No Holds Barred: Wrestling with God in Prayer

by Mark D. Roberts

God wants your whole heart. So let him have it.

Does your relationship with God feel stale and predictable? Do you struggle to find the time and energy for prayer? Then perhaps you’re being too polite with God.

If your prayers lack passion and honesty, then God may be as bored as you are. Guarded and “religiously correct” prayers might sound nice, but to God they sound half-hearted. He wants you to pray with freedom, boldness, and raw honesty.

The prayers we find in the Psalms run the gamut from awed worship to stunned silence to doubt, desperation, and rage. David and others like him had no time for safe, sanitized prayers. They wrestled with God when they prayed–with no holds barred.

Starting today, you can enjoy an energizing intimacy with God. No Holds Barred will help you plunge deeper into different types of prayer–asking, thanking, praising, and confessing. It also will lead you into new forms of praying–prayers of desperation and doubt, prayers that question God’s apparent slowness, prayers that demand answers.

These are the prayers that hold your attention–and that capture God’s attention. Don’t wait any longer to begin a rich new conversation with God.

Genres: Christian, Prayer

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Dre J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good read. I always need some faith refreshment in. He uses the psalms well to promote better prayer with God. The only thing about spiritual readings is that you have to be careful of what doctrine is being promoted etc. Overall a good reminder of how to pray well/better.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roberts beginning assertion is that prayer is not about complicated words but about connecting with God by expressing what’s on our hearts. He also talks of learning to ask for things that we normally wouldn’t ask for or things that we might be predisposed to say are not available to ask for when in reality God is waiting to give us the very thing that we are to afraid or prideful to ask for. Roberts addresses an area of prayer that few others have, but could be enveloped into prayer of thanksgiving, what he calls the prayer of remembering. He talks about how that creates a healthy orientation for our lives in who we are, who God is and our relationship with Him. He also makes an important point, to practice silence in our prayer life is not only to listen to God better, but simply to enjoy who God is without distraction. Silence doesn’t have to be the means to the end, it can be the pleasant result. Among all the “normal” topics of prayer that I found in Robert’s book, he added another new element to prayer, the prayer of vengeance. Taking the imprecatory psalms as examples, Roberts says that in order to be transparent in your relationship with God, you need to be who you are and not disguise your feelings. That includes expressing your anger and hurt and need for vengeance against those that harm you. He posits that since God is a God of Justice, and we have an innate sense of justice, why not go to him with our cries for vengeance? What better way to put it into God’s hands and let him deal with it the way it should be than to cry it out in prayer to him? At the end of each chapter, Roberts has a practical application section, an encouragement and somewhat of a catalyst to get people praying. At the end of the book he has discussion questions for each chapter.

Psalm 62:5-6 the importance of Silence

“To be sure, silence helps us live God-directed lives, But the Psalms don’t emphasize this result of quietness. Rather, they present silence more as the gracious end of a process rather than a means to some other worthy end, such as hearing God’s whisper. Silence is a way of being with God, a relational dynamic in which we actually ‘enjoy God,’ to use the language of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. It’s living in the calm peace and quiet trust, free from worry or pride. Why would any of us avoid this?”
53

“I’m convinced that the vengeful psalms can lead us to pray in ways we desperately need to learn. The uncomfortable imprecations help us confront not only we are but who God truly is as a just, merciful, and forgiving God. Amputating the vengeful psalms not only cripples God’s Word, but it also deprives us of a deeper, truer relationship with God.”
98

Hatred, even when justifiable, is an ugly feeling. It’s nothing we want to put on display, which explains why we’re not inclined to admit our hatred in prayer. We’d rather pretend it isn’t there, even in the presence of the God who knows everything about us. Who really wants to say, “Lord, here is something ugly in me”? . . . God seeks us as we are. He wants relationship with the real you, not with some airbrushed image. Thus, if you feel even a twinge of hatred or anger or vindictiveness, or whatever emotion you’d prefer to hide, God wants to hear about it. And you desperately need to talk with him about it. Otherwise, the negative emotion will fester, ultimately keeping you from intimacy with God and full participation in the work of his kingdom.”
99

[Teach Gleek]

Excellent resource on prayer. I used this to teach a group of middle and high school boys about prayer. They unanimously agreed it was the most important series to date in our Sunday School classes.