WHEN YOU ARE ANGRY WITH GOD

As the New Year unfolds...there will, no doubt, be times when you realize you are feeling angry with God. You're not alone.

All through the Scriptures there are real folks like prophets, and kings, who expressed anger at God when they could not understand what He was doing or comprehend His timing. Sometimes it was because they thought they had done everything correctly and that difficulty should not have come their way.

That performance orientation toward the Lord is, in some way, a vestige of the religious quid-pro-quo found in various pagan religions whereby they believe that doing all the right things, the gods are then beholden to do what you want them to do when you want them to do it. I

t can be a subtle thing that our enemy tries to trap us in by whispering “Well, you’ve been faithful in prayer, Bible study, and evangelism, so…why isn’t God coming through like it seems He should?” Jeremiah expressed his confusion when God’s call on him to be a prophet to Judah turned out to be a series of very unpleasant events.

Another example is Job. He was harsh in his words directed toward God when calamity washed over him and all he had. But the fact is that Job never turned away from God. He brought all his feelings and confusion to God. He never stopped addressing God with his questions, pain and sorrow. It was harsh prayer, but it was still prayer directed to God.

I was musing the other day about struggling in life and as I was studying through the Gospel of Matthew, it struck me that when people gathered to hear Jesus, they brought Him ALL their problems. They brought their lameness, their blindness, their deafness, their demonization, their leprosy, their sicknesses, and even their deadness to Him for healing. It seemed the Lord was telling me, “Just bring your struggles to me. You will never be your own salvation to any degree, and I have begun a good work I am committed to finishing in you. Whatever is weighing your life down, you are to bring it to Me; give it to Me.” Bringing anger to the Lord (which He already fully knows and understands more than you could understand it) is the thing to do. He wants your true self, apart from any performance orientation, just you. Truth is, we don’t understand life as He does. Sometimes it doesn’t make sense and so you bring Him your confusion, your worry, your pressures, your “I just don’t get it!” And you bring it to Him in prayer. Even not knowing, we can celebrate His rule in our lives because He knows us completely, loves us utterly and is for us totally.

Job received his answers to his prayers. God revealed Himself to Job. What Job was longing for was to know God, Himself and the Lord showed him that the One Who was in control was the One who loved Him and had not been offended by Job’s prayers in the midst of the struggle to understand what was going on.

All I can say is, bring your anger to the Lord and if you know why you are angry, give Him that, let go of it. People will let us down as surely as we will let them down. Giving grace where the “rule book” demands you to throw a penalty flag is a work of the Holy Spirit. I think that the Pharisees, legalists that they were, were offended by grace because it didn’t follow the “rule book” they had written. If it was down to “rule keeping” to be acceptable to God, we would have to embrace the fact that we all have strayed and erred like lost sheep. Now that the Holy Spirit has united us to Jesus’ death and resurrection, He IS Life within us. We are being changed by Him. Surrendering to His will is the most logical thing we can do as His will is always for our good and He reproduces Jesus’ character in us. Change is a given and is often a struggle, but we can trust Him.

Bring your real self to Him. He will answer you. Wait for him.