Complaint: A Lament for Your Loss

Journeying and Journaling with God

Complaint: A Lament for Your Loss

Note: At the end of each chapter of God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting, I include two reflection/action sections. One is Your Journey and one is Your Journal. Today, I’m sharing a few sample Complaint/Lament Journey and Journal interactions to help you on your path of grief and growth—of finding God’s healing hope.

Your 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 you doubt His good heart, and 10 being complaint/lament that invites God in because you trust His good heart?

2. How would you compare your response to your suffering to Job’s? Jeremiah’s? Jacob’s? David’s? Paul’s? Jesus in the Garden?

3. Perhaps you’ve begun to face your losses and crosses. Where does Christ fit into your picture? What are you doing with Christ in your suffering? Have you been able to share your heart with God? If so, what have you said? If not, what would you like to say?

Your Complaint/Lament Journal

1. What do you think the Bible teaches about expressing anger and disappointment to God? What passages could you ponder to discover how God’s people have talked to God when they experienced loss?

2. Read Psalm 88—The Psalm of the Dark Night of the Soul.

a. What does Psalm 88 suggest about expressing your anger, disappointment, or complaint to God?

b. If you were to pen your own Psalm 88, what would it sound like? What would you write?

3. Read Job 3:1-26; 7:1-10; and 10:1-22. Have you been here? How so? Pen your own Job-like expression of lament to God.

Join the Conversation

Which of the interactions/questions/reflections most resonate with you?