world the third “stage” is bargaining: basically attempting to manipulate God into being good to us by doing good works.
What Christian “stage” contrasts with that?
That’s our topic for tomorrow.
