Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Anger towards God is one situation I have dealt with often in my many years in the ministry. I bet many of you know one or more people in your lives who may be going through such a period even now as you are reading this blog. My guess is that all of us have gotten angry with God at one time or another. By His grace and mercy, however, most of us don’t remain in that state for too long. Those who continue in it, on the other hand, lose out on the joys of the abundant life Jesus offers all His followers. The reasons people are angry with God are many but the one I most often hear about concerns the death of a loved one. In such cases, many of those who do, carry their anger and bitterness with them to the grave.
Regarding this topic, several biblical accounts come to my mind, the first being the story in Genesis 37 about Jacob mistakenly presuming that his son Joseph had been slain by some wild beast. When his children tried to comfort him, he refused declaring that he would mourn for his son until the day he died. In his case, the Bible doesn’t say he was angry with God for his son’s death, but if he refused to try to put it behind him and move on, he was no different than those who are. The prophet Jonah was another one. When God sent him to Nineveh to preach a message of repentance to the Babylonians, he first tried going in an opposite direction. You see, he did not want the Lord to forgive his people’s sworn enemies and when at last he obeyed and preached his message, he got angry with God for sparing them. Then there was King David. In an account in 2 Samuel, Chapter 6, he got angry with God because he slew a man by the name of Uzzah, who grabbed a hold of the Ark of God while it was being transported. David did not understand it on the day that it happened, but it is obvious he understood later because he did not stay angry with God.
If you know anybody who is angry with the Lord, I urge you to pray constantly for them and try to reason with them for their own good. Tell them we cannot go against God’s perfect will, especially when it relates to the death of a loved one. Very few of us know the exact date of our own death but we must remember that God knew it even before we were born. The Bible says in Hebrews 9:27: “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.” If it was up to us, no one would ever get sick and die, but do we know better than God ? And if we don’t want a certain loved one to die, are we asking for them or for ourselves? Speaking for myself, I certainly wouldn’t want my loved ones praying to try to keep me from my appointment with Heaven. And if you still don’t understand and can’t come to grips with the death of a loved one, you will one day. I just pray it is on this side of Heaven.
Memory verse for the week: (Psalm 51:6 NLT) “But you desire honesty from the heart, so you can teach me to be wise in my inmost being.”
