Are you not happy with your job? Are you not satisfied with how little your saving is? Or are you annoyed that you don’t have a boyfriend/girlfriend to travel with?
Well, whether in life or in travelling, we always seem to have something that doesn’t meet our expectation for the perfect life that we think we deserve to have. Let me share my story with you.
Despite the fact that I know even as God’s children, we aren’t entitled to have a successful and easy life. Yet still I got angry at God for a certain period in my life.
I grew up being an obedient child to God and to my parents. I gave up a number of things for God I love while growing up. Then I chose a career that I was sure that was prepared by God.
I felt ready.
I knew God would bless me and take care of me as He always had. So despite the low-paid salary (in my standard..), loneliness, and humble status (in my standard again), I felt it was fine as long as it’s a blessed path. The project I led was difficult and irrelevant to my degree. It wasn’t easy for me but I did enjoy praying to God to make things work while I also worked hard.
I always believed God would show kindness to those who love Him and rely on Him.
I felt there was no way that God wouldn’t bless those who seek to live a righteous life according to His will.
Psalm 115:13, He will bless them that fear the LORD, both small and great.
But after months of effort when my project was launched, it wasn’t well received. I didn’t leave God and I believed He’d do something that no eyes have seen nor ears have heard nor human minds have conceived.
……But eventually the project was shut down.
Even till that point I was only frustrated with myself that I didn’t know what God was doing.
But guess what? My bitterness was rooted when I started to compare myself with my friends. My non-Christian friends have higher paid jobs, or they are doing PhD from Berkeley or post-graduate degrees from Harvard!
So God, how is this fair?
I felt God could help me and give me more, but He chose not to. And my bitterness turned to anger.
I was like the Israelites who had so much expectation of their own after they were brought from Egypt. But they only found heat and lack of water on their trip. The wilderness didn’t look anything like the Promised Land.
I was like Mary who lost hope when her brother Lazarus was dead and yet Jesus didn’t come.
Except my situation was worse. I didn’t understand why Jesus had to let Mary wait and be devastated. I do believe in miracles, but I don’t understand why one has to suffer just to see something that I already believe? I felt I would be fine if Jesus could just heal Lazarus and I would still believe He is the Son of God.
This was hard.
I couldn’t understand why God acts like this. I felt like Jonah who ran away from God’s calling, and he eventually went to preach about God’s judgment to Niniveh only to find out God changed His mind as the people of Niniveh repented. Then if God already knew about the repentance, then why did He have to send Jonah?
Why not just bless us or leave us alone???
I didn’t enjoy these emotional rides. I was angry at God for being so strange and unreasonable. I found it very hard and almost pointless to remain Christian.
Then I started to doubt God’s love, or His very existence. I thought about taking a break from being a Christian. I still believed in heaven and hell, Jesus, and miracles but I was just tired from following Jesus. Although in my confusion, I still prayed. I didn’t know what else I could do.
After a few months, I watched a movie called Son of God. Of course, I knew the story of Jesus already. But when I saw the Jesus in the film was beaten to the ground, I felt so sad and sorry that Jesus had to die for my sins. But I saw from Jesus’ eyes that He said to me, “It’s okay.”
Just these words, “It’s okay”. It was so powerful than John 3:16 to me.
Jesus suffered so much to save us from our sins. He is God after all! Why should He die for me? It’s beyond my logic but God said it was okay. It was okay for Him to take all the blame because He loves us. If being wronged, beaten and crucified for us was okay for Jesus, then surely nothing happened to me was comparable to His pain. No, Jesus didn’t ask me for a reason why He should love me, if He did, I would have nothing to say. He suffered unconditionally for me, and to Him it was okay.
My anger to God was there because I didn’t understand why He was not blessing me the way I defined ‘blessings’ which could be success, wealth, or status. I had a ruler in my heart that I wanted God to follow. I had my logics which I thought was more important than God’s. So these were the reasons for my anger. And these reasons don’t matter until unless I could find a reason why God should die for sinners like me.
So I relented. I let God to be God in my life. And yes, He could do whatever He wants with me because He is God. He is good, and He works in a way that my brain does not always understand. But all His words are true in His timing and standard. I’m no one to judge what’s good and what’s evil for me, because I’m not God.
And it was such a relief to reconcile with God. It didn’t change anything as my project failed was a hard fact. But when I let go of the bitterness and that ruler in my heart, I had God again.
Most of the time problems didn’t start from God, but from ourselves. It’s from the ruler in our heart that tells us we deserve more or better. It’s from the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and not the fruit of life.
Don’t judge your life and tell God that He hasn’t been good to you. God is fair. Maybe Canaan is right before you but you just don’t know. Or maybe He will give you back what He took away or maybe He won’t. Or maybe He will tell you to do something but your plan will fail. But even so, God is fair. Just don’t judge it with your own wisdom. If He told Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, then they shouldn’t judge with their own wisdom. The point is not how pleasing to the eyes the fruit looked or how they might lack nutrition this fruit offered, but that God told them they shouldn’t eat it. The simple way to say it is—You are His creation, and He is the Creator. Let God be God, let Him take control even though you might not always understand. And you will remain in His blessings.
So next time when you pity yourself because of your savings, salary, holiday or not having a good companion, think about what God has done for you before you complain. Think about how Jesus didn’t complain that He had to die for you.
And let go.
Traveling Mega
