Sharing Your Feelings with God in Prayer

The Bible is how God shares His heart with us; prayer is how we share our hearts with God. God is so excited about hearing from us, so eager to help us learn how to speak to Him, that he put an entire book of prayers in the Bible: the Psalms. This book contains 150 different prayers and songs. In those psalms, we find people bringing every imaginable feeling to God: joy, gratitude, depression, loneliness, discouragement, hopefulness, anger, bitterness, fear, worry, regret, envy, insecurity, embarrassment, excitement, joy . . . the list could go on and on. As you can see, some of those feelings are positive emotions we enjoy, while others are ones we wish we could avoid; Some are righteous, and others are not, but God put them in Scripture to show us that He’s willing to listen to all of them!

That means you can pray . . .  

• when you’re in a bad mood;  
• when you aren’t in a great place spiritually;  
• when you’re feeling angry or confused or rebellious;  
• when you’re anxious or depressed.

Now, prayer isn’t just a place for venting—spewing your unfiltered emotions—although you will find plenty of examples of people venting to God in the Psalms. Prayer is the place where we express our feelings and then work through them with God. Just as we talk to friends or family when we need to sort through feelings, and they help us find resolution and solutions, so we can talk to God and ask Him to help us process and move forward.

And the great news? God is always there, no matter how we feel. We may have off days (or weeks or months!) in our prayer life, but God never does. We may have off days (or weeks or months!) in our walk of faith—times when we aren’t as faithful or righteous as we want to be—but God loves us through our growing pains and mistakes. And He always will. God wants to talk to you, no matter what. 

And remember: Prayer isn’t a feeling. Prayer works sort of like our close friendships. Some days you feel all the friends-forever feels, and other days, you’re just like, “Hey, how’s it going? Cool. We’re all good.” In your relationship with God, you’ll have some days when you feel inspired or moved or grateful; other days you’ll just show up and talk to God about what’s on your mind without fireworks or epic background music. Our closeness with God doesn’t depend on how we feel—it depends on God’s love. And while our feelings change all the time, God’s love never does.