Today @ The Gathering we continued our brand new series entitled “Angry In America” with the second installment, “I’m Angry Because Life is Unfair.”
It doesn’t take very long to realize that, while all men and women are created equal, life has a way of separating us. Some people seem to have all the advantages, while others seem to suffer one calamity after the other. In a world like this, how can you believe in a good and loving God? And if there is a God, why is He so unfair?
This message helped us to get to the place where we could tell the honest truth to God. And that is, there are times when we don’t understand Him and we disapprove of the way He does things. We started today learning that it is our perspective, our framing story of how we see God, that determines how we see life.
For some, God is a guilt-inducing bully. For others, God is a demanding drill-sergeant. While for others, God is a vengeful tyrant. And while everyone has their opinion about who God is and what He’s like, the only real authority on the subject are the sacred Scriptures.
When we go to the Scriptures, what we find is that God describes Himself as a loving Father. Hard to believe sometimes because of the way things work in life. But truthfully, a father who loves his children must at times allow things, for the long-term good, that his child would disapprove of.
We talked about the three times we’re tempted to get mad at God:
1. When you think God is unfair.
2. When you think God is unresponsive.
3. When you think God is unsympathetic.
One of the most important things we dealt with today are the three things to remember that we dare not forget about God:
1. God owes me nothing except to be Himself.
2. If God is indeed loving, this means that God knows, cares, and is willing to act on my behalf.
3. Therefore my secret weapon in the light of all of life’s circumstances is the deep, core conviction that God is loving.