Transcription

• Speaker #0

  Are you angry with God right now? Like right now, like this minute? Did God do something just now in your life that's making you mad at Him? Not mad, like shake your fist and cuss at Him mad, but maybe you're just irritated. I have a perfect example of this. I asked God to help me with my patience. I didn't use that specific word because I know you're not supposed to do that. But I did ask him to help me with it. And boy, did he do that all day. It was irritating. Slow drivers, people not knowing what to do, things not working right. My kids having meltdowns. By the time I got home in the mid-afternoon, I actually said to God, OK, I failed today. I have been snapping. I have not had a good attitude. Can you just stop? Help. helping me work on this today. I've clearly failed. We can try again tomorrow. Do you think he listened? No, no, he did not. In fact, I continued until I went to bed. I had trials. When my husband got home, I told him, I said, I just need you to hug me right now. I had a day and that's what he did. And I used the last few hours of my night to just relax. to apologize for the blowups that I had had and thanked him for listening and answering my prayer, even though it was an extremely difficult day. But that's what I mean by angry at God. Are you angry at God right now? It's okay. It is okay. These are human emotions that we have, and he has big enough shoulders to handle it. You are allowed to say, okay, God, let go today. Can you Just stop. Please, I beg you. We do that with our friends and our family. You know, the whole, say uncle, if you're a boy and your dad is, you know, wrestling with you and you want him to stop or someone's tickling you and you want him to stop, you say, okay, uncle, That's just a way of saying, okay, please stop. Please. We can do that with God. He is our father and we are his children. And sometimes when you... ask him to help you with something, he's going to do it. If you're going to ask him to help work on your attitude, he's going to give you opportunities to do that. He's not just going to poof, here you go, your attitude's better now. So that was a lesson learned that if I plan on asking him for help with my anger fits, I better be prepared for what's to come. And I was not even close to prepared for what was to come with that. Today, I want to talk about anger. It's something we all have. Don't deny it. You have it. Maybe you stuff it down deep, dark, tight, but we all have anger at some point in our life, and that is okay. Again, it is a human emotion. Even Jesus had anger. His anger was righteous, and that's where we need to focus today is on having that righteous anger. Again, like I said, it's okay to be frustrated and angry at God. But shaking your fist and cussing at him might not be ideal. I know he can handle it, but that might not be the best way to handle the situation. We need to confront these emotions that we have, these frustrations, the hurts, the anger that we have about whatever's going on and figure out, are we really mad at God? Or are we mad that he's not doing what we asked him to do or what we want him to do? Maybe he's just not taking away the pain of the situation. Maybe somebody you work with is absolutely irritating. He just won't let that person go away. Why do they have to irritate you? Okay, but maybe he's growing you through that season. Maybe there's a reason for it. And what I learned through this week's guest with Weston Brandon is that despite what our religions believe, what we subscribe to religiously, God pursues all of us. because he wants us all to be his children. He wants us all to do what he's calling us to do. And Brandon's story is heartbreaking, but it is also inspiring in the fact that through the sadness of losing his wife at such a young age, he still managed to be able to hold on to some form of his relationship with God, even though he was extremely angry with him. He still held on to that faith. that God is there and he cares about him and he's got a plan. This was so impactful for me because as I was listening to his story and I was cheering him on and I was blessed and encouraged, I realized that he's from the LDS church and I am not. But yet. Things he was saying resonated with me so much. How could that be? That doesn't make any sense in my brain. That's what I was thinking. But I understand we are all human beings and we all have human emotions. And it does not matter what religion you are. You feel things. You feel anger when things don't go your way, when things seem like they are out of character for someone. This is an injustice. This isn't right. We all feel these. It does not matter what you believe in. And I just want to encourage you today that despite what you believe spiritually about God, about religion, God is pursuing you. He loves you. He wants to help you. Listen to the story with Weston Brandon. Listen to his heart. Listen to how he was able to come back from this tragedy and become 10 times who he was back then. That will give you an encouragement for who you can be. We all are struggling on this earth. We are not promised to have a perfect, wonderful life. You will have moments where you're mad at God, where you're frustrated because he answered your prayer that you weren't quite. wanting him to answer, maybe not that quickly, but he loves you and he's going to do what he needs to do to help you be the best version of who you need to be. So if you need to sit in your anger for a little bit, okay. But remember what the Bible says, don't give the devil a foothold. So release your anger to your heavenly father who loves you and is there for you. And even if you aren't a believer who's listening right now. He still wants to hear from you. Release your anger. Release your confusion. Release your heartbreak. Whatever emotions you are feeling, release them to God. He is our source. He is going to heal you. He is going to transform you. So why not give him your baggage and move forward feeling lighter and free? If you were impacted by this mini-sode, please let me know. The link to comment is in the show notes. Also in the show notes will be the link to West and Brandon's full story. I highly encourage you to listen to it. It is very encouraging and impactful. Until next time.