Her Faith Thrives

Have you ever felt like your feelings were too messy and complicated to tell God about them? Even when you do want to pray, processing your feelings as a Christian in prayer can be especially challenging.

In this blog post, I want to give you the 5 journal prompts I present in the episode and that I use regularly to help me get started when I am praying my (complicated) feelings.

• How have you been responding to the people in your life over the last few days?If you are having trouble recognizing when you need to pray your feelings, a good place to start is simply noticing and recording times in the day when you were either upset or reacted to something poorly.  This could be a harsh response, ignoring someone, a moment of quiet hurt, noticing that you are having arguments in your head and so on. 
• To the best of your ability articulate what or how you are feeling. Are you angry, sad, frustrated, discouraged, confused?
• When did you notice these feelings? Were you interacting with someone specific?  Was it something you heard  or read?  Was it a memory that surfaced?
• Why do you feel this way? You may not have an answer for this and if not that is okay but sometimes you actually know the reason behind your feelings.  At this time, instead of trying to determine whether or not you are justified in the way you are feeling, just articulate the reason for your feelings.

After you have walked through this process, ask God to help you correctly interpret your feelings and take the right action. Stay attentive for how God answers this prayer. God can answer immediately or through other ordinary means of grace like your daily devotional times, a sermon or wise counsel from godly friends and mentors. Bringing your heart before the Lord in prayer is difficult to do consistently but it is worthwhile. I have found that the more I lean into this practice the greater the intimacy I experience in my walk with God. I hope you will join me in making this practice a habit.

For Further Encouragement

Were you encouraged by this blog post? I would love to connect with you on the Her Faith Thrives Newsletter! This newsletter goes out every other month and contains a short personal update, and varying combinations of encouraging reflections like this one, content sneak peeks, and a handful of links to other encouraging resources!