Voice Your Complaint To God
George Frederic Watts "Hope" [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons |
-Psalm 64:1a
I think that it is so important that we tell God about our concerns. If you don't "get it off your chest", it will affect your identity and your theology. The believer who does not talk to God, letting God know what they are worried about, will end up being formed by their problem rather than transformed by God.
Your concerns or complaints are your prayers. One translator gives us Psalm 64:1 this way: "Listen and help, O God. I'm reduced to a whine and a whimper, obsessed with feelings of doomsday." Are you ever so depressed, overwhelmed, stressed-out, afraid, or so hopeless; that you can only whine and whimper? Then go ahead and whine and whimper to God.
The mistake or real failure is when we do not pray. When we let our circumstances define us, rather than letting God transform us in our circumstances. God is the transformer and redeemer. God is the restorer and renewer. God is the comforter and the giver of hope.
Our lives are designed to be authentic relationships with God, where we are, "honest to God" about our concerns. Voicing your complaint to God is the antidote to being a bitter person who grumbles and has simmering sarcasm, because of their burnout and unresolved anger.
Grumbling, bitterness, and and anger-as-identity are sins. Complaining, lamenting, whining, and crying to God is not a sin. When we do not think God loves us and we do not love ourselves, we are believing lies and are walking and living in deception.
You may confuse what I am sharing about. You might think I'm encouraging denial or delusion, as in rose-colored glasses and happy pills. But that is not it at all.
The life we are called to is a life that involves joy and suffering. In suffering there is comfort, hope, and encouragement. With every negative, with every challenge we face, with every bad thing; there is a good gift from God. Grace, hope, love, mercy, redemption, comfort, and the enlargement of your heart. Those are a few examples.
When we except the negative as our 'normal', our 'identity', or 'God's will', or as a definition of God as 'bad'; then we miss out on the gift, the growth, the transformation, and the step up. That is why we always need to talk to God and voice our complaint to him. We need to get it out, off our chests, on the table, and in play, so that God can touch it.
A famous person said, "In my deepest pain, I saw your glory, and it dazzled me". This was the quote on the brochure for the counseling school I went to.
Tell him how you feel. Make your presentation. Cry or rage. Let it out. Express your self. To decide not to pray is a horrible deception. Believing lies about God and about yourself is the oldest trick in the Book. Don't side with deception, but talk to God and let your voice be heard.
God sees us and knows what we are going through, we get that. But God wants us to tell him, because when we communicate, we open our hearts to God. God wants to know us, as in our letting him know us by telling him how we feel and what we think.
God is relational. Relationships were God's idea. He invented relationship. How can we possibly believe that God does not want to or need to hear from us, because since he is God, he already knows everything, including the future? That is nonsense.
God is quintessentially relational. It is not an act or a formality. God is authentically relational and he desires our relationship to him. Jesus came and became a man because God is relational. Jesus sent the Spirit who is in us, because God is relational. To not fellowship with God, which includes talking and listening, is ludicrous.
Voice your complaint to God. Tell God your concerns. Pray from your heart with the language of pain if need be. Practice intimacy (into-me-see) with God.
I'm pretty sure that what God is after with each one of us is transforming us into the likeness of Christ. He is completely submitted to and dependent on God. He knows God's love and shows God's love. He talked to God and so shall we.
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