Heavenly Father
Isaiah Rashad
A raw cry upward from a man barely holding on
What do these signals mean?
- Edifying: Points the heart toward God, truth, hope, or love.
- Worth Weighing: Real good and real concern together. Test it before you take it in.
- Take Caution: Leans toward what could dull or mislead. Approach carefully.
- Consider Avoiding: Celebrates what Scripture warns against. Little here builds up.
Weighed against Scripture
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.”
The psalm opens with 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' — the same structure as Rashad's chorus. Crying out to a God who feels absent is one of Scripture's oldest and most honored postures.
“O LORD God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee: Let my prayer come before thee: incline thine ear unto my cry; For my soul is full of troubles: and my life draweth nigh unto the grave.”
The darkest psalm in the Bible, voiced by someone at the edge of death with no tidy resolution. Rashad's song sits in the same honest darkness without pretending it away.
“Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”
Paul says the Spirit intercedes with groanings too deep for words. Rashad's prayer is barely formed, but it is still a prayer — and this verse suggests that is enough.
This is a lament in the tradition of the Psalms — messy, desperate, and aimed at God. Rashad catalogs real pain: self-harm, addiction, a drunk and absent father, and the industry's hollow rewards. The refrain 'Heavenly Father, why are you so far away?' is not a rejection of God but a cry toward him. The explicit language and dark content are real, but they are in service of honest confession rather than seduction toward sin. The song is hard to sit with, and it should be.
Heavy profanity throughout, references to sexual behavior, drug and alcohol use, and self-harm. The language is unfiltered, but it serves confession rather than celebration in most instances.
The chorus is a genuine, anguished prayer. The song does not arrive at peace or resolution, but it reaches upward repeatedly. The despair is honest, not nihilistic — there is someone being cried out to.
Rashad is processing childhood wounds, addiction, suicidal ideation, and a distant father by naming them aloud. The intent reads as survival testimony, not glorification of the behaviors described.
This song sits in some of the darkest places a person can go, including hurting yourself and doubting you'd make it to twenty-five. If that lands close to home right now, the weight of it is real and worth naming out loud to someone who knows you; you were never meant to hold this by yourself.
When you hear Rashad cry out to a Father who feels far away, does that distance feel familiar to you — and what would it mean to keep crying out anyway?