In Hamish's case - always...
Have you never come to know God personally, because you just can’t get past something?
God knows what you are feeling, so you might as well come to Him and be honest about it! I don’t know why we don’t sometimes. There have been times in my life, I just didn’t speak to God for days. It was so stupid, as God knew what my thoughts were but I just didn’t speak directly to Him.
Do you know you can be honest with God in your prayers? Really! Whatever you are feeling, you can talk to God.
Look at Job, he didn’t know what was going on. Look at what he felt in the passage, and yet he still came and talked to God about it! Sometimes we keep it to ourselves, try and work it out, thinking we will come back and talk to God later, once we have sorted it out in our own mind.
If we aren’t talking to God, it’s only hurting us.
‘But Judith you don’t know what I am going through, I’m upset with God.’ Do you not think he already knows that?
I love Job and some of the Psalmists as they are brutally honest in their feelings with God. Those bible verses remind me that however I feel at the time, I should talk to God.
I believe when we are honest with God about our feelings on a situation. In my experience, God can do a few things when answering us -
- If it's sin, He can rebuke us quickly. We realise our attitude stinks, we repent of it and anything else revealed to us, and God restores our relationship.
- God slowly shows us what we were thinking was wrong and why it was. Maybe showing us the situation from a different point of view.
- He comforts us, giving us His promise and strength that He will be with us through the situation.
- Or God resolves it.
When you look at those verses the one thing to note is that they eventually ended up thanking or praising God. They worked out/through things with God. They didn’t try and figure it out on their own.
We often don't have the whole picture in a situation, only God does.
And Job ended up getting blessed much more than before.
If you don’t know God at all and are angry or upset at Him or anybody else, talk to God about it.