Video Transcript: Pondering the Word -- Module 3

Now, one of the things I talk about in this module is how I myself, in learning to be a chaplain really had to go out and just do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, in order for me to have some kind of a feeling that I knew what I was doing. I had not had enough training, I didn't think, for me to really feel comfortable with what I was doing. 

That's why I'm really glad that we're trying to provide this for you, folks. Because if you have a handle on what it means, to bring the presence of God into people's lives, it's just a tremendously freeing thing as the chaplain because then it's not so much about you. 

It's about how you represent the love, and the grace and the mercy of God to those who are ill and dying. And now one of the things that happens is, people can get very, very angry with God. And it's important for us to understand that, that is something that is real. 

To say to someone who is very angry with God, well, you shouldn't be angry with God, that's, that's wrong. That's a sin. I don't think it's a sin. Mostly because when I read the book, Psalms, I see this lot of anger directed at God, as the psalmist is struggling to figure out what is going on in his life. So today, I've chosen a message that I put together one point on on the subject, Can God handle my anger? Because sometimes, you know, we can get really angry, Can God handle that? Is the question and I'm going to read some verses from Psalm 77. 

To give us the scriptural basis for what we're looking at today. I cried out to God for help. I cried out to God to hear me. When I was in distress, I sought the Lord that night I stretched out untiring hands, and my soul refused to be comforted. I remembered you Oh, God. And I groaned. I mused and my spirit grew faint. You kept my eyes from closing. I was too troubled to speak. I thought about the former days. 

The years of long ago, I remembered my songs in the night. My heart muse in my spirit inquired will the Lord reject forever, will he never show his favor again. Has his unfailing love vanished and forever. Has his promise failed for all time? Has God forgotten to be merciful, as he in anger withheld his compassion? Done, I thought to this, I will appeal the years of the right hand of the most high, I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago I will meditate on all your works, and consider all your mighty deeds. Those words from Psalm 77, it's verses 1 through 12. There's an author whom I have read most of his books, his name is Peter debrief. And in one of his books, he talks about how he lost his faith and in novel form Peter diverse rites of the death of a young girl from Leukemia. In the book, he chronicles the way the disease progresses, and also tells alongside of it the growing anger of the father. 

They cannot help thinking this Father, why doesn't God pick on somebody his own size? Why does he have to pick on my little girl, and in the course of the book, the author tells the story of anguish which the family goes through, as they see their child dying slowly. From a disease they believe God could have prevented. And in the climax of the book, the father of the child goes across the street from the hospital where his daughter is dying. And he looks at the crucifix that's hanging over the door of the church and he railed against the immobility of a God who just hangs there and does nothing for his child. He is filled with rage. And finally he, he takes a pie and he throws it in the face of the crucifix who hangs there over the entrance to the church. 

It's meant, I think, in novel form to convey to us the power of the anger which a person has, when they believe that God has totally let them down. And I think the freeze is also asking the question, Can God handle my anger? Or is he so cold and so unmoved that he isn't even concerned by my feelings? A professor in a medical school who wrote The review of the blood of the lamb says that he assigns the reading of this novel to his first year med students. 

He wants them to realize that the families who have sick children have a great deal of anger in their heart, and many do't know what to do with it. Maybe you've had that happen to you as well. You've gotten so angry with some event in your life, and you discover To your dismay, that there behind it stands God. And you're filled with anger and anger, to try to give a definition what anger, is anger is this emotion that wells up within us. 

When we believe that there is a separation coming between us and something that we love or someone particularly that we love. We get so angry when people come between us and our loved ones. And when there is a disease that comes between us and our loved ones, and they're dying, and we believe that disease could have been healed by God that could have just been wiped away by God, and God has done nothing, then we believe God is the one who is separating us from our loved ones. Your heart burns with rage. But can you get angry with God? Are we allowed to be angry with God? Over the four decades of my ministry, I've had many opportunities to sit with people in hospitals and in nursing homes, in funeral homes, in their own bedrooms as they struggled with the emotions of death or illness, which seemed to be overwhelming them. 

I've listened to them sound bitter in their response to this event in their lives. I've heard them get Oh, so close to saying that they're angry we've got and then and then they stopped short. And they refuse to go that one more step and admit that that anger that burns within them really is aimed at God. When I asked them why the answer I invariably get is that holy would not be right for me to be angry with God, it would be sinful to ask God why he was doing this in their lives. But when I try to understand why many people feel that way, I think I hear something more going on. 

I think I hear them saying so you don't think God could handle their anger. And in their minds and their hearts because God has prohibited or has, because God couldn't handle it. He is prohibited. They're being able to have that anger. And yet when I read the scriptures, I don't find anywhere where God prohibits our being angry with him. In fact, as we read Psalm 77, we discover the David was willing to ask some very difficult questions of God. And so as we read this psalm, we realized that the psalmist is looking at God and he's been he's thinking back on his history, his own personal history with God. 

And he's, and he's asking, Who is God? What is God and and mostly, he's asking what in the world is going on here? He's asking God, and he's asking, so what is happening to me? Why are you letting this happen to me and God forgotten to be merciful? Now these questions are full of an intensity that challenges God to give an answer for himself. Will the Lord reject us forever? Psalm was hard is angry at the way God had been treating him. He is sure the Lord has rejected Him. God has failed to be God. If God has failed to be faithful,

God supposedly chose this people called Israel How could he now have turned his back on the people that he had promised to care about? How could he have done this? The Psalm was just wonders how? How can this be? Will God never show his favor? Again? Will he forget to do what he said he would, his hearts turning this over and over throughout tonight, he can't close his eyes and you're the one God who is keeping my eyes open in my heart, turns this over and over. And we wonder what might have precipitated this, this crisis of faith on the part of the psalmist. 

He doesn't tell us which is I think just as well, because now we can take hold of the Psalm and we can have it ourselves, we can use it ourselves. Whenever you find yourself in the depths, Psalm 77 is a great song to go to. Because one thing is sure, something has happened to the psalmist in which he has felt God has failed to act when he should have acted. And the psalmist is upset, deeply upset. He turns it over. 

He says in his heart over and over, he's questioning God's character. When someone gets angry with another one, one of the first things that happens we question their character. We call people names. And we think that by calling them names, we're putting them down where we're labeling them in such a way that their character can never be recovered. In comics, that, that I kind of like to read in the newspapers wherever there's various marks that are used to replace words that they don't want to print, but which are meant to call words to our own minds and our minds easily, easily. supplies them. 

We all know the words, even if we wouldn't make use of them all that much. The Psalmist uses word which call God's character into question has his unfailing love?. See, we said his, has his unfailing love vanish forever. The Psalm is hard cannot hold on to its anger anymore. He sees that, that God has not been what God was supposed to be. And so he hears his heart saying, Lord, You have failed me. You failed to keep your promises. You've turned out in this situation, to not be good. Even go so far as to question the heart of God, is God forgotten to be merciful? God's very character is to be merciful. B

ut now, the Psalmist is convinced that God is forgotten even to be merciful. How could he? How could God forget that? The Psalmist is lying alone there in his bed in the middle of the night. He can't sleep. He can't lift up God's name and prays. He can only get angry. And he knows, but he knows. He knows God's big enough to handle it. God isn't so vulnerable as to be scared of a human being voicing his or her anger after all, God created us with the ability to get angry. 

And when when we see something we find unjust going on, we ought to be getting angry. And if we think that it is God's fault, that the injustice is happening, we need to address God with the fact one of the great Christian ethics teachers in the last part of the 20th century wrote a book about forgiving and in in it he included a chapter on forgiving God. He told the story of his own child dying very young. And he tells of the anger and the bitterness that the event caused him and his wife, they hidden long for a child for so long for so much and then and then within days of the child's birth suddenly child died then long for a child for a decade. And then the pregnancies occurred and the child had been born. And a mere 10 days later, the child died. And they looked upon that as one of the most cruel things God could have done to them. How could he have done that? There was so much anticipation so much thankfulness at the pregnancy, so much thankfulness at the birth and now this. 

They didn't believe God could ever explain what had happened to them. How could he have done this to a couple who were trying to be faithful and following him? Dr. Smith tells us that they needed to learn to get angry with God for he needed to learn that God could handle his anger that God could handle the pain that he listened to that anger and that God was present with him. Dr. Smith says, I had to learn that God is big enough to handle my anger. It's okay to be angry with something we perceive God has done to us. You see, God wants his people to be honest with him. If in our relationships, we tend to be dishonest with each other, we will never feel close to the one we've kept back the truth from, the same thing is true with our relationship with God. If we do not tell God, what is on our hearts, we'll never feel close to God. We will never get over the anger that will simply fester there in our hearts in which will eventually separate us from God because I like I said, anger is something became comes between us and someone we love and when we love God and that anger comes in there. 

Finally, if we don't express it to God, it can separate us from God. When I think the Psalm was teaches us here in Psalm 77 Is that we ought to raise the issues with God, to cry out to him to let our souls bleed in God's presence to weep and to cnash our teeth and to let God know how badly we hurt. We need to recognize that the message of the Bible is that God knows what it is like for us to not understand his way his own son was hanging on a Roman cross. And as he hung there, he cried out in desperation, My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? If you follow the example of Jesus, you will see that it's, it's appropriate for us in the depths of our suffering to cry out to God. The Bible tells us that Jesus hung there on the cross, abandoned by God so that we will never be forsaken by Him. God can handle your anger. And so I appeal to you today to let God hear it when you're angry will not drive a wedge between you and God. No, rather in a mysterious way, letting out that anger will draw you nearer to God, because you take him seriously enough to address him and to ask him what he's doing in your life. The Bible invites you to make your anger known to God he will reach out to you with nail scarred hands on he will say I love you, my child. Trust me on this one. You may not understand it, you may hurt really badly but know this. Jesus says, I have borne God's anger against you and he has not forgotten to be merciful. God is still the merciful one, know that. And your angle or anger will know that you have been heard. And then the relationship you have with God can begin to heal as he touches you with His Holy Spirit. And you know that no question is too big for God. Even even if it calls his goodness into question. I want you to close your eyes for a moment. And if you have some anger with God hidden away in your heart about something that you believe God has done to you, I want to invite you to take it out of hiding

I want to invite you to feel the anger again. And now turn from your heart and look in your mind's eye to Jesus who stands with his living, but kneel torn hands held out to you. Look at him and know that God will never forget to be merciful, for Jesus, Immanuel, God with us, he has proven himself again again. Listen, listen to his voice. For he's going to be saying something like this to you, I love you, my child. I am with you, in your pain. I am with you, in your sorrow. I am with you. In your anxiety and I love you, says let that anger out. Let it go. Since you and I can walk in a close relationship, free of those wedges again. That's what God is saying to you. Share it with other people. So they too can know that God is Immanuel. He's with us and he loves us and he can actually handle our anger.