20 Days of Believing God (Day 3)

I had an appointment one day 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.

I’ve gone through some hard times where 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 Him. If I didn’t expect much then I couldn’t be disappointed.

That period in my life was over fifteen years ago, but 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.

As long as we’re being honest, I have to confess I still wrestle with those feelings. Sometimes the virus rears its ugly head and really takes a toll on my faith.

Maybe you can relate. You might be in a season like that now. If so, let me suggest you meditate on these two verses today.

“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)

God’s ways are perfect. I may not understand them. I may not even like them. But it doesn’t change the fact that they’re perfect. He’s also good, loving and faithful.

We’ve got to view our circumstances through that lens. We can’t view God’s character through the lens of our circumstances. He won’t look very good and we’ll only feel confused.