Walking with God through Pain and Suffering by Timothy Keller
Week 13: Chapter 12 — Praying Through Suffering
Read Chapter 12 of Walking with God through Pain and Suffering. Key Scripture: Psalms 22, 88; Romans 8:26-27.
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The final chapter of the book's practical section focuses on prayer — the most intimate and most tested discipline in a season of suffering. Keller draws especially on the Psalms, whose raw honesty may surprise you.
Discussion Questions
7 questions1.Keller makes much of the Psalms of lament — poems like Psalm 22 and Psalm 88 — which are brutally honest with God about pain, confusion, and even the feeling of divine abandonment. Why is this kind of prayer legitimate? What does it tell us about the character of God that such prayers are preserved in Scripture?
2.Keller contrasts the lament psalms with the kind of polite, sanitized prayer we often offer in suffering — prayers that say what we think God wants to hear rather than what we actually feel. Have you ever prayed a genuinely angry or despairing prayer? What was that experience like?
3.Psalm 22 begins with "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" — which Jesus himself cried from the cross. Keller argues that Jesus' use of this psalm on the cross means that honest lament is not unbelief but the deepest kind of faith. How does this reshape your understanding of what "faithful" prayer looks like in suffering?
a.What kinds of things have you felt you couldn't say to God in prayer? Why?
b.What would it mean to bring those things to him now?
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