Praying in Pain

Glenna Marshall is a Pastor's wife and mother of two sons. She's the author of: The Promise of His Presence, Everyday Faithfulness, and other books. She appeared on Crosstalk to discuss her newest release: "Praying in Pain: How to Know You're Heard When You Haven't Been Healed." Have you ever gone to bed at night dreading the next multiple hours where sleep eludes you due to pain? Perhaps this isn't a single night but night after night. You try the usual things, shifting your position in bed multiple times, trying different pillow positions, perhaps using some sort of over-the-counter pain-reliever, perhaps applying heat or cold, or moving from your bed to the couch to the recliner and then back to your bed again with no lasting relief. Glenna writes, "I've spent many nights treading water in an ocean of pain. And yet, I can think of no other place or time when God has most faithfully met me in the dark. In the night. In the crucible of my deepest and hardest physical suffering. I have learned that though it feels impossibly hard to pray in the grip of crushing pain, prayer is how we survive it. It's how we endure." What about when your pain is so great you cannot pray? Is it normal to feel like God is ignoring us when we're in pain? What about those who say prayer for pain is merely complaining to God? What help can the Psalms bring to such situations? What part does gratitude play when suffering? These are just a number of questions Glenna answers as she explains, from experience, how to handle pain from a biblical perspective.