Me:  Are you with Data?

Prodigal:  Yes, people like the idea that his emotions do not get in the way.

Me:  In fact he doesn’t have emotions right?

Prodigal:  Yep, what do you think of emotions.

Me:  Well some Christians try to pretend they don’t have any.  I will share a different view point though.

 

This is from the book Disappointment with God by Philip Yancey

 

One bold message in the Book of Job is that you can say anything to God.  Throw at him your grief, your anger, your doubt, your bitterness, your betrayal, your disappointment–he can absorb them all.  As often as not, spiritual giants of the Bible are shown contending with God.  They prefer to go away limping, like Jacob, rather than to shut God out.  In this respect, the Bible prefigures a tenet of modern psychology:  you can’t really deny your feelings or make them disappear, so you might as well express them.  God can deal with every human response save one.  He cannot abide the response I fall back on instinctively:  an attempt to ignore him or treat him as though he does not exist.  That response never once occurred to Job.

 

You feel alone with the pain of what has happened.  You just cannot get past the churning of the anger inside of you at the moment.  People are busy.  Nobody seems to dull the emotions anyway.  Do you dare turn to God?  Do you try to bury them beneath a wave of work and tasks?  Maybe a choice would be to allow them to gush forward out of your soul as you would when Job found out about the loss of his children.  No Job did not receive his children back when he went to God, and God did answer Job.  But Job did not turn from God.  Maybe the honesty of Job’s emotions drew him toward God and that made the difference during his trial.  When others turned away from God in bitterness and resentment.  Job stayed true to his relationship with God.

 

Job 42:10

And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job, when he had prayed for his friends.  And the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.

 

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org