Have you ever had something painful happen, and you fell silent about it? Maybe someone did something to you and it was unfair and it hurt and it maybe even caused you to question God, but you said nothing?
Maybe you grew angry. And angrier. And the anger filtered into places it should have never been allowed until it tainted certain areas about life and you had a hard time maintaining a healthy perspective. Or maybe, instead, it simply simmered into this ever-present “thing” that you’d like to walk away from, but no matter how many times you’ve tried, you remain ever-aware of its presence?
Read Chapter Three: Quit the Quiet
Read Luke 18.
There comes a time to break the silence. And in Luke 18:4, we meet a woman who understood this.
She lived alone, this widow who was constantly being mistreated. She had sought protection from the local judge but apparently this judge wasn’t a godly man and didn’t seem the least bit bothered by our friend’s dilemma. He was certainly in no hurry to help because the widow had to return more than once, insisting that something be done.
“For a while the judge refused to do anything. Finally, he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care about people, I will help this widow because she keeps on bothering me. If I don’t help her, she will wear me out.’” {Luke 18:1-5 CEV}.
Our widowed friend came to a flashpoint, an anger that refused her unfair circumstances one. more. day. Not the quiet sort of anger that simmers as we walk about with life’s hurts silently prying away at our hope, but rather a righteous anger that challenges the wrong, one that brought a cold-hearted man into right ways. {Don’t you love when God does that?}
I imagine there are raw, painful places inside every one of us that stem from some degree of rejection, insecurity, or shame. Places we’d like to keep hidden. Places that a quiet and insecure anger tempts but never fully challenges. And I get it, it’s hard to even look at these things sometimes, much less confront them long enough to let them go.
But I want to suggest there’s a certain something that burns within us that may well be preparing us for what God has waiting. Like the widow, there’s a time we must honor this smoldering indignation, must harness the power of a situation that would also anger God. Shouldn’t we be angry about the things that make God angry? Should we remain silent about these things?
Constructive anger can serve as positive ammunition, an energizer for necessary change.
Let us watch for a clear directive for God on this one, though. Let us ensure our response to an unfair situation is constructive and not destructive, being angry for the right reasons and taking the right actions as opposed to blurting out angry in-the-moment feelings and justifying them with our need to “find our voices.”
We must keep God at the forefront of our healing journey here, mad or not.
We do not have to be a victim of this anger, or the pain behind it. Nor do we have to remain silent. Let us harness this, let us turn any grudge-holding, bitterness-churning acid that threatens to tip over at any moment into pure motivation to correct injustice. Let us learn to speak the words that beg to be heard, words of truth that breed life and hope and positive change. Ones that birth freedom.
From The Voice Studio: Are you tolerating something you shouldn’t and are you angry about it? What is it and what do you need to do about it? What can you do to stop it? How can you set up a support system that will help you overcome it? Leave us a comment below as well as any any statement or story from the Chapter that resonated with you somehow.
{For more practical help, see the book When A Woman Finds Her Voice: Overcoming Life’s Hurts & Using Your Story to Make a Difference.}