We know how to "say our prayers," but do we know how to hear from God? Wrestle with God? Abide in God? This series will dig deeper into five aspects of prayer and offer practical advice on how to go deeper in communion with God by His Spirit.

Prayer is the most central and fundamental component of our relationship with Jesus, yet sometimes we often stay in the proverbial shallow end of the pool. Today, we begin a new series called Deeper. In this series, over the next five weeks, we will look at how to go deeper in prayer. Each week, we will take one element of prayer and explore how to practice it. We’ll be looking at talking to God, abiding with God, listening to God, wrestling with God and interceding with God. One member of the clergy will be teaching each week and today we continue with the subject of how to wrestle with God with me. We hope you enjoy this series and that it draws you deeper into your relationship with God.

The Rev. Dr. Suse E. McBay
Associate for Adult Christian Education and Prayer Ministries
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To respond to this Bible study, please email
the Rev. Dr. Suse McBay at smcbay@stmartinsepiscopal.org.
Week 4: Wrestling with God (How to Struggle with God)


Wrestling with God is not a type of prayer about which people line up to find out more. Engaging with God in conflict is something we come to, typically, when we are compelled. Contrary to popular belief, a deep prayer life is not one that is always in a state of happiness or optimism. A rich prayer life is one in which we can bring all of our selves to God–including those parts that hurt, ache and have serious doubts or questions.

There are many examples in the Bible (Gideon, Jacob, Job, Lamentations, Jonah, etc.). People who question God name their fears, their hurts and their hang-ups. Jesus Himself struggled with the suffering and sacrifice He was to make in Gethsemane and expressed words of abandonment on the cross (Mark 15:34). Over a third of the Psalms—the prayer book of the Bible—express some kind of lament, complaint or struggle.

Ways to wrestle faithfully with God:

  • Let go of the desire for clear cut answers. To wrestle with God is to face the tension between the reality of our pain and suffering, and our belief that God is truly good and powerful. This willingness to live with complexity is a willingness to reach deeply into the truth of God and the truth of our reality, however hard or challenging.

  • Begin naming your pain to God. Sometimes we have to say: “God this happened… and it hurts,” not “God this hurts, please fix it.” Naming your pain means sitting with the hurt in God’s presence. Perhaps you can find words from Scripture that echo your feelings—make those words your prayer. Perhaps each night you can conclude and pray, “Lord, this is what hurts today…” and pray it every night until there’s nothing left to pray. Find a symbolic picture or object that sums up your pain and leave it in plain sight. Tell your story of hurt to someone you trust and invite them to pray for you. Stop pushing the pain away and invite it into your conversations with God.

  • Begin naming where God seems absent or uncaring. This is an invitation to ask God the why question. This is hard! If God’s goodness is greater than we realize or have believed to date, we can end up feeling even more abandoned. Yet, if God is God, He can take our questions about His character and those things we don’t understand. It is a daring thing to pray, “You say You love me, but it doesn’t feel like it.” Put yourself in spaces where you can hear the truth of God’s goodness, places which may add to your questions and complaints. Come to church, read Scripture and listen to the words of liturgy. Put ourselves in spaces where the truth of God’s character is before us, even when we don’t understand how it could possibly be true.

  • In your wrestling, “have faith!” I probably don’t mean what you think I mean here. Having faith in God’s goodness is to call on God for an explanation when His goodness seems absent. “God, where are you in this? Why does it hurt so much? If You are good and You love me, why do I feel alone and you seem a million miles away?” This might seem like a radical idea: “having faith” is to have the confidence to shake your first at God and say, “This is not okay!” and trust that He is big enough to take it and will not abandon you for asking the hard questions.

What Job and so many faithful believers found through wrestling—and resisting superficial platitudes or explanations for their suffering—was this: God Himself. As Jacob said when wrestling with the angel in Genesis 32, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

Wrestling with God is hard.

It challenges a lot of our sensibilities of who we are, what faith looks like and how God should act. Yet, it is through wrestling with God we truly enter into the death of Christ, for it is how we invite God into our suffering. We do not hide the hard stuff away and pretend we’re okay. We do not ‘suck it up’ and believe as best we can. We trust resurrection is a work of God not a work of man.

Let the words of Job 30:20 be your words as you wrestle with your Creator and Redeemer:

“I cry to you and you do not answer me; I stand, and you merely look at me.”