“We don’t go there.” I’ve heard many express that sentiment about their family. I think of couples who refuse to talk about sex, or the family that hides dad’s explosive anger. When such toxic behaviors become normalized, they turn into dysfunction. From the outside, anyone can recognize these areas of avoidance as a sign of dysfunction. The pain of pressing into such challenging areas hinders the full formation and growth of healthy familial relationships.

What is the area of your faith where you “don’t go there” with God? What do you avoid talking to God about? Where do you mask your true feelings when you approach God?

Most of us have ruts in our prayer life. We talk to God about certain things and bury other things, often things we try to avoid thinking about ourselves. But an unsurfaced problem is still a problem. Have you ever asked God to reveal the things on his heart that he wants you to pray for?

As we follow Jesus on the final day of his life, we are invited to experience a full and uninhibited faith that refuses to bury anything.

One of the most stunning moments we witness as Jesus interacts with God the Father is in his cry of dereliction. In the final moments of his life, Jesus cries out to God. Matthew describes the scene:

Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, “This man is calling Elijah.” And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.” And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. (Matt. 27:45-50).

At noon (“the sixth hour”), darkness overtook the land, like the darkness that overtook Egypt. At 3 pm (“the ninth hour”), death drew near to the Savior. He had undergone shaming by the leaders, shaming by the crowds, shaming by his own apostles, being scourged including barbed hooks that tore the flesh from his chest and back, a crown of thorns, and the torment of the cross. Far more, he was undergoing the agony of carrying the weight of the sin of the world placed on his shoulders.

He had dwelt in perfect union with the Father and the Spirit from eternity past?. By being born, he had taken on flesh and had suffered separation from that idyllic harmony for the first time. Even in human form, he lived a perfect life and still had spiritual unity with the Father and the Spirit. But on the cross, Christ fulfilled his destiny to be “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn 1:29). Humanity’s sin rested on the shoulders of the spotless one. And now he suffered the deepest pain of all: spiritual separation from the Father.

Jesus minces no words when he cries out “with a loud voice” while in excruciating physical pain to God the Father with the words of Psalm 22. Matthew and Mark stop the narrative in the Koine (common) Greek they’ve been writing their gospels in and shift to the exact Aramaic words Jesus says, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani.” That is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

“Why God, why?” Our Savior cries out to God the Father, mourning his feeling of absolute abandonment.

Let that sink in. God the Son wails to God the Father. God, the perfect Son, sorrowfully asks, “Why?”

Do you speak to God like that? Do you have the confidence in your relationship with God to share with him your profound heartaches? Do you have the intimacy with God to let him into the roiling, dark places in your heart? Do you let him know your confusion, your sorrows, your anger, your fears, your wounds? Even when it is directed at him? Jesus did. And we are invited to as well.

There is a convention in ancient writing that quoting from the beginning of a passage is shorthand for the inclusion of the entire text. It’s the ancient version of our ellipsis. For that reason, some biblical scholars believe that Jesus didn’t just quote the opening line from Psalm 22, but the entire Psalm. Whether he did or not isn’t that important. But what is profound is to sit in the Psalms of lament and even imprecatory Psalms, which cry out for God’s justice against one’s enemies.

Do you have a cry of dereliction faith? Do you trust God with all of your emotions? I encourage you to sit in David’s (and Jesus’s) Psalm 22 and give God all of your emotions, good, bad, shameful, and ugly today.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,
and by night, but I find no rest.

Yet you are holy,
    enthroned on the praises of Israel.
In you our fathers trusted;
    they trusted, and you delivered them.
To you they cried and were rescued;
    in you they trusted and were not put to shame.

But I am a worm and not a man,
    scorned by mankind and despised by the people.
All who see me mock me;
    they make mouths at me; they wag their heads;
“He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him;
    let him rescue him, for he delights in him!”

Yet you are he who took me from the womb;
    you made me trust you at my mother's breasts.
On you was I cast from my birth,
    and from my mother's womb you have been my God.
Be not far from me,
    for trouble is near,
    and there is none to help.

Many bulls encompass me;
strong bulls of Bashan surround me;
they open wide their mouths at me,
like a ravening and roaring lion.

I am poured out like water,
    and all my bones are out of joint;
my heart is like wax;
    it is melted within my breast;
my strength is dried up like a potsherd,
    and my tongue sticks to my jaws;
    you lay me in the dust of death.

For dogs encompass me;
a company of evildoers encircles me;
they have pierced my hands and feet[b]—
I can count all my bones—
they stare and gloat over me;
they divide my garments among them,
and for my clothing they cast lots.

But you, O Lord, do not be far off!
    O you my help, come quickly to my aid!
Deliver my soul from the sword,
    my precious life from the power of the dog!
     Save me from the mouth of the lion!
You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen!

I will tell of your name to my brothers;
    in the midst of the congregation I will praise you:
You who fear the Lord, praise him!
    All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him,
    and stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!
For he has not despised or abhorred
    the affliction of the afflicted,
and he has not hidden his face from him,
    but has heard, when he cried to him.

From you comes my praise in the great congregation;
    my vows I will perform before those who fear him.
The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied;
    those who seek him shall praise the Lord!
    May your hearts live forever!

All the ends of the earth shall remember
    and turn to the Lord,
and all the families of the nations
    shall worship before you.
For kingship belongs to the Lord,
    and he rules over the nations.

All the prosperous of the earth eat and worship;
    before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,
    even the one who could not keep himself alive.
Posterity shall serve him;
    it shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation;
they shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn,
    that he has done it. (Psalm 22)