Choosing Forgiveness - Chapter 6 – Angry at God

 

Quotes & Summary in White – My thoughts in Red

 

“As I read the letters and e-mails people send to our ministry and listen to people share their stories, one of the recurring themes is: ‘I’m angry.’

                ‘Angry at my husband.’

                ‘Angry at my children.’

                ‘Angry at my parents.’

                ‘Angry at my pastor.’

And sometimes, after they get through all those layers, I hear them express something that is really at the heart of the matter:

                ‘I’m angry at God.’

Even godly people… are sometimes tempted to direct their resentment toward God.  ‘I even blamed God,’ she said, ‘because… well.  He’s in control of everything isn’t he?’  After all, if He’s supposed to be all-powerful, He could have stopped this.  If He’s supposed to be all-loving, he could have protected my heart and spared me this pain.  But He didn’t. He turned away away and chose not to.  So how can I trust a God like that—a God who would let something like this happen in my life?  Have you ever said words similar to these—or at least thought them?  In your search for answers and justification, have you turned instead to wag your finger toward the heavens and let God have it for treating you the way He has?  Or maybe it’s not so blatant—more like a nebulous, simmering resentment.”

I think that we would be lying if we said that we were never angry at God.  If we said that we never felt this way.  I know that I have.  I know that God is all-powerful, He is all-knowing, He is ultimately in control of all things, and I believe that He loves me… so why would He allow me to suffer so much?  Why would he allow so many lies to be said and believed?  Why would He allow my reputation to be ruined?  I have felt this way… I have cried out to Him.  I am not the type to go screaming at God for what He has done… but I have questioned why He allows things to happen… I have cried out in pain on many occasions.  But as I have been doing this study again, I have come to realize that part of the reason that we become angry with God is because we have a hard time understanding that although Yes, God is all-powerful, at the same time, He does not control us… so that means that we will be hurt by other humans.  This world is full of sinners (and Satan is roaming it to find people to do his bidding) and sinners do hurtful things to others.  Yes, God will use everything for my good but that doesn’t mean that everything that happens to me is good.  Yes, He could have protected me but who am I to question why it happened?  It may have occurred because of a sin in my own life or the sin of another… it may have occurred simply because mankind has freewill… it may have occurred because we are constantly in a battle of Spiritual warfare and the enemy wants to wound me.  I don’t need to know the reason… I just need to draw close to the one that can comfort me through it all… Jesus.

 

“Can such feelings and accusations ever be warranted?  Does God condone such backtalk from the people He created?  Does our relationship with Him include the privilege of being this honest in our expressions?  Do we ever have a right to be angry at God?”

I have been mulling over these questions… and while I don’t think we necessarily have a “right” to be angry at God, we are human with human emotions and sometimes we are angry at God.  I believe that God would rather have us be honest with Him about how we are feeling.  I believe that He would rather that we talk to Him about it (even yell at Him if that is what is needed to express it at the moment).  Does He deserve our accusations and anger?  No, but He can handle it.  Is it a sin to backtalk to God and yell at Him?  Maybe… but not any worse than being angry at Him and holding it all in.  I believe God would rather have us be honest with Him and work through our feelings… engage in the relationship with Him and learn to trust Him again and sometimes that means we have to work through these emotions first.  I don’t think that it healthy to remain in a place where all you do is yell at God and blame Him for everything… but when the feelings rise up it is better to be honest than to shut Him out… that is how any healthy human relationship works. 

 

“Why wouldn’t God answer our prayers—and answer them now? How could a loving God allow His children to suffer so?  Is God always true to His promises?”

Yes, God is true to His promises… even when we don’t understand what is going on.  I think part of our problem is that we expect God to answer us immediately… in the way that we want Him to answer us.  We expect that when we become a follower of Christ that our life will magically become perfect and easy… I mean now we have God on our side… but this is so far from the truth… in fact, it is usually quite the opposite.  My belief is that Satan has been given temporary authority over the earth… and we are in a constant spiritual battle.  So, the closer we are walking with God, the harder our life on earth will be… why?  Because Satan is going to be in full on attack against us. He doesn’t need to attack non-believers who are doing his bidding… nor does he need to attack believers who are complacent in their walk… luke-warm, not making waves, not doing anything for the Kingdom of God.  So, if you are facing trial after trial… there is a good possibility that one of two things is going on… either you are living in sin and God is disciplining you or you are walking closely to God and making a difference for His Kingdom and the enemy is attacking you.  Of course, it could also be because of the fact, that we live in fallen world where sin in rampant and we will experience pain.  So, why is there suffering?  Because God gives us (mankind) freewill, Satan is alive and active, and we aren’t in heaven yet!  But God is still so good and can use it all for His glory and our good… He can use it draw us closer to Him, to bring others to Him, to humble us and make us more like Christ… He won’t waste the difficult experiences we face… if only we would allow Him to be at work in them.

 

“I have come to believe that, at one level, all bitterness is ultimately directed toward God. I may be cloaked in anger toward a particular person or group of people who have wronged us, but it actually extends far beyond them, far above them.  So when woundedness turns to bitterness—when unforgiveness is given enough room, time, and oxygen to take on a life of its own—the prospect of a powerful God who doesn’t seem to care about us to step into our situation is troubling to us.  We even seem to be giving a measure of permission to feel this way as we read impassioned cries and prayers of the Psalms.  ‘How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?  How long will you hide your face from me?  How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?  How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?’ (Psalm 13:1-2).”

I do believe that if we allow anger towards someone grow into bitterness, then to some extent we will also be bitter towards God. We see in 1 John 4:20-21 “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.  And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.”  How can we think we love God if we hate (which includes having bitterness towards) someone?  Does this mean every time I get “angry” at someone that I am angry at God? No… I think you can have a fight with your spouse and be angry at them without being angry at God… but when we let that anger simmer and grow and turn to bitterness… it is really hard to not turn that bitterness towards God too… a God who is in control of all things… who created the person who sinned against us. Bitterness will always cause a strain on our relationship with God which is why it is so important that we take care of it… why we are encouraged to resolve things quickly. Anger is an emotion… we don’t always have control over our emotions… but we do have control over whether or not we allow things get to the point of bitterness… and bitterness is a always a sin.    

 

“Can we be honest with God?  Absolutely.  Are we encouraged to have a righteous anger against sin, including the sins that have been committed against us? Yes, we are.  But there is a point where our honest questions directed toward God cross the line and become an expression of a proud heart.  Insubordinate.  Demanding.  The Word cautions us against letting even righteous anger escalate into sin: ‘Be angry, and do not sin’ (Psalm 4:4).”

I completely agree with this… as I was sharing earlier.  We can be honest with God, in fact, He wants us to be honest with Him (He knows how we feel anyways so we might as well be honest about it).  There is nothing wrong with having a righteous anger towards sins… even the sins committed against us… but there comes a point when we need to let go of that anger or it will turn into a sin. 

 

“In His inscrutable wisdom and love, He is able to use even the most agonizing circumstances that touch your life in this fallen world to refine and purify you, to make you fruitful, and to magnify His grace and glory through your life.  I know it’s sometimes hard to believe.  I know you may not see how you can possibly continue with this pain another week, another day, another hour.  But unleashed anger toward God, I believe, from having a faulty view of Him, form thinking that He is flippantly ignoring you, that He couldn’t care less what you’re going through.  The truth is, He is going through it with you and for you.  ‘In all their sufferings, He suffered’ (Isaiah 63:9).  He is with you, right in the midst of it.  Helping you.  Loving you.  Hurting with you.   Driving you back to Him, drawing your closer in, making your more dependent upon His grace and power.”

Wow, if only we believed this in the midst of our suffering.  Actually, there are times that I have believed this.  There have been difficult circumstances that I have experienced that I knew that God was with me… that He was going to use it for my good… that He was walking with me through the experience… helping me, loving me, hurting with me, drawing me closer to Him and making me more dependent upon His grace and power.

I think the circumstances in which I have struggled to believe this the most are the ones in which there has been conflict with another person. I hate conflict with other people.  It tears me up inside and consumes me.  It knocks me down quicker than any other circumstance… and those who know me know that I have been through a lot.  Matthew and I have dealt with a ton of medical issues (near death experiences) and those experiences all drew me closer and more dependent upon God.  In those experiences I feel as if I was able to draw close to God and lean upon Him even more…. But when it has to deal with a broken relationship… especially one in which I feel powerless to fix, I struggle a lot… I question God and what He is doing or trying to teach me through it all.  This isn’t something new... it is something I have dealt with my entire life. 

As I watch it snow and reflect on this… I realize that I need to give up control.  I have no control over the circumstances.  The snow is falling one direction and then quickly changes directions… in relationships I can only do my part. I can love others, treat them with kindness, speak truth, listen to what they have to say, offer forgiveness, and seek forgiveness, but I have no control over the other person. I cannot make them treat me with love or kindness, I can’t make them believe the truth, I can’t make them receive my forgiveness, or admit they have done anything wrong, I can’t force them to want reconciliation… I have zero control over the circumstance… and my desire for control is a sin… called pride.  I need to trust God to be at work… and allow Him to be at work in all our lives… and trust that if we never see reconciliation here on earth that He has a reason for that too… and that ultimately it is for my good.  I don’t need to worry about it.  Instead of worrying about those who don’t want to be a part of my life (or those who spew hate and anger at me)… I can focus on those God has put into my life and bless them today.  I can sit and enjoy the beauty of the those relationships… like I sit and enjoy the beauty of the snow.

“Have you been the one to pay the most, it seems, for someone else’s mistake?  You can relate, then, to the fertile ground for bitterness in Naomi’s life. ‘She said to them, “Do not call me Naomi (which means pleasant); call me Mara (bitter), for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.  I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?’ (Ruth 1:20-21). Do you see who is getting the blame for her calamity?  Have you been there?  Have you found yourself the victim of your own poor choices or perhaps the poor choices of others?  But instead of taking responsibility for them or choosing to forgive the one who misled or mistreated you, your ultimate response has been anger toward God for letting this turn of events occur without warning you, without bailing you out, without stepping in and stopping it while there was still time to avoid disaster?”

I don’t think I have consciously blamed God and purposely turned my anger towards Him, but I can see how the bitter root that I allowed to grow in me sprang up and strangled the life out of me and had me so entangled that I was also bitter towards God.  I don’t know why He allowed things to go the way they did… I don’t know why we had to suffer as much as we did or why I have to watch my husband still in so much pain.  I do know that God is good and that He loves me.  He never left me even in the midst of my hardest times… and He was using those circumstances to mold me into His image and teach me.  I am choosing to move forward and not allow the pain to overwhelm me anymore… I am choosing to allow God to comfort me when the pain creeps in or the thoughts try to take over… and I have found peace in Him. 

“It’s at this point that some would even suggest a need to ‘forgive God’—as though He had erred and was in need of pardon.  Us?  Forgive God? … the very idea borders on outright blasphemy.  No, God does not need forgiveness from us.  He is never guilty of making mistakes.  In fact, the thing you may think is a cruel injustice on His part may actually turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to you.  So I ask you to look again into the heart of God and see Someone who has a deeper, more loving plan for your life—even in the midst of this painful turmoil—than you could ever figure out on your own.  He will use disappointment, this heartbreak, this unspeakable circumstance to teach you, train you, and fulfill His holy, eternal purposes for your life.  The alternative—anger with God—can do nothing but make things worse and further delay your healing.”

God does not need my forgiveness… not today and not any day.  When we get angry with God it is because we have a faulty view of God or the situation.  Our perception is off… just because we believe something to be true, does not mean that it is true.  Yes, there is pain in this world… lots of it… we live in a fallen world… where sin and destruction has been given free reign… but God loved us so much that He sent His son to save us… so that this fallen world does not have to be best thing we ever experience. Our eternal destiny is way more important than whatever happens here on earth. 

“What about you?  Do you feel that God has not lived up to His name in your life?  Does is seem that He has been one thing in the sermons and the Sunday School lessons but quite another when you needed Him the most?  Listen to yourself.  What are you saying about Him?  What is your life communicating to others about Him?  When people hear you speak His name, or describe His character, or resent the circumstances that have come into your life—what are they led to believe about Him?”

I think that I am giving mixed messages about God.  I go from glorifying Him and trusting Him to resenting the circumstances I am in.  I can flipflop back and forth multiple times in the same day.  I am trying to get my life back on the right path… because I know in my head what is true… I know that He is with me, I know that even amidst the trials, He is with me, I know that no matter what comes my way, He is with me… but I feel like my walk has been weak.  I have not been consistent in my time with Him, in my prayer life, in worshipping Him, serving Him.  I used to be so on fire for Him and I let that fire dwindle down… it hasn’t gone out completely, but it is nothing compared to what it used to be… I let the world sneak into my life and dull down my passion for Christ and now I am having to claim it back.  I don’t think it has anything to do with God failing me and not being who I need Him to be… but me allowing bitterness to take root in my life and sin to slowly take over.  But those roots have been uprooted and I am claiming my life back… little by little. 

“I’ve seen over and over again the damage that ‘Naomis’ can do—in a marriage, in a church, in a workplace, in a ministry, in a friendship, in a family.  Their bitterness, their anger toward God and others, is toxic, though they are often the last to recognize both their bitterness and the effect they have on others.  In their attempts to salve their wounds or to gain sympathy and understanding, they contaminate their corner of the world.  Our anger toward God will inevitably become a poison that spreads far beyond our own hearts, just as it did with Naomi.  What seems so intensely personal becomes impossible to keep to ourselves. Believe me, it shows.”

Lord, forgive me for allowing bitterness to grow in my life.  Forgive me for the damage it has done in my relationships, in my marriage, at work, at church, in my friendships, in my family, in my ministry.  I know that it has affected each area to some extent.  I know that I have not been shining the light of my love for you as brightly as I did in the past.  I know that in my desire to “protect myself” I have not allowed others to get to know me the way I would have in the past.  Forgive me.  I may not have been “horrible,” but I definitely wasn’t my best self… I wasn’t using all my gifts for Your glory… I was letting little things bother me and being judgmental.  Forgive me.  Remove all the bitterness and help me live freely in You. 

“It comes down to a choice: Blame God and rail against Him for His capricious cruelty, complaining and insisting on getting our way.  Or trust that He knows what He’s doing, that He is working in us to both purify and prepare us for lives of greater service and usefulness, and that He is employing one of His greatest teachers—time—in order to enlarge our hearts and expand our vision.”

While my natural inclination is to blame God and rail against Him… to grumble and complain because I want my own way… I want to trust Him at the same time.  This is the war going on inside me.  Today, (right now) I am choosing to trust God.  That He has a plan for me in the midst of all the chaos… and that He is using all the circumstances in my life to prepare me for greater service and usefulness.  He is using it to transform my life so I can bring more glory to the Father.  I don’t have to have all the answers… I just need to lean into Him and just breathe. 

“Airline pilots have to learn how to read their instruments and trust those instruments… For believers, the Word of God is our instrument panel.  There will be points in our lives when, in the midst of the ‘white-out conditions,’ our feelings will betray us and contradict His Word—insisting God doesn’t care or that He’s made a mistake.  At that point, we dare not rely on our feelings but must choose to trust what the Instrument tells us is it true.”

Wow… what an accurate analogy… how often have my emotions been out of control… made a situation look hopeless.  All to often, I am focused on those emotions and the fact that I am going to crash… the pain, the hurt, the storm.  I can’t see past my current situation and things don’t look good… and yet God has given me His Word for such a time as this… so I can remember that He is good… that He has not left me… that I am not alone… and that everything will work out for my good.  If I could only take my eyes off the storm, or my emotions long enough to refocus them on God’s Word, I would realize that things are going to be okay.  They may not turn out like I had planned… but God can still use it for His glory and to mold me into the image of Christ. 

“The longer I live under God’s providence, the more readily I can trust Him when it comes to my unfulfilled longings and life’s unsolved mysteries.  The more joyfully I am able to love and worship Him and to be satisfied with that which He supplies.  And the more patiently I can wait for the day when faith will be sight and all that which made no sense to my limited frame of reference will be made clear.”

Lord, You know the desires of my heart… but You also know what is best for me.  The closer I get to You, the more You change my desires to align with what is best for me.  I may not understand the circumstances in my life… I may not understand the trials… I may not understand why You don’t give me what I ask for… but I can trust You!  I can trust that You are good and that You love me.  I can trust that You are working behind the scenes in the lives of everyone to bring about Your glory. 

“Have you wanted to scream your anger toward God through clenched teeth, banging on the doors of heaven that seem coldly closed to your heart and life?  Hear God asking the question He twice asked of His resentful prophet: ‘Do you do well to be angry?’ (Jonah 4:4,9).  He knows your heart, dear one.  He has not left you alone.  And by trusting in His sovereign wisdom, goodness, and love, you, too, may one day see the sweet restoration of everything you’ve prayed for.  But even if not, you will have found a refuge in His will and in His care—a blessed place that is reached only by those who trust His heart—and keep trusting it even when the darkness closes in around them.” 

Lord, I have had a lot of anger built up inside me… I have come to realize that some of it was directed at You and for that I am sorry.  It didn’t do me any good to be angry.  Forgive me.  Holding onto the bitterness and resentment didn’t help.  Holding onto the pain didn’t help.  Yes, I was hurt deeply.  Yes, they felt justified in their actions.  Yes, it hurts that not once did anyone ask what was really going on… we made out to be the bad guys because that is what they wanted to believe about us.  Lord, I don’t know if truth will ever be revealed here on earth… and if not, I have to trust that there is a reason for that too.  Am I perfect?  No, but you know my heart Lord… You know what I did and why I did it.  Lord, for so long I desired reconciliation… and yet You have chosen to just hold me.  I have come to a place where I no longer need human reconciliation… I don’t need people in my life who can tear me down and treat me so badly.  Why would I want to be a part of that?  I am reminded of an area that I struggle with… (Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ. – Gal 1:10)… I wanted to be accepted and loved by them… and yet I never felt like I was… it does not matter what they think about me… only what You think of me, Lord.  You have provided us with friends that are like family.  You have surrounded us with my family to love us and encourage us.  We are blessed.  May I be focused on the blessings and not worry about the losses. 

Making it Personal Questions: (Too personal to share specifics with everyone 😊 )

Have you experienced some hurt, disappointment, or unfulfilled longing that has caused you to question the goodness or wisdom or love of God?  How have you responded?

 What does your typical response to adversity communicate to others about God?

 ‘Unleashed anger toward God comes from having a faulty view of Him’ (P. 153). What steps could you take to develop a more accurate view of God and to deepen your trust in Him?