Don’t move away from God, move toward him. Don’t turn your back on God, face him. It’s the biblical and constructive way to resolve your anger.
SHAUNA: Hi, this is Shauna on Joni Eareckson Tada: Sharing Hope. Today Joni brings us a lesson about overcoming anger from her friend Leslie.
JONI: Actually, I’m changing her name here because her story is pretty raw. You see, Leslie learned recently that her husband Ray was seeing another woman. She was stunned and she confronted him with it. Ray, in turn, told her that he was in love with someone else. When he refused to break off the relationship, things only got worse. It became incredibly awkward, especially for the children; Ray would often miss dinner, or come home late, and they wondered where their daddy was. Ray, of course, breezed into the house like nothing had happened. And finally, when he told his wife that he had decided to stay with the other woman, it shattered her life. At first Leslie’s shock and anger was directed solely against her husband: “How can Ray throw away our marriage? How will I support myself?” But as time wore on, another list of angry questions surfaced: “Lord, is this what you do to your people who trust you? Why have you abandoned me, Lord, and the kids to face this awful nightmare?!”
Leslie was becoming angry at God, and she knew it. She felt justified in her anger and didn’t want to put a lid on those feelings. She stopped going to Bible study and found comfort and refuge in a different group of friends. She began turning her back on God and influencing others to do the same. She would wonder: “You know, I just can’t paste on a good Christian smile and pretend everything’s okay. I can’t relate to the Bible anymore when it tells me to not complain.”
Leslie’s story is more common than we think. And I’m not talking about marriage problems. I mean any situation in which we accuse God with our anger. When we rail against him, even if only in our thoughts, we are digging a deeper pit. Perhaps you’ve been there. Maybe your boss fired you unfairly, or you were abused as a child. Perhaps you’ve been betrayed or you’re dealing with a progressive disease. Maybe your child is dealing with the disease, and you are angry at God. You tense up when you think of him being sovereign over your life and all of its misery. You assume you’re forced to choose between either hiding true feelings and stifling anger or venting your anger uncontrollably.
But the Bible rejects both these options. Because there is a third way, a better way to deal with anger. The biblical way is to be transparent before the Lord, while at the same time not blaspheme or badmouth him, turn your back on him, or sow seeds of discord about him. Rather than say things you’ll only regret later on, my advice is to learn how to complain in a godly way! For there is such a thing as “holy lamenting.” In God's Word you can find the lamentations of other people who felt cheated, and abandoned, and abused and even forgotten by God. Just look at David and other writers in the book of Psalms. The Psalms are filled with the groanings and the anguished complaints of people who felt cheated by the Lord. Friend, let their psalms and lamentations give voice to your pain. Don’t move away from God, move toward him. Don’t turn your back on him. Face him. It’s the biblical and the constructive way to resolve your anger.
SHAUNA: For more of Joni’s – and the Lord’s wisdom about anger and every other emotion you can think of, go to joniradio.org. There you’ll find help for today and bright hope for tomorrow. That’s joniradio.org. And remember, today don’t move away from God; always move toward him.
© Joni and Friends