No Holds Barred: Wrestling with God in Prayer is the book on prayer I have been waiting for! For years, I have argued that a greater familiarity with the Psalms results in deeper personal relationship with God and a greater diversity of expression in public worship. Now, I have the perfect resource to offer others that is easy-to-read and presented with pastoral wisdom.

Pastor Mark D. Roberts challenges us to “no holds barred” prayer, that is, prayer without limits or restraints.

Our typical approach to God brings to mind Olympic wrestling, in which every move is governed by detailed rules. Our communication with God is cautious, controlled, disciplined, and relentlessly boring. Fearful that we’ll do something wrong or that God won’t accept our true selves, we tame our prayers to the point that we actually hide our selves from the Lord. (4)

With the Psalms as our guide we are liberated from the plodding monotony of routine, comfortable, and predictable prayers that usually mask, rather than reveal, our true feelings. The more acquainted we are with the full breadth of human expression and experience in the psalms, the deeper our relationship with God will be. It will be a relationship that connects with all life events – good, bad, and everything in-between – and is expressed with our whole heart – from joy to despair, ecstasy to agony, love to hate.

In the course of his book, Roberts covers a wide spectrum of diverse psalms. With pastoral skill and sensitivity he applies the psalms to all the possible experiences of the Christian life. He covers:

• Prayers of asking. The psalmists often repeat their requests to God. “You can’t read one psalm, not to mention the whole collection, without marveling at the freedom of the psalmists to ask again and again for what they need” (23). This encourages us to continue to present our requests to God without fail. There is nothing wrong with repeatedly imploring God with our concerns.
• Prayers of remembering. If we want to spur worship in our hearts, we should regularly remember God’s wonders and mighty deeds in the past. The psalms demonstrate how this practice prompts us to praise and adoration.
• Prayers of silence. The psalms call us not only to shout, praise, clap, and dance, but also to periods of silent rest in the presence of God.
• Prayers of physical expression. “More than one hundred times the Psalms tell us to do something with our bodies as we pray” (65). We are called to stand, kneel, bow, clap, shout, sing, and lift our hands – anything but sit (something the Psalms never encourage us to do). Although we should not completely identify worship with physical expression, we must remember that we are integrated beings – what we do with our body impacts our attitude, and vice versa.
• Prayers of desperation and doubt. Many psalms are lament psalms – prayers expressing frustrations, difficulties, and sorrows. The lament psalms demonstrate that the Spirit of God is present in our groaning. We are given the freedom to pray our doubts and fears. This teaches us about the kind of God we approach: “What kind of God would answer a prayer such as ‘I believe; help my unbelief!’? Only a God who seeks genuine relationship with us, not artificial religiosity. Only a God who desires humble honesty, not pompous piety” (89).
• Prayers of vengeance. The imprecatory psalms – psalms that call down God’s curse upon enemies – are difficult to harmonize with Jesus’ teaching on loving our enemies and his example at the cross (“Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing”). Roberts suggests that these prayers remain relevant: “our hate needs to be prayed, not suppressed” (98). When we surrender our vengeful desires to the Lord, we leave justice in his hands and refuse to execute it ourselves.
• Prayers of thanksgiving. The psalms are full of expression of gratitude. God not only deserves our gratitude, but like many spiritual practices, we benefit from expressing our gratitude to God. “Indeed, gratitude helps us slow down and savor life, much as we might linger over a fine meal to enjoy its pleasures. When we thank God for his gifts, we enjoy them doubly, both in the initial experience and in our gratitude” (119).
• Prayers of praise. “Praise knows no limits because there is no limit to the greatness of God. As David proclaimed, ‘Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; his greatness is unsearchable’ (verse 3). The measure of our praise is God’s own greatness. But his greatness exceeds our tools for measurement. We can’t ever fathom the unsearchable grandeur of God. No matter how much we perceive it, there’s always more that eludes us, infinitely more. Therefore, our praise never comes to an end, just a temporary time-out” (133). Roberts quotes C. S. Lewis to demonstrate how praise both pleases God and satisfies the one praising God: “I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.”
• Prayers of confession. If we want to have a close, intimate relationship with God, we must regular confess our sins before him. We can only be fully open before God when we approach him without deception – without hiding something from him.

Roberts admits that this diversity of religious expression and experience is bound to make us uncomfortable. Such a breadth of worship is hard for any one person or group to embrace. With this wide variety of religious expression and experience comes a “nagging tension.” “For example,” Roberts writes, “in one chapter

I advocate the open, bold prayer of asking. Yet in another I speak of the need for trustful silence. The chapter on silence appears immediately before a chapter that calls for riotous, joyful shouting to God. And now I'm urging you to approach God in reverent humility, bowing before the King, whereas not long ago I was encouraging you to cozy up into God's lap. Am I hopelessly confused? (165)

Roberts is certainly not confused. He is simply embracing the whole spectrum of worship represented in the Psalms. He invites us to do the same. He challenges us – or better, the Psalms challenge us – to refuse to reduce worship to our comfort zone by resolving all its “nagging tensions.”

I’m convinced that the tensions we feel in the Psalms should not be resolved. Though we may want to tidy everything up so we can know exactly how much to submit to God and how much to ask from him, how much to shout for joy and how much to keep silent before him, the Psalms resist such neat and tidy prescriptions. In fact, a delightful messiness pervades the entire Psalter. (165-166)

Worship is ultimately not about our feelings or our tastes. It is not about what we want but what God wants. When we reduce worship to our own limited perspectives – when it becomes about us rather than about God – then we effectively deny the full revelation of the Psalms and thus resist complete spiritual transformation.

It is the diversity of the psalms that stretches us. The wide variety of psalms challenges us to know God in ways that go beyond our comfortable routines. Roberts is right, “It’s terribly easy for Christians to get into a prayer rut in which we approach God in more or less the same way every time” (166). Consequently, “We need both celebration and silence, both exuberant praise and reverent submission… Our God deserves both intimacy and reverence, both boldness and humility” (162, 168). A full embrace of the whole experience and expression of the entire book of Psalms will guarantee that we do not fall into the trap of worshipping a God that is “too small” or worshipping in ways that do not embrace the fullness of human experience.

The great discussion questions in the back of the book, the breadth of subject matter covered, the depth of analysis offered, all presented with warm, pastoral wisdom make this book an absolute joy to read, discuss – and most importantly – to lead us to prayer!

© Richard J. Vincent, 2005