Making Today Matter预览

Being Honest with God

"I am angry!” she said to me.

It was a strange way to start a conversation, but her emotions seemed to overwhelm her.

I had just finished teaching, and I was signing a book for someone when this woman stepped between us. Asking her to wait just a second, I finished signing the book and handed it back to the now very concerned recipient.

“Let’s walk for a bit,” I suggested to my unhappy new friend. When we were finally alone, I quietly asked her, “What happened to you?”

For half a second I thought she might slap me, but as I watched, the ice in her eyes melted from anger into intense pain. She fell into my arms, and rivers of tears streamed down her face.

“I’ve buried two sons,” she said when she could speak. “Every time I hear you talk about your boy, it’s like a knife in my heart.”

We talked for a long time that night. At one point I asked her if she had let God see her rage, and she seemed horrified by the suggestion.

“I can’t talk to God like that!” she said.

“Don’t you think He already knows?” I asked, holding her tight. “He knows—and He loves you. He knows—and He wants you to trust Him enough to tell Him the whole truth about what you’re feeling.”

Have you ever done that? Have you ever simply gotten alone with God and let Him have it all, the good, the bad, and the downright ugly—whatever it is you’re thinking and feeling? Doing so will change your life. Trust me; I speak from experience! But it took me years to open up to God. I’d lived much of my life filled with shame, with the profound sense that no matter what I did, I would never be good enough for God or for anyone else. Clinging to that falsehood, I kept a wall around my heart so that no one could hurt me. The wall kept me safe, but it also kept me lonely. One night when I was alone in a hospital, alone in the dark, I spoke out loud to God everything I felt. It wasn’t pretty . . . but I wasn’t struck by lightning. Instead I actually felt closer to Him than ever before. Truth does that. Truth destroys walls.

Are you willing to take that risk today? Will you fall at the feet of Jesus, tell Him the whole truth about what you’re thinking and feeling, and then let Him love you back to life?

God knows your whole story and He loves you.