Praying to God in Our Suffering

October 22, 2025/Daniel Rowlands/
Photo Credit: bymuratdeniz / iStock.com

Photo Credit: bymuratdeniz / iStock.com

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Suffering and struggles send us to prayer. Even though we desire to be a “prayer warrior,” the distractions of everyday life tend to put prayer too low on our list of priorities. Then comes suffering.

All Christians will suffer, just as our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus suffered:

For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake. (Phil. 1:29)

And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he [Jesus] said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34)

Prayer is an act of steadfast faith.

Besides suffering as followers of Christ Jesus, who suffered on our behalf so that we, by faith in him, may be saved from our sins to a glorious and everlasting life, suffering in this life strengthens our faith and drives us to prayer. When James instructs us to be joyful in suffering (James 1:2), he explains that suffering tests our faith and produces steadfastness so that we lack nothing (James 1:3-4).

In other words, suffering often turns our faith away from ourselves, away from our own self-sufficiency and pride, to cry out to the Lord for help. This is an act of faith, a confidence of believing that God can help us in our suffering and that he is the one who loves us, who sustains us, who heals us, and who hears us. Prayer is an act of steadfast faith.

For example, when Christ Jesus was nearing his time to suffer on the cross, he turned to God the Father in prayer. The writer of Hebrews records,

In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. (Heb. 5:7)

The High Priestly Prayer of Jesus in John 17 is another example of Christ praying to the Father just before he would be betrayed and go to the cross to die. In Matthew 26 Jesus goes alone on the Mount of Olives to pray before he would be betrayed, and with “sweat dropping like blood to the ground” he prayed earnestly with agony to the Father to let the cup of his suffering pass, then saying, “Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:39-44).

Suffering drives us to prayer, even though we desire God’s will to be done.

No doubt there are times when many of us have prayed in agony with many tears that we or our loved ones would be healed. We have prayed for grace in our suffering, so that we would bear our afflictions with a strong faith as an example to others, and that God would remove from us our own cross of suffering and restore us to the joy of good health and pleasant times. We cast our burdens upon God, hoping for a favorable answer to our prayers, even though we desire God’s will to be done (see Matt: 6:10; the Lord’s Prayer).

Job suffered terribly. We know the story of how he was on the top of the world—wealthy, healthy, a wonderful family, obedient, with a reverence for God, and serving him faithfully. But for reasons Job didn’t know, he suffered the loss of everything. Everything. In the end after his three friends tried to explain all the reasons why he suffered, God challenged Job, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” (Job 38:2). The Lord turned to Job with reminders of creation and providence. He faithfully remembered that God who created all things and upholds and rules all things by his sovereign providence will not always reveal why a particular person suffers. We may never know the reason, even though our friends speculate and we lay awake at night asking our Lord, “Why?”

So when we suffer, may we pray that the Lord will give us the grace to bear it well.

We turn to prayer. We cry out to God, and he hears us. He knows our frame as the dust we are. He knows our hardships and suffering, He knows the pain we bear, for in God the Son, Christ Jesus, he suffered beyond our imagination to show his love to us. Job responded to his suffering with a prayer:

Then Job answered the Lord and said:

“I know that you can do all things,
     and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
     things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
  ‘Hear, and I will speak;
     I will question you, and you make it known to me.’
I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,
     but now my eye sees you;
therefore I despise myself,
     and repent in[a] dust and ashes.” (Job 42:1-6)

Job knew the sovereignty of God in his suffering and turned to him in prayer, trusting in God that his purposes, though often unknown, are good and true. So, when we suffer, may we pray that the Lord will also strengthen our faith, that he will give us the grace to bear it well as we follow in the footsteps of Christ Jesus until that amazing day when there will be no more suffering, no more death, no more crying, no more mourning, and no more pain (Rev. 21:4).

This article is adapted from “Praying to God in Our Suffering” in Beautiful Christian Life’s June 2025 newsletter, “Prayer.”

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