Lord, with All Due Respect

About this book

Some days you can pray with your hands raised. Other days you can barely get the words out, and the ones that do come aren't the kind you'd say out loud in church.This book is for those other days.LORD, WITH ALL DUE RESPECT is a collection of eighty honest prayers for the tired, the grieving, the doubting, and the still-hoping. Each prayer is followed by a verse from Scripture, not to correct what you just said but to meet it with the reassurance that you will be okay.The prayers move through seven sections: Belonging, Clarity, Healing, Strength, Surrender, Longing, and Gratitude. Together they give you permission to tell God the truth. To be angry. To be numb. To admit you're running on fumes. To ask the questions that polite faith doesn't always make room for.The title is a little defiant, and that's the point. The prayers inside are not. They're sincere, somber, and direct. The humor lives only in the framing, in the foreword and the section headers and the closing postscript, never at the expense of God, faith, or your pain. It comes from the very human experience of trying to speak politely to God while life is confusing, exhausting, and occasionally absurd.If you've been told your weariness is just a "season," that your doubt is a "faith journey," or that there's a reason for everything, this book is a quiet permission slip to set all of that down. You don't have to perform. You don't have to be grateful for the thing that's breaking you. You just have to show up and tell the truth.The God these prayers are spoken to is not fragile. He can take it.And so, with all due respect, can you. That's the whole point.