Have you ever been angry with God? Like really angry? Like scream into your pillow so hard you start to cry angry? Maybe even willing to walk away angry? If we’re going to be honest most of us, if not all, have faced a low like this and God has been on the receiving end.
You might have shouted out something that sounded similar to, “God, why have you done this?” or “If You really loved me, You would...” and we have spat out any emotional baggage we were carrying at Him because He won’t fight back. He has every ability to, but in His love, He doesn't. This pouring out of emotion echoes the heartache of the man in Psalms 43. A man that was so deeply impacted by human misery that he became outraged by the lack of quickness in God’s glorious hands.
In the weakest of times, I tend to deeply internalize my emotions. See, the women of my family have had a pretty lengthy history with depression, which, I too have been so kindly blessed with. Given this predisposition, I’m inclined to bottle things until the point of complete helplessness surrounds me and I fall to the feet of God. Which, if looked at from an outside perspective, might look more like a child being put down for their afternoon nap; me, yelling out in anger, while my father, patiently works through the discomfort.
When experiencing any hardship, I have found that only two things bring me any amount of comfort.
The first is reading Psalms 51 aloud as a prayer to God, emphasizing verses 10 through 12 where David writes,
“Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a loyal spirit within me. Do not banish me from your presence, and don’t take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and make me willing to obey you.”
This prayer comes from David shortly after Nathan confronts him for being intimate with another man’s wife, Bathsheba. Psalms 51 seeps with the broken heart of a man that is so wrapped up with emotions that he simple had to fall at the feet of God. In a time where David could have gotten angry and push his hurt on God, he instead asks for more of God’s Spirit. See, it can be easy to push our hurting hearts onto God’s plate, but it’s hard to sit with humility in His presence.
The second is meditating on Psalms 27:8 where David writes,
“My heart says of you, “Seek his face!” Your face, Lord, I will seek.”
In contrast to shouting out that if only God had loved you, your life would not be in turmoil, shout out that you are seeking His face. In anger, sadness, depression, anxiety, and confusion look outside of those emotional restrictions and aim to rest your eyes on the One who matters. When we do this, our earthly dilemmas seem to fade away.
