Honestly Confronting God: How to confess your anger against God

By Joyce Carol Gibson

Honestly Confronting God is a collection of inspirational stories demonstrating how to restore your relationship with God.

If you have ever walked with Jesus and turned away, life is worse than if you had never known Him.

When you feel abandoned by God Almighty, suddenly He seems not so mighty.

When your lips that once gave Him praise tremble with pain and sorrow because you believe He failed you, there is no longer a desire to praise Him.

When you have served what you believed was a loving God and now He seems unconcerned, how can you want to seek Him?

How can you care about the God you trusted after you have lost the most important battle in your life and He wasn’t there?

There is one unpardonable sin and it is not being angry with God. You can’t be angry with God if you are a fool who has said in his heart that there is no God. If you are angry with Him it proves that you do believe in Him.

What a miserable life you have ahead of you if you stay angry with God knowing He is God. It’s not your soul that’s in jeopardy. It’s your joy, your peace, your comfort, your hope for a chance of pleasing Him because you no longer want to.

God understands pain. He understands emotions. He understands disappointment, even disappointment in Him. He waits for you to realize the truth. You may not find that truth if you don’t honestly confront Him asking for truth.

Not everyone has the gift of preaching. Some take it upon themselves to preach and proclaim that they are called to preach. The ones who are not called to preach yet preach anyway sow confusion and fear.

There is such a vast misunderstanding of God’s word that it is evident to some why Jesus wept.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brighton Publishing LLC
• Release date: May 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9781621835271

Joyce Carol Gibson

Joyce is the third of five children, born to a preacher and his wife in a coal mining town of West Virginia. The town was wedged between the mountains and populated with fewer than five hundred people. She spent most of her free time sitting on side of the mountain scribbling her thoughts, aspiring to be a famous poet. Before she knew how to hold a pencil, Joyce often begged her sister to write her words for her, but Brenda refused saying, “I’m not your secretary.” When in her early thirties, Joyce began sending poems and short stories to vanity competitions. Each entry achieved one of the top placements in the publication, and sometimes first place prize money. It was no great accomplishment but was encouraging. Her voice was not completely dead. Divorced and living alone most of the time, on her income from a full time job, Joyce has one grown daughter and three grandchildren. Carla is thirty eight years old, and married to Chad. Her children are nearly grown. The oldest son, Frankie is twenty one, works full time at night and goes to college. He lives with Joyce temporarily, and insists on paying room and board. Jacob is almost nineteen, and Faith is fourteen. Katrina is Joyce’s assumed daughter. She was Carla’s childhood friend. Katrina’s mother died when she was nine years old, and from then has been considered family. Katrina and her husband Eric have two grown sons, Cody and Trevor. If you were to ask Joyce what matters most to her, she would say God and her family. Her mother died in 2012. She lived almost eighty four years and spent the last three years living with Joyce and Margie, the youngest of the five. After their mother died, Margie went to live with her grandchildren in another state. Joyce and her four siblings grew up working. They learned many skills and know how to survive. Joyce turned her attic into a bedroom, including dry wall and electric wiring. She did the work herself. After seeing that she really could do it, she closed in her porch to make another bedroom. Faith helped her lay the ceramic tile floor, and Joyce built a wraparound porch around the existing porch to hold the ladder while she hung the windows and siding without help. Hard work comes easy to her, but relaxing is something she never learned to do. Writing helps her do that. If possible, Joyce would have had fifty children, but is glad she was only able to have one. The storms of her life would have been impossible to weather with more children to protect. However, it is normal to find a teenager, who feels unloved by their own family, sleeping on her couch. The House Rule is simply The Golden Rule—“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Unruly behavior and criminal activity are not tolerated. She lives modestly in a once two bedroom cottage type house. She has a positive and upbeat attitude about life and is thankful to enjoy good health at sixty two. She loves everyone and though forgiveness is sometimes hard, she forgives readily. She says that Carla has taught her most about real faith and forgiveness. Carla is amazing and has a huge measure of faith, and love. Forgiveness comes natural to her. Joyce says she would like to take credit for teaching Carla to be that way, but she knows that Carla taught her.

Book preview

Honestly Confronting God

How to confess your anger against God

Joyce Carol Gibson

Brighton Publishing LLC

435 N. Harris Drive

Mesa, AZ 85203

www.BrightonPublishing.com

Copyright © 2019

ISBN: 978-1-62183-527-1

eBook

SMASHWORDS EDITION

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher or copyright owner.

Acknowledgment

Thank you, Aunt Della for your encouragement and inspiration.

Thank you, Rabbi Joe for your wisdom and direction.

Foreword

When Aunt Della’s husband died, she was crushed. They had been married for forty-one years and had two grown children. Their children were deeply grieved. Everyone hurts in different ways and processes grief differently. Anger is a big part of grieving and because of the anger many harsh words were spoken. The wounds of those words caused the family to be estranged for many years. They all went through the grieving process without support from each other. Only God knows the true feelings of everyone involved here, and only He can soothe the injuries caused to their spirits.

Aunt Della said she had no family support, but she does have God. Most of her other family lived too far away to be physically and emotionally available for her. Regretfully, I was one of those who was not physically available because I lived too far away. Thank God He is enough. He gives us comfort and ability to get through the valleys.

When my mother died in 2012, Aunt Della called me often and helped me through the grieving process. My mother was her oldest sister so she too was grieving. Her help was so needed and comforting that I realized how much she had needed it when her husband died, and when she and her children were estranged. I realized too, how much my cousins needed comfort and prayer so they could understand the situation more deeply and get past the injuries. Grief is not easy to endure and we don’t see each other’s hearts, so we cannot know how deep the pain is.

Though she said that she was never angry with God, Aunt Della admitted that she could not understand why He allowed all this to happen to her. She had served God since childhood and she and her husband had made it a priority to raise their children in church, and to teach them the love of God. She went through many emotions that are mentioned in the poem "Well God, and when she heard it she wept. You need to share that with the world, Aunt Della said. So many people hurt and are unable to relate their feelings to God."

She wanted me to write a book and include the poem that touched her heart. I wasn’t sure that I could stay within God’s boundaries enough to write about confronting God, until I ran into a Messianic Jewish Rabbi in the social security office. Rabbi Joe is a published author who suggested that I gain testimonies from people who had been angry with God and had allowed Him to heal them.

After the testimonies were gathered, and I began writing, it was, at times, almost like God took control of the keyboard. The thing most clear to me, after this work was completed is that God’s love never fails, and His mercy endures forever.

While gathering testimonies from people who felt hurt or angry with God, I learned and grew from their experiences. I hope you will be able to do the same.

~Joyce Carol Gibson

Chapter One

He Knows

Psalm 51:6 (King James Version) Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.

Each night before bed, we all gathered to listen as Daddy read from the Old Testament. As children we were confused and fearful because we couldn’t understand why we should love God if He allowed such terrible things to happen as we heard from the readings.

The flood was a frightening story for me. God tolerated sin long enough then destroyed the world with water. People screamed and clawed as they tried to board the ark, which was already sealed shut by the hand of God. I would later learn that God allowed Noah to spend many years building the ark and during those years he tried to warn the people of the coming doom. They wouldn’t listen, as they don’t listen now. Back then we didn’t understand why the ruler of the universe was angry. As an adult, I cannot fathom God’s grace. It’s easier for me to understand His power and His wrath.

My mind wandered as Daddy said his long prayer. I remembered the ladies at the funeral we had attended earlier that day. They gossiped about the widow being angry with God for taking her husband.

How can anyone be angry with God? I thought. I wanted to understand why she thought she had a right to be angry with the most powerful being of all. Wasn’t she afraid?

Daddy taught us the fear of God first. Then when we knew that God is all-powerful we learned that His mercy endures forever and His love covers all sin.

I still couldn’t imagine having the guts to be angry with God. Now I realize that a lack of understanding seems to justify that anger.

What do you do when something terrible happens and you blame God? How can you continue to glorify Him when everything in your mind points a finger at Him for allowing such a terrible thing to happen to you? You’ve done your best to please Him and you’ve been a faithful witness of Him.

You can fake it and some do, or you can try to convince yourself that He had a good reason, but secretly you may still blame Him. You may have been taught that you must be reverent to God and never disrespectful, and never to question His deeds because He knows what’s best and He loves you.

Perhaps you’ve been taught to be afraid of Him because He is Almighty God and could strike you down.

He knows your heart and your feelings. He knows every hair on your head, and He knows your name. Surely, He knows when you’re mad at Him, or hurt because you believe He should have worked things differently.

What next? Do you stop seeking God? Do you lay down the Bible and pick it up only to go to church and continue to appear to others that you’re still right with God? Do you say that He’s giving you strength to go through this horrible thing? Do you believe that, or do you feel abandoned by God and are too prideful or afraid to admit it? Do you dare voice your real feelings for fear of angering the ruler of all?

Maybe you don’t even have enough desire left to try to understand. Maybe you are so angry that you don’t even want to think or speak about God, much less listen to someone else speak of Him. Some people get so angry and turned off with God that they just want to forget the whole thing and try to believe He’s just a delusion.

Your joy is at stake if you feel that way. It’s time to have a real heart-felt conversation with God. Whether you want to know it or not, God is still God and you need Him. You need His love, guidance, mercy, wisdom, and comfort to make it through this world. The terrible thing that happened to you will dim in light of the things that may happen if you give up on Him. How can you go through life without Jesus if you’ve ever had a relationship with Him? His word is in you and you can’t run from it.

Jeremiah 31:33 But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, and will be their God, and they shall be my people.

Perhaps you’re not angry with God at all, but hurt that He could do this to you. Perhaps you just feel abandoned. You still need to know that His love for you is real and that He knows your pain and does not joy in it.

Chapter Two

Sharon

Sharon was a new Christian. She started going to church with our friend Laura. There were no devout believers in her family so she had little knowledge of God. Her excitement grew as she learned that God loves us unconditionally, and will answer our prayers. Sharon held fast to the words of Jesus in John 15:7-8: If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.

Sharon’s desire for the knowledge of God increased until her husband had a heart attack while sleeping beside her. He died at the hospital while friends prayed with Sharon.

She stopped going to church and steered clear of anyone who would talk to her about God, except Laura.

I saw Sharon in the store not long after the funeral. She seemed angry and hurt, and uninterested in talking to me. It was more than grieving, it was a strong hold.

When I got home I wrote what was on my heart. I put it among the many writings that I wasn’t sure I would