How to pray when the Bible makes you feel worse

You opened it because you were meant to. Ten minutes, before the day starts, the way you've been told is good for you. And you read a chapter, and by the end of it you feel worse than when you sat down. Not shaken. Not moved. Just smaller. There was a line in there about how a person ought to live, and you are not living like that, and now you know it in writing.

So you close it and go and make the coffee. Nothing has happened to you today. Nobody has accused you of anything. You did this to yourself by reading, which is the strange part. The thing everyone says will help you is the thing that just put a weight on you, and you can't tell anyone that without it sounding like you've got a problem with the Bible.

Maybe it was a verse about anger, or money, or what you do when nobody's watching. Maybe it wasn't even aimed at you and you took it anyway. It doesn't matter which. What matters is the state you're in now. You went to God's word and came away with a list of what you are not.

Here's why that one doesn't get prayed.

Because you think you have to fix it first. The verse showed you something. The obvious response is to go and do better about it, and then come back to God when there's something to show him. Praying now, while the thing is still true of you, feels like walking in with the evidence in your hands.

And underneath that there's a worse thought. That if this is what the book says, and this is what you are, then the two of you are not going to get on. That the more you read, the more of this there'll be. That the honest end of this road is a God who has read your file and is not impressed.

So you don't say it. You resolve to do better, quietly, and you don't mention any of it to him. And the thing you're actually carrying — that you feel condemned by the one book you're supposed to love — never gets said to anyone at all.

There's a short psalm for this. Psalm 130. We don't know who wrote it. It's one of the songs people sang walking up to Jerusalem, so it was written to be used by whoever was carrying this, on the road, out loud.

It's eight verses. Here it is whole.

Out of the depths I have cried to you, Yahweh. Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my petitions. If you, Yah, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you, therefore you are feared. I wait for Yahweh. My soul waits. I hope in his word. My soul longs for the Lord more than watchmen long for the morning; more than watchmen for the morning. Israel, hope in Yahweh, for with Yahweh there is loving kindness. With him is abundant redemption. He will redeem Israel from all their sins.

Look at where he starts. Out of the depths. Not once he's climbed out of them. He is down there, and the first thing he does is speak from down there. He doesn't wait until he's in better shape to come. The prayer is made from exactly the position you're in when you close the book.

Then verse three, and this is the whole thing. If you kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand?

Notice what he does not do there. He does not argue. He doesn't say the standard is too high, or that he's doing his best, or that he's better than most. He agrees with it. He takes the thing that just crushed him and he says it back to God as true. If you were keeping the list, nobody survives it. Not me. Not anyone.

That's a move you can make tonight and it costs you nothing to make, because it's already true. You don't have to work up to it. You're already there. He just says it out loud, to God, instead of carrying it around.

And then the turn, in verse four. But there is forgiveness with you.

Watch what the turn is not built on. It is not built on him being better than he thought. Nothing about him has changed between verse three and verse four. He is the same man with the same record. What changes is that he says something about God — there is forgiveness with you — and he says it as a fact about God, not as a feeling about himself.

That's the shape. The complaint is about what he is. The answer is about who God is. Those are two different subjects, and he doesn't try to solve the first one to get to the second.

Then the end of verse four, which nobody expects. Therefore you are feared.

You'd think forgiveness would make God easier to take lightly. The psalm says the opposite. Being forgiven is what makes a person take God seriously. So this isn't a psalm that lets you off. It doesn't say the chapter you read this morning was too harsh. It leaves the standard exactly where it was, and it says there is forgiveness with him anyway, and it says that's the reason he's feared.

And then he waits. Three times. I wait. My soul waits. My soul longs for the Lord more than watchmen long for the morning.

Watchmen are men on a wall through the night. They are not doing anything to bring the sun up. They are just standing there wanting it, and it is still dark while they want it.

That's where the psalm leaves him. Not relieved. Not feeling forgiven. Waiting, in the dark, having said the true thing about himself and the true thing about God, with morning still not up.

So here's the one thing.

Tonight, out loud, say the verse three sentence with yourself in it. Not the general version. The one with the actual thing in it that you read this morning and couldn't get out from under.

God, if you kept a record, I couldn't stand. This is what I am. And there is forgiveness with you.

That's it. Don't add a plan. Don't promise him the improvement. He hasn't asked you for one as the price of being spoken to.

And if your own words won't come, use the psalm's. It was written down so people who couldn't find their own could borrow it. Read verse three and verse four out loud and mean them at him.

You may not feel any different afterwards. The man who wrote this was still waiting at the end of it, and he wrote it anyway. What changes is that the thing you came away from the Bible carrying is no longer being carried alone in your head. It's been said, and it's been said to him.

If you, Yahweh, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand?

That's in the book. Said to God, about himself, and nobody corrects him.

But there is forgiveness with you, therefore you are feared.