The story of the people of Israel calling for a king has taught me two things about prayer. It has become especially helpful as I am discipling a young man on this very thing.

Prayer needs to be submissive. I do not think it was wrong for the people to want a king – God even made provisions for such an event. However, they did not ask but rather demanded a king.

It would seem that God does listen and allow for such prayers and allows them to produce the fruit that such disobedience calls for. It may be the way God disciplines us.

I believe my prayer needs to be more in line with the way Jesus prayed – my blessing is wrapped up in God’s wll and not in my own.

I will come to you and save you.

I will destroy all the nations

    where I have scattered you,

    but I will not destroy you.

I will not let you go unpunished;

    but when I punish you, I will be fair.

I, the Lord, have spoken. – Jeremiah 46:28

If I have messed up, it is not the end of the world. I will choose to receive God’s discipline and maybe even come to a place where I can thank Him for it. Imagine if He did not discipline and allowed me to continue on my own path to destruction? He obviously loves me too much.

So complaint will be, or at least should be, a recurring element in the praying of the born again. The presence of complaint prayers in God’s prayer book (for that is what the Psalter really is) shows that, so far from being irreverent, prayers of this kind, describing the distress of oneself and others in the freest and most forthright, forceful language imaginable, are entirely in order. Ignoring in our prayers situations that are not “just fine” would by contrast be barren unrealism. For this world is a battleground on which Satan and his hosts strive desperately to obstruct and spoil God’s work in every way they can; the book of Revelation reveals that in this war all sorts of bad and destructive things will happen to Christians, churches and the larger human community; thus there will always be things to pray about in complaint terms as part of one’s regular petitions. Using cursing psalms as complaint prayers against Satan and his forces might be a good way to begin. – J.I. Packer