Today’s focus is on prayer as a cry — not a polished, polite prayer, but an outcry or complaint to God. When life hurts and sorrow overwhelms, tidy prayers fall flat. Outcry or Lament is not faithless; it’s a form of protest. Lament says, “This isn’t right,” and appeals to God to act, to heal, to make things whole. But what happens when we cry out and get no explanation? Today Robyn Elliott will dig into the life of Job, a man who’s whole life came crashing down along with his theology and he saw God in a whole new way.
Questions:
1. How do you usually imagine God when you pray — and how might that image shape how or even if you pray? Is God distant? Disappointed? Gentle? Attentive? How does that affect your openness in prayer?
2. When life gets painful or confusing, what’s your natural reaction — to withdraw from God, to plead with Him, or to protest? What does that say about what you believe prayer is for?
3. If lament is a form of protest — what do you think it means to “protest in faith”?
How can honest complaint actually be an expression of trust rather than rebellion?
4. Can you think of a time when you brought your raw emotions to God — grief, anger, confusion — and felt met rather than rejected? What did that moment teach you about God’s character?
5. What would it look like for you to practice more honest prayer this week?
(Maybe a prayer of lament, a written complaint, a conversation with God without filters.)
6. The people of Job’s time believed in the Retribution Principle — “good things happen to good people.” Where do you still see that mindset showing up today — maybe even in subtle ways in your own thinking?
7. When you’ve faced pain or loss, have you ever felt pressure to keep your faith “tidy”?
What might it look like to follow Job’s example and bring your unfiltered emotions to God instead?
8. Job never gets the answers he’s looking for — but he does get an encounter with God.
What do you think that tells us about the kind of relationship God desires with us, especially in suffering?
9. When have you heard or seen modern “Job’s friends” — people offering religious explanations or blame when someone suffers?
How does that kind of thinking distort our understanding of God’s justice and compassion?
10. At the end of Job, God corrects everyone’s assumptions — but gives no explanation for Job’s suffering. How might that reshape the way we respond to our own unanswered “whys”?
11. Hope in lament isn’t denial — it’s defiant trust.
Where in your life do you need that kind of tenacious, ferocious hope — hope that believes God is love even when nothing makes sense?
