Praying Through Spiritual Rapids

Photo by Michael Hamments on Unsplash

The following article, “Praying Through Spiritual Rapids,” by Joe Chambers, first appeared on Field Notes On The Jesus’ Way on March 20, 2025.

Pastor, author, and soul companion, Joe Chambers, joined Adam Ormord (LifePoint Resources) on The Being Formed Podcast to talk about “Navigating the Soul’s Journey” (Episode 29). We are grateful for the opportunity to share Joe’s reflections on praying through the rapids with our LifePoint Resources community. Click here to read more from Joe Chambers.

Praying Through Spiritual Rapids

Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence  – Paul Simon

There is a dark and desolate place in the life of everyone who follows the Man from Galilee. It is a place of confusion, unanswered prayers, sorrow, and despair. It goes by many names: crisis of belief, spiritual depression, desolation, wilderness wanderings, the wall, and dark night of the soul.

It can be a place of catastrophic destruction due to a self-inflicted wound like a moral failure. Or you are the victim of someone else’s selfish and sinful choice. It can be a health scare. It can be a hidden addiction that has wormed its way to the surface of your life and no longer stays hidden. It can be a professional or relational failure. It can be a growing disillusionment that the life you have built is not fulfilling the deepest longings of your soul.

Sometimes, through no fault of your own, life kicks you in the teeth, and darkness becomes your boon companion.

No one is exempt from this midnight at high noon. Moses went through this place, Elijah did, and King David did. Jeremiah lived in the desert of desolation all his life. John the Baptizer knew this dark place, and so did his cousin from Nazareth when he found himself in a garden called Gethsemane.

Perhaps an analogy will help.

I live in the valley of the Arkansas River’s headwaters. Every late spring and early summer, when the snow melts, the river swells to a point where it is a thrilling opportunity for recreational raft trips. Many rafting companies in our valley provide guided rafting trips down the river. These guides know the classifications of the rapids. The most advanced rapids are class 5.

Rivers in the Class 5 group contain incredibly long, obstructed, or violent rapids, exposing a paddler to added risk. Drops may contain large, unavoidable waves and holes or steep, congested chutes with complex, demanding routes. Rapids may continue for long distances between pools, requiring a high fitness level. Several of these factors may be combined at the high end of the scale. Advanced scouting is recommended but may be challenging to accomplish. Swims are dangerous, and rescue is often difficult, even for experts. Proper equipment, extensive experience, and practiced rescue skills are essential to attempt rapids in this classification.

Spiritually, class five rapids is a stage in our spiritual development when a person undergoes a difficult and significant transition to a deeper perception of life and their place in it. This enhanced awareness is accompanied by a painful shedding of previous conceptual frameworks such as an identity, relationship, career, habit or belief system that previously allowed us to construct meaning in our life.

The rapids are a deeply holy place on the faith journey. It is always individual, mysterious, God-shaped, and infused with Spirit—inviting us to transformation. The rapids are one of the most difficult parts of the faith journey and it asks more surrender of us than we may think we are capable of.

A guide is recommended through this stage of your sacred journey. A guide who knows this section of the river of faith.

No one wants to go through the rapids. It is a season of pain, uncertainty, and disorientation. But we all have whitewater rapids in our lives. Even Jesus had class five rapids—the crucifixion. A frequent question asked is what do we do when we encounter our class five rapids? Often that means what do I need to do to stop this pain, uncertainty, and confusion. We can get a glimpse of how to position ourselves during the whitewater phase by following Jesus’ pattern of prayer.

Allow Jesus to accompany you down the river with these prayers.

“My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me…”  Matthew 26:39

Jesus prays his way into and through his rapids—death on the cross. In the praying, death acquires an unguessed dimension: no longer a dead end but a passageway to resurrection, no longer a terminus, but a beginning.

When we pray, we willingly participate in what God is doing, without knowing precisely what God is doing, how God is doing it, or when we will know what is going on—if ever.

Like Jesus, this is a time to pray what we want, not what we ought to want.

What do you want from God?

What are your deepest feelings right now?

What are you sensing in the stillness?

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Mark 15:34

Whitewater rapids cut us off from our moorings. Other than death, rapids are the ultimate incomprehensibility. I no longer belong. I no longer fit. And I am not given an explanation.

Jesus’ way of dealing with his rapids is to move into the midst of it an let the rapids do their deeper work on his soul. The writer of Hebrews reminds us, Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. (Heb. 5:8)

It is not easy. Nobody said it would be easy. It wasn’t for Jesus. Praying this fragment prayer reveals the worst that comes to us in a life of belief in God: the experience of absolute abandonment by God.

What does your heart feel as you go down these rapids?

Acknowledge the sorrow of desolation.

Lift your heart towards your deepest longings.

What do you sense during this time of silence?

“Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” Luke 23:34

Often, when we go through our rapids, those around us will be just as confused by the darkness and uncertainty as we are. Some will want us to snap out of it and be happy. Others will try to fix us with encouraging words and platitudes. Or by giving us unsolicited advice.

Here a posture of grace and mercy is needed. Hessed, lovingkindness, will be needed in large doses. For “Job’s friends” can be relentlessly brutal.

Ask for a double portion of steadfast love and mercy for family and friends.

Listen to the Holy Spirit as you listen to those who don’t understand.

Live with an open heart and hand towards others.

“I thirst.”  John 19:28

This is a one-word prayer in Greek: dipso. Think about what Jesus prayed on the cross—sense the abandonment, forgiveness, and relinquishment. And now—pain: the body shutting down, lungs failing, heart failing, kidney’s failing. In Jesus’ class five rapids, this leave-taking of his body was experienced as excruciating thirst.

We can never underestimate the impact of the rapids or dark night of the soul on our physical state. Pay attention to what your body is saying to you. It is not unreasonable to ask God for relief from the pain we go through as we pass through rapids.

Where do you feel tension in your body through this experience?

Ask God to help you notice specific physical pain or discomfort.

Listen to what your body is telling you about how this experience is affecting you physically.

Let God speak to you through your physical experience.

“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Luke 23:46

This is a prayer of trust. When we pray this prayer, we don’t know what might happen next, but we are releasing ourselves into the care and control of the one who calls us “beloved”.

Jesus prayed this trusting prayer in circumstances that were anything but secure and safe. When you pray this prayer through your rapids, picture being in the company of Jesus as he utters it from the cross.

Remember: Jesus was not giving up; he was entering in—entering into the work of salvation. And when we pray this prayer as we go through our rapids; we are entering into the work—deep work—of what the rapids can accomplish in our souls.

What does it feel like to pray this prayer?

In what ways are you deceiving yourself?

Let your grasp of control be released to the Father.

What will the evidence be of you leaving the outcomes with God?

What we can’t know in the midst of the rapids is that there is life on the other side that is unspeakable and full of glory. There is resurrection morn. There is exaltation, if not in this life, in the life to come. It is our outcome, it is our destination, it is our birthright as the beloved of God.

As I heard an old preacher say one time, “Never doubt in the dark what God revealed to you in the light.”

In the meantime, pray, paddle, and trust God to remember you.