40. What If We’re Not Being Honest With God

We're working on giving up condemnation and blaming, but we need help from God on this.

Today, this one gets personal for me. This is something that I'm having to work on in pretty fresh ways.

I'll start with this question.

When you think about your relationship with God, my problem in really being with God is that I am too.

And how would you feel in that black?

I will get to mine.

I got to start here just by checking in.

How's it going given up condemnation?

Somebody who's part of our become new community was saying that they decided to give up Dr. Blackman's third horseman.

He talks about John Gottman, says criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling or the four horsemen.

So I'm giving up defensiveness.

And then a member of her family said to her, what are you giving up for let this year?

And she said defensiveness and this person said, that's a pretty lame thing to give up for lent.

And she said, and then, well, let's just say I relapsed.

And can I just say to tell somebody they're giving up something lame for lent?

That sounds a little bit judgy too.

But of course, the problem is it's just inside me. So what do I do with that?

And it's easy for me to try to cover it up, especially if I've been around the church for a long time.

I look like somebody that doesn't have any condemnation inside them.

Nancy, this week our morning, a good, good friend, his name is Rex.

And some of you all know him.

And he just passed away after a courageous, faith-filled, difficult battle with a long illness this past week as I am recording this.

And one of the things I loved about Rex was how direct he was.

He was a therapist, the pastor, and football coach. And all that would come out with him.

And Nancy was telling me one time she went into his office and she was mad at me.

And Rex was a really good, safe person to talk to about that stuff.

And so she kind of loaded in Rex's comment to her was, you owe your husband an apology.

And she said, I didn't come in here to hear that.

Well, then you shouldn't have come in here. So God bless Rex.

One time I went into his office and I went happy about Nancy and I was complaining about her.

This is a verbatim quote. This is over 20 years ago Rex just looked at me and laughed and said, yeah, like you could have done so much better.

So I miss, we miss many aspects, but just that remarkable combination of heart and honesty in a life is such a gift from God.

And when I think about that in Scripture, of course the person when it comes to condemnation who actually moves into what we might talk about is condemning God.

It's a man named Joe who suffers greatly, who loses all kinds of things.

And this book is such a wonderfully strange one. And there's a conversation that's going on in the upper sphere in the heavens that Joe never finds out about.

He never learns what's really at stake in his life and based on his choices and that he will become a person that will inspire all kinds of folks when he suffers deeply.

Ella Davis says in her book, getting involved with God, maybe in all literature, there are no more bitter words than those that festering burst out of job silence.

Why did I not die in the womb? Emerge from the belly and expire. Why did knees receive me? And breasts give me suck? Why does God give light to the wretched and life to the bitter and wait for death in vain and dig for it rather than bury treasures?

Who would rejoice exceedingly exult that they had found a grave?

And most of us are afraid to get this honest with God, lose needs, rights in his book when it comes to God, our instinctive piety rushes in to defend him against our own complaints.

So sometimes complaining about life becomes a sneaky, passive-aggressive way of complaining about God.

For my size and my food, my groaning pours out like water, I have no rest, no quiet, no repose.

And this goes on chapter after chapter after chapter.

She goes on to write, here's a paradox at the heart of the book and the reason why the church is afraid of it,

Job rails against God, not as esceptic, not as a stranger to God's justice, but precisely as a believer.

It is the very depth of Job's commitment to God's ethical vision that makes his rage so fierce.

We are not accustomed to blaming God. And so when we find ourselves doing so we feel guilty and religiously confused.

The solution for some is to cover our confusion about God with a false piety.

And as I have looked with this and thought about my life, especially over these last few years, I suffer from that problem.

My problem in really being with God, this is me, I am too polite.

It's hard for me to get angry and I don't know why maybe that's partly temperament, maybe it's partly, goes into my own background.

I was thinking if you were at work and there were two people that you saw that had a relationship with their boss, with their employer,

and one of them was always polite and always careful and always reserved and always deferential.

And the other one could just let it fly, was connected, was committed to the work.

But just could get really angry and name it.

Which one of those two people would you say had a closer relationship with a person that they were working for?

And of course we're not just called to be God's servant, Jesus said, I call you friends and friends will be real with each other.

And politeness can be a way of trying to control a relationship and just keep it safe.

Now, Job's friends are quite polite towards God.

As you might remember in this story, Job is suffering and initially they're silent and they just mourn with him.

But then when he starts to vet, they can't stand it.

And so they think that they are defending God.

One of them build out the shoe I replied, how long will you say such things?

Your word or a blustering wind?

Does God pervert justice?

Does the Almighty pervert what is right?

And Job says you bet he does.

And Bill that goes on.

When your children sinned against him, he gave them over to the penalty of their sin.

Now of course that's not what the story says, but that's his interpretation.

God's got to be okay.

So he's got to be justified.

If this is going on, they did something wrong.

Job, if you're suffering, you did something wrong, way worse than what you used to do.

So if you'll just confess things will be okay.

If you will seek God earnestly and plead with the Almighty to your pure and upright,

even now he will rouse himself on your behalf.

Just do it.

And Job will not.

He just rails against.

He doesn't say he's perfect, but he says when my life was going well,

I was not behaving a whole lot better than I am right now.

So your insistence that my suffering must have been caused by wrongdoing that I did.

And that's why God is doing this to me.

Must be wrong and I will protest it.

I will lament it.

God, why do you shoot poison arrows at me?

This goes on through the whole book.

Now here's what's so striking in this part of what I'm trying to live with right now.

God finally shows up, talks to Job, not just about how much more God knows than Job,

but God's care for all of this creation.

How he made the morning star sing for joy that there is goodness.

And Job finally says, now my eyes have seen you.

God's comment about his friends.

He speaks to his friends and he says, I am angry with you three friends

because you have not spoken truth about me as my servant Job has.

That's in Job 42 verse 7.

God goes on to say, Job will pray for you and I will forgive you.

And then he says it is second time to underlie.

You have not spoken the truth about me as Job has.

Now how can he say that when Job is complained about him

and accused him and his friends defended him?

And Eleanor stop.

I won't take the time to read it right now,

but in a wonderful book wondering in darkness,

it's about what's going on with Job is.

He doesn't understand what's happening to him and he knows that God has great power

and God could stop it, but God does not.

And he refuses to accept it just on the base and, well, God's powerful.

So you have to take anything from him.

What he says is, no God must be good.

God must be good. God's got to be good.

And if he's not, and it should look like he is right now,

if he's not, I will stand with God's goodness.

I will stand on the side of goodness rather than capitulate just to power.

And in the end, what God lets him know is, yeah, in ways you don't know, can I yet see?

There's lots and lots to play out.

Job, you were actually drawing closer to me.

As you went through all the rage and the accusation and the honesty,

you were coming to see in all of that confusion and not knowing,

yes, it is good. It is good. I am good. I am good.

You were way closer to me than your polite, deferential friends who sounded pious,

but didn't have a clue what they were saying.

So the invitation today is to be real with God.

And I took some time today to write my own prayer,

song of lament, because there's stuff in my life where that God,

I don't understand.

If you've ever seen the player, the movie Fiddler on the Rough,

Tevi as the central character, this milkman,

and pretty much the whole, all of his talk pretty much,

when he's not talking to people, it's just a prayer to God.

If I were a rich man, that's kind of a prayer.

I don't have a lot of anger on that one,

but then there's another song where he talks about the loss of somebody who's precious to him.

Little bird, little halva, I don't understand.

I don't understand. I don't understand. I don't understand.

And maybe that's your prayer. God, I don't understand. God, why?

God, how come this person that I love is having this suffering?

You don't stop it.

To be real, to be honest, to be open before God

is not an absence of faith.

It's part of the journey of faith.

And what's miraculous and amazing and comforting and helpful

is that Jesus himself, when he's on the cross,

took one of those great anguished,

deeply pained, confused,

psalms of lament, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

And he prayed that prayer.

So, the invitation today is, be real with God.

And don't let a kind of superficial polite deference to get the way.

What's troubling, what hurts, what do you understand?

Be real with God.

And if you're wondering, oh, God, let me have it.

I'm not allowed to do that.

Just remember, no condemnation.

Hey, thanks for joining us here at Become New.

My name's Tim, and I'm a part of the team.

We distribute 10 minute teachings just like this one from John or Berg every weekday

to help you grow spiritually in Christ one day at a time.

And we have a bunch of resources that go along with these teachings.

We've got an email that we write and distribute to anyone who wants it,

completely for free, every day.

We also have a text message reminder that we send out also,

completely for free.

If you just want the link to the video every day, text to you,

we provide that.

Or if you want to go back through old teaching with John,

with your small group or with a friend,

we've created study guides for old content.

You can find all these things at BecomeNew.com.

And if you want to sign up for that email, it's BecomeNew.com,

slash subscribe.

Thanks for joining us.

We'll see you next time.

Bye.