Who Do You Tell?
March 14, 2021
When people tell me that they have an issue with God, sometimes a complaint, sometimes real anger, I often ask, "Have you discussed it with God? Have you told God how you feel?"
"I could not do that," they might respond.
"Why not?" I ask.
"I am afraid to do that. God might get angry back at me."
Not so, not for that. God's anger is what we experience when we resist the fierceness of unrelenting love. We are in a storm and we can ride the storm or wage war against the storm, but we cannot ignore the storm.
Jeremiah, like the psalmist, invites us into the arena of honest prayer where we wrestle with ourselves and speak honestly with God. He prays throughout the book his scribe recorded. It is not always pretty, but often comes to this:
" I know, O LORD, that the way of man is not in himself,
that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps.
Correct me, O LORD, but in justice;
not in your anger, lest you bring me to nothing."
- Jeremiah 10:23-24 (ESV)
He puts it out there and is willing to be corrected. He trusts God that God can correct Him in justice and not in anger.
I want to be corrected. Don't you? Why would I ever want to continue in a course of unproductive, destructive thinking or behavior? I want to be set upon the right track. My days, like yours, are numbered and I want them to count.
Looking back a few verses, he prays the prayer of as disillusioned man:
" Woe is me because of my hurt!
My wound is grievous.
But I said, “Truly this is an affliction,
and I must bear it.”
My tent is destroyed,
and all my cords are broken;
my children have gone from me,
and they are not;
there is no one to spread my tent again
and to set up my curtains.
For the shepherds are stupid
and do not inquire of the LORD;
therefore they have not prospered,
and all their flock is scattered." - Jeremiah 10:19-21 (ESV)
Prayer is a process. Indeed we pray with the news around us in one hand and the Bible in the other and we are shaped by our dialogue with One who hears and cares.
Whatever you feel, pray.
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I hope you're getting a little something you can use today, friends, a little something to gladden your souls for God today. Scroll for that goal - for your soul. Pass by the negative and land on those words that build and lift and then, share them!
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Our deepest desires lead us and draw us into His presence to discover that His presence has already surrounded us.
Self-talk/God-talk - Dialogue/Trialogue -Interactive
It becomes unclear sometimes in the cycle of the central verse who is speaking because the WORD is embedded in each word and even the longing complaint of the heart is met with the reassuring comfort of the Presence.
It is especially evident when we pray,
"Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God."
This is our song when we are preparing our hearts to come before God and discover that God is already with us.
Our panting turmoil does not go unheard. Hear and pray with the Sons of Korah:
"Why Are You Cast Down, O My Soul?"
"To the choirmaster. A Maskil of the Sons of Korah."
"As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?
My tears have been my food
day and night,
while they say to me all the day long,“Where is your God?”
These things I remember,
as I pour out my soul:
how I would go with the throng
and lead them in procession to the house of God
with glad shouts and songs of praise,
a multitude keeping festival."
"Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God."
"My soul is cast down within me;
therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
from Mount Mizar."
-Psalm 42:1-6 (ESV)