When we are hurting or in the middle of a season of darkness, it can be difficult to know what words to pray. Whether we are buried in grief, overwhelmed with chronic pain, or suffering from a betrayal, life can become so challenging at times that it can be hard to work up the motivation to talk to God in the first place.
During those times in my own life, I’ve struggled to know whether God would hear my prayers at all. My guest can relate to this feeling. She has suffered for over a decade with chronic pain and has spent countless nights exhausted, frustrated, and at times unsure what to pray.
Glenna Marshall is an author, speaker, pastor’s wife, and mom to two adopted sons. She has authored several books that address the spiritual disciplines that help us grow in the faith and endure suffering. In her latest book, she teaches us how to pray when we are experiencing hurt or pain.
In this episode, you’ll hear:
- How to move from bitterness toward faith
- A Biblical structure to handle sorrow
- The hidden blessing to be found in hard circumstances
- And more!
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Prefer to watch this episode? You can now view and subscribe to our YouTube.
- [BOOK] Praying in Pain: How to Know You’re Heard When You Haven’t Been Healed
- [BOOK] Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament
- Connect with Glenna on her website, Instagram, or Facebook
- As a thank you for listening, get your 3 free eBooks.
My Key Takeaways:
1) Take your grief to God. The first step when we are in pain is to air out our grief in prayer. Scripture doesn’t ask us to harbor our complaints to ourselves. God is able to handle our heartache and pain. We can see examples of this throughout the Psalms, where David poured out his pain to the Lord page after page. Coming to terms with our disappointment and grief starts with bringing it to God.
2) Remember God’s faithfulness and resolve to trust Him. Whenever we see people expressing their struggle in Scripture, we also see them recalling all the ways God had been faithful in the past. In Joshua 4, stones were collected and set up as a remembrance of how God protected His people. This practice of remembering helps us see the ways God has already cared for us in the past and how we can continue to place our trust in Him for the future.
3) Reveal your circumstances to your community. We can have a tendency to want to downplay what we are going through or even hide it entirely. When this happens, we are often idolizing self-sufficiency rather than reliance on God and others. As we share and bear one another’s burdens, we receive love and care from our fellow Christians. If we were to keep silent, we would be robbing them of the chance to act as the hands and feet of Jesus. Who can you reach out to in order to share what you are experiencing and struggling with this week?
About Glenna:
Glenna Marshall is an author, speaker, pastor’s wife, and mom to two adopted sons. She has authored several books that address the spiritual disciplines that help us grow in the faith and endure suffering. No stranger to trials, she shares openly in her books about her long history with infertility and a rare chronic pain disease. In her latest book, she addresses how to pray when we are experiencing hurt or pain. Glenna loves strong coffee with just a touch of cream, heart-to-heart conversations, and going to bed early.
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