He Sympathizes With Me
Have you ever been mad at God? Disappointed? Frustrated and left with so many unanswered questions? You aren’t alone. Although talking about anger with God may not be the most popular topic in Christianity, I believe it is certainly something that the Church needs to be able to talk about, freely. Because the truth is, there are a lot things that happen in the Christian life that are far from easy to cope with.
I have found myself in that place recently with God. It wasn’t something I was expecting, but an emotion that slowly swept in my heart and the subconscious of my emotions. Moving to Nashville has been an incredible journey and experience; meeting lots of new friends, exploring new places, settling into new spaces, but yet still in the quietness of my soul, there were unrelenting feelings and questions of the past, present and future that I have had to wrestle within myself intensely. I have had to deal with great moments of victory, celebration and simultaneously deal with grief and sorrow all at the same time. Growing up in a space where negative emotions weren’t always expressed, I tried to ignore the negativity in my mind and find contentment in the Good. Because what sort of Christian, a person of faith, could ever question God? As most of us probably already know, ignoring the problem never does us any good. We must ask the hard questions. We must be able to set two chairs in the middle of a room, and make space for these uncomfortable conversations, and look God in the eye and dare Him to speak to the dark, untouched spaces.
So, I decided to become honest.
Honest with God.
Honest with myself.
Honest with others.
I invited him in the dark spaces I struggled to let go of.
So, I wrote an honest letter to God, and when I say honest, I mean, very unchristian honest. I laid it all on the table; my fears, my doubts, my frustrations with Him, my grief, my sorrows, my “Not Yet’s” and “Never will be’s”, and my disappointments on why things didn’t work out the way I wanted them to. I told Him that although I loved Him, I didn’t understand… and why He could allow some of my worst fears to happen in my life. Seriously, last year was the worst.
I gave myself permission to be honest and vulnerable with my closest Friend and trust that He wouldn’t reject me... because I knew He wouldn’t. This is how safe I know God to be. He is my first love and first place to run even when I say I hate him. At the end of this gruesome letter, I heard the Lord whisper gently to me, He sympathizes with me.
Immediately, I felt a sovereign peace that stilled my soul once again, after all the grief, after all the pain, He is steady to remind me, that Emmanuel, God with us, was born in a lowly place, much lower than I. He made Himself flesh, for you and I, and felt the curse of the world upon his shoulders. He felt gravity. He felt pain, in fact, the Bible says in John 11:33 that when Jesus saw Mary weeping, a deep anger welled up with in Him and was deeply troubled. He then wept in great empathy for those He loved. Jesus, the son of God, waited to resurrect Lazarus 3 days late on purpose, yet felt the humanity of pain in the present with Mary and wept with her. Jesus is God, Holy, all knowing, all powerful, yet was completely present with Mary and identified with her suffering. Her suffering was His suffering. How could Mary know? The anguish in His heart was for her, because humanity can only take us so far to understand the knowledge of God. We must hold onto the Spirit of God to understand the Spirit of God.
And the Cross. The most gruesome pain of all. He was despised and rejected by some of his friends and spat on by strangers who didn’t even know Him at all. They simply wanted entertainment. If you don’t think God understands your pain, your rejection, your greatest fears, He does, more than we will ever be able to understand. He has felt your pain, your anger, God’s wrath, when He hung on the cross for you and I. There was so much pain that He cried out “Oh Lord, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). The Lord sympathizes with us because He was, for a brief moment, rejected by God Himself. Because why ask such a question unless Jesus could not understand? For a brief moment in time, just maybe He didn’t understand why His Father had rejected him. Can you truly imagine the son of God not understanding in the moment of time, wrapped in humanities sin, the way of God?
Hebrews 4:15-16 says “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin…
Therefore, let us approach the throne of grace with boldness. There, we will receive His mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it the most.”
Maybe you are struggling as you read this with doubts, fears and pain. Invited God into those spaces. Wrestle with Him with the hard questions. Write a letter to God and be honest. He won’t leave you or forsake you. It is simply not His nature. I pray that as you invite God into those hard unspoken places, that you would feel the overwhelming love of God, where you can receive new hope, new mercies for the days ahead. He sympathizes with you. He has felt the pain that you have felt and has overcome. And because He has overcome, so can we.