How to Pray a Psalm of Lament – Heartfelt Devotions

You have opened the Bible because you want to pray, but the words seem to belong to someone else. The sorrow sounds larger than yours, or the confidence is farther than you can reach. You are not sure whether praying a psalm means saying every sentence as though it describes your own life.

You can begin by listening.

A lament is a prayer that brings trouble and questions before God. It may ask for attention, protest an absence, name an enemy or appeal for help. It does not need to explain why the trouble came before asking God to hear it.

The guide below uses Psalm 13. First we hear its whole prayer. Then we can borrow one truthful line and answer it with a few words of our own. We do not have to pretend that every word is ours already.

Listen To The Whole Prayer

Psalm 13 opens with questions:

How long, LORD?
Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long shall I take counsel in my soul,
having sorrow in my heart every day?
How long shall my enemy triumph over me?

Psalm 13:1-2, WEB

The heading associates the psalm with David but tells us no particular occasion. We are not given a bereavement story to reconstruct. These are words from Israel's prayer book, received by Christians as Scripture.

The speaker feels forgotten, carries daily sorrow and faces an enemy. The questions are addressed to the LORD, not kept outside until they become more polite. Their repetition lets us hear how long the waiting feels.

The next words ask for more than a better attitude:

Behold, and answer me, LORD, my God.
Give light to my eyes, lest I sleep in death;
lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed against him;”
lest my adversaries rejoice when I fall.

Psalm 13:3-4, WEB

This is a plea for life in the face of death and an enemy's victory. Our present circumstances may be very different. We need not call a difficult conversation the same danger, or find an enemy so that the poem will fit.

Listen, though, to the address within the plea: LORD, my God. The speaker who feels forgotten is still asking this God to look and answer.

The psalm ends:

But I trust in your loving kindness.
My heart rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing to the LORD,
because he has been good to me.

Psalm 13:5-6, WEB

Trust and song belong to the prayer too. They must not disappear because the opening feels more familiar to us today.

The Ending Is Not A Deadline

The poem gives us no account of what happened between the plea and the song. The final words may remember rescue or anticipate it. We cannot measure how much time has passed, or conclude that speaking the earlier lines produced the change.

Six verses are not six minutes in which a person must become ready to praise.

Other laments end differently. Psalm 88 continues to address God, but its final verse leaves the speaker separated from friends, in darkness. Scripture does not add a bright closing stanza there. Nor does one psalm make another's trust less real.

We can hear the whole prayer without making its ending our assignment for today. A lament is not more faithful because it sounds angrier, and a prayer is not finished only when it sounds confident. These poems give us language for speaking to God, not a required order of feelings.

Pray With One Line

The following movements are one optional way to pray with a psalm, not rules the psalm commands. There is no required posture, written record or length. Use a few available minutes, or leave the practice for another time.

1. Hear The Prayer Before Making It Yours

Read Psalm 13 once, silently or aloud. Let the questions, request and song stand together. You may use the text above rather than finding another book.

Notice what the speaker is asking God to do. There is no need to explain every image or identify an equivalent event in your own life. Reading can also be an act of listening to someone whose need is different from yours.

2. Stay With One Phrase You Can Use Honestly

Choose a phrase that gives you somewhere to begin. It might be the question How long, LORD? or the address LORD, my God. If the final words of trust are true for you today, you may begin there instead.

Keep the surrounding poem in view. Taking a phrase into prayer does not make its other words unimportant. You can acknowledge the speaker's danger without claiming it, and hear the song without pretending you can sing it yet.

No phrase has to feel especially powerful. Choose one you can say without putting on a voice that is not yours.

3. Answer With One Sentence Of Your Own

Let the phrase open a few ordinary words to God. After the address, perhaps:

LORD, my God, I miss the person who used to be here. Stay with me through this evening.

Or: How long, LORD? Hear me in the waiting I do not know how to explain.

These are examples, not sentences you must use. You may name a different need, offer thanks that is genuinely present, or ask to be heard without explaining the whole story. You need not discover a lesson, account for every feeling or find a reason the loss happened.

Then let the prayer rest. There is no need to repeat the process until you have found a better sentence or reached the poem's final confidence.

When The Words Are Not Yours Today

Some days you may only read. You may find that the address to God is all you can use, or that silence is more honest than another attempt at speech. Neither requires you to prove that you have prayed correctly.

You do not have to search through difficult memories to supply the poem with a story. If you do not want to continue, put the guide aside. Your belonging to God does not depend on finishing this practice.

If you wish to pray alongside someone, you may invite that person simply to read the psalm with you. You need not give an account of your sorrow, and they need not find an explanation for it. Listening to the same words can be the whole shared prayer.

The guide does not promise relief or resolution. It offers a way to bring what is true before God while leaving room for what you cannot yet say.

Prayer

LORD, my God, receive the words I can speak and the questions I leave unfinished. Hear the need beneath my few sentences. Keep me from calling sorrow a failure or borrowing confidence I cannot honestly offer. Let the prayers of your people give me words without requiring me to become someone else. I bring you what is true today. Hear me here. Amen.

Reflect

Which words of this psalm could you use honestly today, and which would you need to leave as the psalmist's words?

Sources

Scripture: Psalm 13 and Psalm 88, World English Bible.
Written by: Ruth Caldwell
Scope: This guide offers Christian spiritual support and education. It does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, therapy, or crisis services.