When Things Don't Go Our Way

Hungry prayers are honest prayers.

Jeremiah's relationship with God was intimate, intense and, above all else, it was real. He was real about joy and also about pain. There is nothing that he hides from God. We're going to look at a prayer that is not only "hungry", but "naked".

The prayer comes from Jeremiah chapter 20, where the priest Pashur has Jeremiah beaten (whipped) and then locked up overnight in the stocks. It was life-threatening, painful beyond description and utterly humiliating.

Jeremiah "spills his guts" to God:  

• He tells God that he feels let down, abandoned and betrayed.  
• He felt deceived because he wasn't experiencing the respect that prophets usually had from the people.  
• He holds God responsible because he believes that God is ultimately in control and that evil can only do what God allows it to. 

In Hebrew, the words deceived, overpowered and prevailed have an overtone of sexual assault. Jeremiah is, in effect, saying to God, "I feel I have been violated." It is a very personal outpouring of frustration and pain and one has a clear sense that Jeremiah feels safe enough to "tell it like it is."

The beauty of this passage is that Jeremiah is so close to God that he is able to express his feelings and frustrations to God.

But if verses 7 & 8 were about nakedness, then v.9 is about hunger. In spite of all that has happened, Jeremiah's love for, and trust in, God still surpasses the pain of a broken world.

In this broken world we are not always spared the pain that our brokenness unleashes. Jeremiah felt safe enough to be naked with God and he was so hungry that the fire in his bones burned hotter than the flames of brokenness. May this be true of us, too.