I Am Angry And It Is A Holy Day

You have not prayed properly since it happened and you know exactly why.

It is not that you have stopped believing anything. That would be simpler and in some ways easier. It is that every time you start, the same thing comes up, and it is not reverent and it is not submitted and it has a question in it that you do not think you are allowed to ask.

So you stop. You say something short and general instead, or you say nothing, and you have been doing that for months.

And now the day is coming. The reverent one. The one where there will be a moment of some kind, and somebody may say something, and you will be standing in a room with your head down carrying a thing you believe you are not allowed to bring in.

Let me say what you are actually planning, because I want it in the open.

You are planning to leave it at the door. To go in with the anger set aside, and be appropriate for the duration, and pick it back up in the car.

I want to tell you that this is not necessary, and that it does not work, and that Scripture is far more on your side here than anybody has told you.

And before anything else: if these months have taken you past what one man can hold, 988 is a crisis line and it is answered, and a doctor, a counselor or a pastor you trust is the right room for it. Nothing on this page stands in for a qualified human being.

How long wilt thou forget me

There is a psalm that opens with a question nobody would let a man ask out loud in most rooms.

How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me? (Psalm 13:1, King James Version)

Read the accusation in it. Not: I feel forgotten. Wilt thou forget me. He is putting the forgetting on God, directly, in the second person, and then asking whether it is permanent.

And then he asks again in the same verse, because once was not enough. How long wilt thou hide thy face.

That is not a man being careful. That is a man saying the thing, and it is in the book, and nothing anywhere in Scripture corrects him for it.

You have not invented a question that offends heaven, and Scripture preserved it word for word. The Spirit of God is the one who lets a man read his own question in a psalm and stop being frightened of it, and it is written into Psalm 13:1 that a man asked God directly how long He intended to hide His face.

And notice who he is asking. He does not take the question elsewhere.

You are able to take it to the right place, and the Holy Spirit is present when a man brings an accusation to the one it is aimed at. The written word keeps the whole complaint inside a prayer, and Psalm 13:1 has him ask God rather than complain about God.

What leaving it at the door does

Now let me be practical about the plan, because it will not do what you want it to do.

Leaving it at the door does not produce reverence. It produces absence.

A man who has set aside the only thing he currently feels is not present in that room. He is a shape standing in it, doing the appropriate things, with the actual man parked somewhere outside in a vehicle. And everybody in there will experience a version of you that is polite and unreachable, and one or two of them will notice and will not know what they noticed.

You were never going to be in that room while the anger was in the car, and Psalm 13:1 has the complaint and the praying in the same sentence. The Spirit of God is present with the whole of a man rather than with the presentable part, and Scripture puts a man's accusation inside a prayer rather than outside the building.

And here is the second thing, and it is the one that matters most.

The anger is not an obstacle between you and God. It is the only live connection you currently have with Him. It is addressed to Him. It assumes He exists, that He is responsible, and that He owes you an answer, which is more theology than most people carry into a room on that day.

An indifferent man does not get angry. He shrugs. What you have is not the opposite of faith; it is faith with a grievance, and Scripture is full of it.

You are still speaking to Him, and the Holy Spirit is the one who recognizes an accusation as an address rather than as a rejection. The written word treats that as prayer, and Psalm 13:1 is written by a man who never once considered taking his question anywhere else.

Say it before you go

So here is the assignment, and the timing is deliberate.

Say the angry question out loud to God before the day, in the words that actually come.

Not the tidy version. The one that arrives every time praying is attempted and that has been shut down for months. Say it out loud, in a room by yourself or in a vehicle, in the words it arrives in.

How long. Why did you. Where were you. Whatever it actually is.

You are able to say the untidy version, and Scripture kept the untidy version. The Spirit of God receives a question in the words it arrives in, and it is written into Psalm 13:1 that the asking was done twice in one verse because once was not enough.

And say it before rather than during, for a practical reason. If it has been said, it does not need to be held down for four hours. A thing that has been spoken stops pressing.

That is the whole mechanism. Nothing here is trying to resolve it, and I am not going to tell you that saying it produces an answer, because Psalm 13 does not get an answer in verse two either.

What it does is let a man go into a room with the thing acknowledged rather than suppressed, and an acknowledged thing takes up a great deal less room than a suppressed one.

You are able to be in the room with it rather than despite it, and the Holy Spirit carries a man who has said it further than one who is holding it down. The written word leaves the question standing exactly as it was asked, and Psalm 13:1 records the complaint without any resolution arriving in the next line.