Christians are no strangers to affliction.
David reminds us in Psalm 34:19, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous.” Because God’s people live in a fallen world, we experience sickness, financial trouble, relational difficulties, grief, discouragement, opposition, and countless other providential trials.
What are we supposed to do with these burdens?
The Psalms give us a clear answer: bring them to God in prayer. The Psalms teach us that prayer is the place to bring our afflictions, burdens, and disorienting circumstances before God.
There are two ways the Psalms teach us this. First, they command us to bring our burdens to God. Second, the Psalmists exemplify what it looks like to bring those burdens to God in prayer.
The Psalms Command Us to Bring Our Burdens to God
Consider Psalm 37:5: “Commit your way to the LORD, trust also in Him.”
The word translated “commit” carries the idea of rolling something over onto another. We are to roll our way onto Yahweh—to entrust our paths to his safe keeping.
One immediate application of this command is prayer. Throughout the Psalter, David does precisely this. When he is surrounded by enemies and confronted with threatening circumstances, he turns to God and asks him for help and intervention.
Psalm 50:15 says: “Call upon Me in the day of trouble.”
God commands us to call upon Him in difficult days. When trouble assaults us and danger is near, we are not supposed to face those circumstances as though we were on our own.
Psalm 55:22 puts it even more vividly: “Cast your burden on the LORD, and He shall sustain you.”
To cast our burdens on Yahweh is to throw their weight onto him so that he might bear them rather than requiring us to bear them alone. And one of the chief ways we do this is through prayer. We bring the troubles of our hearts before God and entrust them to him.
Finally, consider Psalm 62:8: “Trust in Him at all times, you people; pour out your heart before Him; God is a refuge for us.”
To pour out our hearts before God is to bring our needs and burdens to him with fervor—to let our cries come before him in prayer. And we do this because of who God is: our refuge.
The Psalms, then, do not merely give us permission to bring our burdens to God. They command us to do so. This is God's gracious prescription for his afflicted people.
The Psalmists Show Us What This Looks Like
The Psalms not only command us to bring our burdens to God; they show us what this looks like in practice. The Psalmists repeatedly describe their prayers using words such as complaint, trouble, cry, distress, and supplication.
David writes in Psalm 55:2: “Attend to me, and hear me; I am restless in my complaint, and moan noisily.”
In Psalm 64:1: “Hear my voice, O God, in my complaint; preserve my life from the fear of the enemy.”
Psalm 77:2–3 says: “In the day of my trouble, I sought the LORD; My hand was stretched out in the night without ceasing; My soul refused to be comforted. I remembered God, and was troubled; I complained, and my spirit was overwhelmed.”
Psalm 102 begins: “Hear my prayer, O LORD, and let my cry come to You. Do not hide Your face from me in the day of my trouble; incline Your ear to me…”
Psalm 120:1 says: “In my distress I called to the LORD…”
And perhaps most clearly, David says in Psalm 142:1–2: “I cry out to the LORD with my voice; with my voice to the LORD I make my supplication. I pour out my complaint before Him; I declare before Him my trouble.”
Notice the combination: crying out, supplication, complaint, and trouble.
David is experiencing circumstances that burden him, but he does not simply internalize those burdens. Neither does he merely talk about them to other people. He takes them before the LORD. He honestly declares what is happening and how those circumstances are affecting him.
That is biblical lament, a holy kind of complaining; a telling to God what hurts us and asking him to intervene.
In this sense, prayer is the place where we can honestly and emotionally pour out our hearts before God—to lodge our complaints before heaven's King, to tell him of our troubles and distresses, and to ask him for help.
As Hebrews 4:16 puts it, we are to come “boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
What Burdens Are You Carrying?
The relevance of this teaching is obvious because Christians routinely experience providential affliction.
We face sickness and troubling medical diagnoses. We experience financial difficulties, relational problems, grief, and fears surrounding death. We may have enemies or experience persecution, even if only in milder forms.
The Psalms also address less tangible forms of suffering like spiritual discouragement, confusion, and doubt. Psalm 73 and Psalm 77 give us examples of believers wrestling with profound spiritual disorientation.
The Psalms speak of betrayal by friends (Psalm 41; 55), the taunts of those who hate God's people (Psalm 22), and seasons in which the Psalmist feels as though he is only a step away from death (Psalm 116).
In all these circumstances, the Psalmists intentionally pray. They cast their burdens upon the Lord. They bring their honest feelings to him and leave them in his hands.
What disorienting circumstances are you facing today?
What causes you grief? What causes you to groan?
Is it possible that you are carrying a burden that God has commanded you to cast upon him—but you have not yet done so?
Then answer the Bible's command: bring your burden to God in prayer.
An old hymn captures this truth beautifully:
"What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear,
all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer!"
That is one of the great lessons the Psalms teach us.
He has not commanded us to carry our burdens alone. He has commanded us to cast them upon him.
And as we do so, we discover again that the God who hears our cries is also the God in whom we can trust and who is our very present help in trouble (Psalm 46:1).
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