“Rise during the night and cry out. Pour out your hearts like water to the Lord.”Lamentations 2:19 (NLT)
You’ve just had an awful setback. You’ve lost a job. You’ve ended a relationship. You’ve failed in some way.
What do you next? Do you just grin and bear it? Do you tell God what you think he wants to hear?
No, the first thing you should do is to tell God how you feel—unload your pain. When you’re honest with God about your emotions, it’s actually an act of worship.
Job is a great example of this. Job loses everything—his family, his livestock, his home, and his wealth.
But the Bible doesn’t sugarcoat his response: “Job stood up and tore his robe in grief. Then he shaved his head and fell to the ground to worship” (Job 1:20 NLT).
Job grieved the way people did in the Middle East back in his day, by tearing his robe and shaving his head. But then he worshiped God.
Any time you experience loss, you’ll face four emotions:
Anger: Why did this happen to me?
Grief: What have I lost?
Shock: What’s going on here?
Fear: What’s going to happen next?
When you experience a setback, you need to express every one of those emotions. And God can handle them because he is the one who gave them to you.
In fact, the only reason you have any emotions at all is because you are made in the image of God. God is an emotional God; he has emotions. He can handle your anger, your grief, your shock, and your fear.
Job was brutally honest with God, and you can be too. Job said, “I cannot keep from speaking.
I must express my anguish. My bitter soul must complain” (Job 7:11 NLT).
The right response to a setback isn’t to fake a good response. God never wants you to fake an emotion.
In one of the most difficult setbacks in the entire Bible, after Jerusalem had been looted and destroyed and the Israelites had been killed, enslaved, and exiled, the prophet Jeremiah writes this: “Rise during the night and cry out. Pour out your hearts like water to the Lord” (Lamentations 2:19 NLT).
For more Daily Hope with Rick Warren, please visit pastorrick.com!
Your Gift Brings Hope to the World
God has dreams for your life!
In Pastor Rick’s book "Created to Dream: The 6 Phases God Uses to Grow Your Faith," you’ll learn how to discover God’s custom-made dream for your life—a dream that is bigger and better than anything you could ever dream up on your own! And you’ll find practical help for navigating challenges, delays, and detours that stand in your way.
We’d love to send you a copy as our way of saying thank you for your generous gift below to help take the hope of Jesus to more people through Daily Hope.
Request yours when you give today—and thank you for your partnership!
*All gifts will be doubled up to the full amount of the grant. Thank you for your generous support! *The USA IRS code permits you to deduct the amount of your financial gift to Daily Hope that exceeds the fair market value of materials you received from Daily Hope.
_638876645809349421.webp)