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Methodist Advice?

MystyRock

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Looking for Methodist viewpoint. If you talked to someone and found out they were mad at God, what would you say to them? They thought God wasn't listening to them when they were younger, he didn't care about them. They learned to be self-reliant and wonder why they should trust God now.
 

GraceSeeker

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First, just a reminder that God is big boy and isn't likely to be hurt by people being mad at him. He can take it.

Second, if one is angry at God it's actually much more healthy to express it and tell God what you think of him for the crappy job you may feel he has done in your life than to take it out on other people like family and friends or self. Again, he can take it better than your family, friends, or yourself can.


Third, learning to be self-reliant isn't the worst thing to happen in a person's life. Indeed, the reality is that we live in a fallen world. People are given free will and not every choice that people make are good and beneficial, and not every person seeks or allows themselves to follow God's purpose(s) for their life. But God sends the rain on both the just and the unjust. And for those called according to his purpose he can use all things to work for good; meaning that even the worst events in life can be redeemed.

How do we know the later? Well, consider what in my opinion is the worst day in all of human history. Consider the day that God himself, having come to live among his creation, and doing so in a way that caused others to call him good and pronounce that they could find nothing wrong in him, was nonetheless executed at human hands. Despite the injustice inflicted upon him, he not only proclaimed forgiveness upon his persecutors, he also allowed that this terrible act could not only itself be redeemed, but efficacious in redeeming all others who would so desire it and reconcile us back to God.

So, does God actually love us, care for us? Does that day answer that question?

Not that there won't still be other issues in our lives that don't go our way. The reality is that God doesn't promise that life will be easy. He promises that those who align their lives with him will be victorious. Victories usually imply that there was some sort of struggle that needed to be overcome.

The other option is that God prevents us from ever having problems. For that to be true, he would have to keep us from ever making any mistakes. And for that to be true, he would make us so that we weren't free to make those mistakes. In other words, to have a world without pain we would also have to have a world without freewill. But that is not the world God chose for us.

We live in a world with freewill (even if 5-point Tulip Calvinists say otherwise) because God loves us enough to want us to love him freely. The other option being that we didn't chose to love him, but only did so because he caused us to respond to him out of his volition rather than our own. But God loved us enough to give us freedom to choose him for ourselves --or to not choose him, for that is the corollary to free choice. And knowing what the consequence of that free choice might also bring about, God still took the risk to give us freedom, though it would cost him so very much personally. He cares enough to give us freedom, even though that very freedom would also inevitably lead to the Cross. That is how much God cares.
 
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Maid Marie

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I have a friend in this position. I listen as he tells me his reasons why he is angry and feels forsaken by God. I assure him that I do not judge him and that I am praying for him. And then in time, once he realized that I care what happens to him and am not just running my mouth, I have been able to tell him the ways that God has been there for him but he couldn't see due to his pain. Bit by bit he has started to believe once again.
 
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MystyRock

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OK. Good description of God's love. Anger with God can also mean no communication, no relationship. First step to get over this?

We have free will - to accept God or not. Is free will something we have only here on earth?
 
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