40 Days of Believing God – Day 5

Last week, I had an appointment to meet a friend for lunch. It turned out he forgot about the appointment, but it gave me a chance to talk with one of the servers I knew. As we talked, she told me about her son and how he’d turned his back on God.

Her son was angry, because of some difficult circumstances that had occurred in his life. He was blaming God and feeling like God had let him down.

Can you relate to his feelings?

I can.

A number of years ago, I went through some hard times. Nothing I did seemed to work. Difficult circumstances got worse, not better. When I was sure things couldn’t get worse…they did. I felt not only humbled, but humiliated.

I got angry. At God. I thought I was doing everything I knew to do to walk by faith and please Him. Rather than blessing me for it, He seemed to delight in making things harder.

I was angry. Very angry. It didn’t stop there though.

My anger turned to bitterness. My heart was filled with it. It infected my thoughts, my feelings and my words. My relationship with God suffered. My influence for God suffered. There was more though.

The anger and bitterness turned to cynicism. I no longer trusted God. I didn’t believe He really had my best interests in mind. That being the case, I saw no reason to trust Him. He wasn’t going to come through anyway. So what was the sense? I concluded that the best thing to do was to simply lower my expectations of God. If I didn’t expect much then I couldn’t be disappointed.

I’ll be honest, even though that period in my life was over ten years ago, I can still feel those emotions surface once in awhile. It’s kind of like having a virus that lies dormant for years, then becomes active again. For me, it’s a virus I must guard against.

Maybe you can relate. You’re in a season like that now. If so, let me suggest you meditate on these two verses from the Psalms today. As we talk about believing God, it’s crucial that we believe the truth about His character. We’re not talking about having faith in faith. Our faith or belief needs an object. In our case, that “object” is God, so we must know what our God is really like.

If we develop our understanding of God based on our circumstances, it’s likely that God won’t seem very good. That’s why we must develop our view of God from what He has revealed about Himself in His word, the Bible.

By the way, when I use the word “meditate”, I mean to think about it, “chew” on it, mull it over. Talk to God about it. Ask Him what a verse means. Think about how it applies to Your life. Stay with a verse or passage until it fills your heart and mind and begins to crowd out the wrong thoughts and ideas about God.

Okay, here are the two verses:

“As for God, His way is perfect; the word of the Lord is flawless.”  (Psalm 18:30)

“For the Lord is good and His love endures forever; His faithfulness continues through all generations.” (Psalm 100:5)

Don’t run by those two verses. Write them a note card or whatever and read them over today. Let them sink in. Let them renew your mind. Let them change the way you think about God. You’ll be transformed.

Tomorrow, we’ll talk about why God allows difficult circumstances and what to do about it.

By the way, I left a voice mail yesterday for the young man I spoke about earlier. I told him I could relate to how he’s feeling and asked if he’d meet me for lunch. Would you pray he calls me back and accepts my invitation?