Prayer Confronts the Broken Soul

In my distress I prayed to the Lord, and the Lord answered me and set me free.

─ Psalm 118:5 NLT

“I know prayer shouldn’t be hard,” Tricia confessed, “but right now, it feels like I’m trudging through thick mud that comes all the way up to my thighs, and there’s no escape in sight.”

Her friend, Kara, reached across the table and took her hand. “I’m sorry,” she replied with tears in her eyes. “I can’t imagine how you feel.”

“I want my time with God to be that perfect picture of me sitting in the porch swing, wrapped in His love, experiencing peace, stillness, and relief,” Tricia continued. “Instead, every word, every thought, takes all the effort I have to progress forward even an inch.”

Pure and honest conversation with God is the safest place to be, even when you have negative emotions related to prayer. It may even feel like prayer sucks the life out of you because prayer often confronts the broken soul.

The words of Psalm 118:5 sound simple but can often take lots of time: “When hard pressed, I cried to the Lord; he brought me into a spacious place” (NIV). For the psalmist, we don’t know how much time passed between the words before and after the semicolon. The hard times of life pressed in and the psalmist prayed. Then God responded and acted.

Freedom comes when you allow God access to help you through the hard things.

Today’s One Thing

Allow God to confront any brokenness in your soul. Give voice to how you feel through your words or through your tears. Lay it all out before Him and trust Him to put the pieces back together in His timing.

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