I leave you with this mans testimony ( not mine of course but it could have been )
Angry?...Without Sin?
Have you ever been angry with God? I have. I grew angry with God when our first baby died.
I married my high school sweetheart. After a couple of years we started visiting doctors to help figure out why we were not having babies. They did all they could, but still no baby. We went through the roller coaster of emotions peaking at Hope and bottoming out at Despair while mostly walking the pathway of Why?
Every one of our married friends, it seemed were having babies. We would discuss the abortion issue within our society and wonder why anyone would reject such a precious gift. We watched as some would have children who didn't want them while others who desperately wanted them could not have any. We questioned practically everything.
After three years, we discovered that we were expecting our first baby. Less than one month later, the love of my life, my high school sweetheart miscarried. Many family members and friends wanted to help, but their words brought only a greater feeling of emptiness.
I knew all the philosophies and the ways to look at it, right? After all, I was a seminary student training to become a pastor. All we knew was that our baby was dead. All our hopes, all our dreams, all our grand plans, dead. We never got to look into his/her eyes. We never got to place his/her foot into our hand. We never heard the laughter or the crying. Our baby was dead. And the anger toward God began to mushroom within my soul.
The next morning, our phone rang at 4:30. "Ted, this is Tommy. I saw your light and thought you might be up. Are you okay?" I assured our neighbor that everything was just fine. I had risen to pray. To this he replied, "I know you usually get up this early to pray. I just didn't think you would today." "Was that because of the miscarriage?" I asked. "Well, uh, yes. I mean, after all, you're so sad," Tommy slowly spoke. Then I shared with Tommy what I was really doing at that time.
I told him, "Tommy, can you imagine with me for a moment? I'm imagining that I am walking up to the throne of God and punching him right in the nose. Then I'm imagining that I'm crawling up into his lap and crying." In shock he replied, "Can you really do that? I mean can you really punch God?" I explained to him that God and God alone holds life and death in his hands and He's the only one I can go to about this. I further explained that I also have no where else to go with all of my pain. God and God alone is the great Comforter. So I go to Him for comfort in my agony.
Tommy understood all this. We discussed it more over the following few weeks while Tommy worked through his own anger and then trusted Jesus for salvation. Interestingly enough, he had always been taught by his parents and his church that anger toward God was a sin. I helped him see otherwise and he then became a faithful follower of Christ.
I had already learned that we are commanded in Ephesians 4:26 to "be angry" but not to sin. It takes time and some help to learn how to be angry without sinning. I had learned this from two events earlier in my life. These lessons I used in order to help Tommy.
I have already shared with you about the first lesson. But let me remind you that I had grown angry with God over years of feeling rejected. Then in the driving rain one night, God spoke to me and cleansed me from my bitterness and rage.
The second lesson I learned was from one of my heroes, Dr. David Seamands. Dr. Seamands had grown up in India with missionary parents. He later returned to India after college and seminary to serve as a missionary himself. After sixteen years, he and his family moved to Wilmore, Kentucky for him to serve as pastor at the Methodist Church.
He had served as pastor in Wilmore for six years when the legendary Asbury revival occurred. God descended on the campus of Asbury College in February of 1970 during a routine chapel service. The service continued around the clock for the next eight days. It began on a Tuesday.
On Friday night during dinner, Dr. Seamands' wife, Helen asked if he planned to attend the revival any that evening. He responded that he probably should, "After all, I am the pastor of the Methodist Church and I should make an appearance."
I learned of this conversation in 1988 as a student of Dr. Seamands. He told us that his wife looked at him for a brief moment and then responded with the single most effective sermon he had ever heard in his life. When he told her that he should make an appearance, she replied, "David, I think it's time we started being honest instead of respected."
This is what I shared with my neighbor. He couldn't imagine someone wanting to pray after the death of his dreams. He couldn't fathom the idea of openly and honestly expressing my anger to God. But as I honestly and openly shared with him, God was able to reach deeply into his soul and do a work that later resulted in his salvation.
King David tells us in Psalm 51:6 that God desires truth in the innermost areas of our hearts and souls. However, many times we Christians are more concerned with appearances than with truth. The Apostle Paul commands us to "be angry" but to avoid sin in his letter to the Ephesians (4:26). On the other hand, we Christians many times would rather pretend everything is fine than to be angry. Often we would rather pretend we have no anger instead of openly and honestly facing God with our anger.
I have served as a pastor for eighteen years now. I find it common among Christians to face hardships and difficulties with a mask over our feelings. Later, because we refuse to honestly face God with our anger, we turn away. We stop praying. We stop reading our Bible. We stop attending church services. In other words, we walk away from God. All because we prefer to be respectable instead of honest. We have been taught this, however, anything that has us acting in a dishonest way is from Satan. Of course he would have us more concerned with appearance than with truth.
I mentioned my wife and my struggle with having babies. Now years later, we have one daughter. When she was five years old, we took her to the funeral of Austin Yanders, a one month old from our church. The three of us walked up to the casket. She looked into the face of little Austin, "Daddy, is he dead?" she asked me. "Yes, he is." She studied his face a little longer, then stated, "I'm really angry with Jesus right now." I quietly responded, "Most of us in the room are angry with Jesus right now." She continued, "Could Jesus have healed him?" I assured her, "Yes, he could have." She then repeated herself, "I'm really angry with Jesus right now."
She said nothing else. Over the seven years since that moment at the casket, she has grown in her faith. She has not turned away from God. From time to time she wants to walk over to Austin's grave.
She was angry with Jesus. I did not try to convince her otherwise. I want her to grow up knowing how to "be angry" but without sin. I want her to have an honest and open relationship with Jesus that grows deeper every day of her life.
Rev. Ted Beam
