June Chan: Unfiltered Prayer – A Path to Intimacy with God

During the recent Faculty Development Days, EAST Adjunct Faculty June Chan shared a powerful devotional below.

A friend once asked me, “When was the last time you shouted at God?” I was taken aback by his question. I replied, “I’ve never shouted at God.” At the time, I was going through a difficult period. I’d whined, I complained, I pleaded, I probably cajoled, but no, I had never let myself shout at God.

A Question That Opened My Heart

My friend’s question, though, made me rethink my relationship with God. How intimate do I allow myself to be with him? Do I truly trust God enough to bring him my unfiltered prayers—especially in times of doubt, despair, or sheer petulance?

Letting God See the Real Me

I’ve always thought of myself as authentic, both with people and with God. I may resist the temptation not to be rude when someone gets on my nerves, but I like to think I put up no pretences. What you see is what you get—at home, at work, at church, with friends and strangers.

Yet during pre-seminary counselling, my pastoral counsellor noticed something troubling. I was always careful with my words. Too careful. I couldn’t say anything negative without couching it in justifications and excuses, not for myself, but for everyone else. It was hard for him to get to the truth of how I felt beneath all the layers of cerebral reasons and objections. To say I was emotionally reserved would be an understatement. During one particularly frustrating session, when I simply could not describe how I was feeling, it ended with me asking the counsellor to give me a few possible emotions—multiple-choice options if you will—and I’ll tell him if any resonated.

Now, I wasn’t always so buttoned up. “Before Christ,” I had a real anger management problem. At the risk of over-sharing, I’ll give you a few highlights: I once smashed an old dial-up telephone after a call that didn’t go my way; I bloodied my knuckles punching the wall after an argument with a friend; and I discovered—almost with glee—you really can’t break those old Snapple glass bottles no matter how hard you throw them, so you can hurl them repeatedly until exhausted.

When I began following Jesus, he helped me process much of that anger. But I also adopted outwardly proper behaviour that stunted my emotional growth. On top of that, I struggled to pray the Psalms because I always imagined myself as one of the bad guys, deserving only wrath and fury. The idea of saying anything to God that was less than pure gratitude was inconceivable.

By the time my friend asked his question, I thought I had come a long way. I’d come to see God as a loving Father, Jesus as a gracious Saviour, the Holy Spirit as a trusted companion. I felt free to ask for help and for material things, to tell God how I feel about other people, to pour out my deepest desires and disappointments. I believed I was fully honest with God. After all, he already knows everything about me, so what’s the point in pretending?

Now, do I think that’s true? For sure, I do. I could write an essay on it. Yet my friend’s question exposed the troubling lies my heart still held to about God and our relationship. As C.S. Lewis wrote in The Problem of Pain, what we think and what we think to be true are two very different things. Deep down, I thought that if I were to be so impertinent as to point my finger at God and accuse him of short-changing me, or if I were so ungrateful as to ask for more after all he’d already given me, then I’d be a very poor follower indeed. Perhaps more truthfully, I didn’t want to give God any reason to withhold blessings he might’ve given me if I weren’t being such a brat.

What holds me back from opening to God is this deep belief: if I enter into the truth of myself, I won’t be loved, and I’ll lose something. But the truth is that nothing can separate us from God’s love. The journey then is first to be who we are in his presence, and from there to become all we can be in him. Whatever is happening in my life or how I feel, I can always invite God into the emptiness and chaos.

Scripture’s Witness to Raw, Honest Prayer

When I read the Psalms now, I see a whole other side to how God’s people actually speak to him.

David, in Psalm 13, demands of God, “How long, LORD, will you continue to ignore me? How long will you pay no attention to me? How long must I worry and suffer in broad daylight? Look at me! Answer me!” David vents raw fear and accusation—and finally the psalm ends in trust. He didn’t tidy up his emotions first, but that trust grew inside honesty.

But sometimes I don’t feel ready to end with trust or thanksgiving. Psalm 88 gives me an ironic sense of comfort. Heman laments to God, “You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths … Why do you reject me and hide your face from me?” (Emphasis added.) Often considered the darkest psalm, it famously closes with “Darkness is my closest friend”—without resolution, just dejection and despair. Still, that counts as prayer. An honest, radical prayer that powerfully demonstrates God is big enough for all our unresolved feelings.

Jesus himself—in Gethsemane, before his crucifixion—expresses raw human anguish. Facing unimaginable suffering, he didn’t pretend to be stoic or strong. He didn’t offer a polite or guarded prayer. He pleaded with his father for an alternative path. And then on the cross, in his moment of deepest pain and confusion, Jesus uses the ancient, honest language of the psalms: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”

We see through the Bible that God can handle our hardest questions and truest emotions. As Psalm 139 says, “You have searched me, LORD, and you know me… you perceive my thoughts from afar.” And, as Eugene Peterson paraphrases, “You know everything I’m going to say before I start the first sentence.” And for Psalm 62, Peterson puts it beautifully: “God is a safe place to be,” so we can “trust in him at all times and pour out our hearts before him!” If God values inward truth and sincerity, that should extend to our prayers—to voicing what is true in our souls.

Intimacy Born from Truthfulness

In conclusion, prayer doesn’t require me to pretend I have it all together. Being honest in prayer isn’t sinful—rather, it shows I am truly offering my heart to God. And so, in the last months—during what I can only term “My year of living joblessly”—I finally did it. I shouted at God. I asked, “Why is this happening? I thought I had followed your will!” I railed, “Why do you favour her over me?” Pathetically, I even lamented, “Why don’t you like me?”

But really, what I was saying was, “God, I don’t love you—but I wish I did.”

And that honest, broken, and desperate prayer became my path to intimacy with him. Because God would rather have my honest rage than my polite distance. God can work with what is real.

So, as my friend asked me, I now ask you: “When was the last time you shouted at God?” If you let yourself, what might you say to Him?

Closing Prayer

Our Father in heaven,

We come before you, carrying the weight of our unspoken words—the prayers we’ve been too courteous to offer; the grievances we’ve held back; the rage we’ve haven’t dared to name. Help us to trust you enough to bring our true selves, raw and unfiltered. Teach us to bridge the gap between our words and our hearts. You see us completely and love us unconditionally. Let us come into the safe space that is you, and may it be a place of intimate encounter.

We ask this in the name of your precious Son Jesus, who taught and showed us how to pray,

Amen.