YOUR PRIVATE LAMENT
What I offer you here are guidelines to exercise the healing power of lament.
Take some time and reflect on how the last week (or a time frame of your choice) has been for you. Make note of the predominant emotions you have been feeling during this time, in particular the more negative ones. Reflect on a particular situation or recurring theme that you know has been causing you distress, pain or anxiety and that you feel is beyond your control. Imagine that God is with you and that He has given you complete freedom to lay it all out, to complain fearlessly without judgment, in order to get it all off your chest.
Give Yourself Time and Space
With a piece of paper and pen, invite God’s presence and follow the steps outlined below.
- Address and introductory cry: Identify the Lord as the person to whom you are addressing your complaint. Request for His presence as you express what is on your heart.
- Complaint or Lament: Articulate the problem you are wrestling with. Detail how it is affecting you, the pain it is causing, and ask the Lord for His help.
- Confession of Trust: Verbalize your trust in the Lord. Share your hopes that He will come to your aid, that He will be present with you in your situation.
- Prayer for Deliverance: Request deliverance, or God’s intervention in the problem.
- Praise: Offer praise and thanksgiving to God for God’s many blessings and faithfulness.
There are many different definitions of spiritual formation. A definition that describes our approach comes from Dallas Willard, who describes spiritual formation in the tradition of Jesus Christ as “the process of transformation of the inmost dimension of the human being, the heart, which is the same as the spirit or will. It is being formed (really, transformed) in such a way that its natural expression comes to be the deeds of Christ done in the power of Christ.”[1]
Spiritual formation is not something that we do to ourselves for ourselves, but something we allow God to do in us and for us as we yield ourselves to the work of God’s transforming grace in us, and also in the world around us.
