Check out a highlight from last week’s podcast: Forgiving Even When It Hurts Deeply: The Duck Dynasty Story
How much longer….
When we are in the middle of suffering, a natural response can be to lash out in anger. It can feel at times like God isn’t there, or that He has simply forgotten us. For me, when those hard seasons happen, I find it all too easy to vent that frustration—especially toward the ones who actually love me the most.
Recently, some things weren’t going as I had hoped with The Lion. I found myself in a season where I was trying to discern where God wanted the ministry to go, and working through that became more and more challenging. I remember reaching the end of a particularly rough day right as my daughters got home from school.
My second oldest has a very specific love language, and it has always been physical touch. That girl loves hugs from Dad, and if I’m on the couch, you can bet she’ll do everything she can to get as close to me as possible. She usually finds a way to get my arm around her. She loves her dad, and that makes her feel safe and secure.
Well, on this particular day, when she came into my office with her normal bright disposition, she was met with a double barrel of Daddy’s wrath. She quickly reversed course, and I found myself alone again in the office, continuing to stew over what was not going the way I had hoped. Unfortunately, in the middle of suffering, what often gets exposed is the brokenness of our hearts—and the path of devastation it leaves behind can be brutal.
I really started to think about why I lash out like that, especially when suffering feels ever-present. The best way I’ve been able to describe it is this: in those moments when I’m being pushed the hardest and the pressure is mounting, what flows out of me is directly connected to what has been brewing in my heart.
Take a water bottle, for instance. Let’s pretend I take the cap off the water bottle and throw it away. Then, in some fit of rage, I proceed to shake the bottle violently. What is going to come out? It’s not a trick question—water. Why? Because water was what was inside the bottle from the beginning.
Now, if I take that same bottle and fill it with lemonade, the result would be lemonade all over everything. So how does this relate to us, particularly as men who are suffering and lashing out in anger?
Just like that bottle, when the pressure and stress of life hit, we quickly see what has been inside of us all along. That is why my daughter, who wants nothing more than to be loved by her dad, can end up receiving a double dose of “punk dad” when those moments occur.
So what do we do about it? How can we possibly reframe, course correct, and respond differently when anger begins to surface in seasons of suffering?
For me, if the Bible shows us anything, it is that we cannot be afraid to bring our true emotions to God. In fact, God is not intimidated by your anger. He invites you to bring it to Him. This is not a natural response for most guys, because we generally like to handle things on our own. We would much rather sit and sulk at times than deal with what is really bothering us.
When we have that mentality, however, we are essentially telling God that He cannot handle what we are dealing with. That is putting God in a box, and that is never a wise decision. Instead, what if we took the time to change our posture and literally bring our anger to the Lord? We see in the Psalms that God gives us emotions for a reason, and they are not inherently bad. What is dangerous is thinking we have to internalize everything and figure it all out on our own.
Scripture shows us time and time again where men who were in intense seasons of suffering were able to release their anger by bringing it to our Heavenly Father. That did not mean their current situations magically or dramatically improved, but it often did mean their mindset changed.
The evil one hopes that when we are in a season of suffering, we refuse to bring it to the Lord. He knows that with the right combination of suffering, time, and opportunity, we are likely to make emotion-based decisions that can hurt us and those around us even further.
Again, I would never diminish the suffering you may be facing right now, but I will challenge you to consider how you may be responding with anger. And if that proves to be true, I am not offering any kind of condemnation. Instead I’m asking you to consider a path to healing that, honestly, can only be found at the foot of the cross.
My prayer is that we stop letting anger spill out unchecked and instead allow the Holy Spirit to fill us. Then, in those pressure-filled moments, may we let Him show us how to respond with humility, patience, repentance, and love.