My Best Friend Died — Why I Was Angry at God

Transcript

The day that I found my best friend dead, I was angry, but not at him. I was angry with God. I was at church volunteering like I did twice a month. We had finished up and I had walked all the way to my car and then I felt this overwhelming conviction to go back in and say hi to him. I almost talked myself out of it. I was at the car wrestling with should I really walk 5 minutes through the church?

But after about 10 seconds, I thought what's 5 minutes? And so I went through the building and I found him in his office. He was already gone. That night, a pastor and dear friend called me simply to check on me. He said, "Matt, I know it doesn't feel like it, but I believe it was God's will for you to be the one to find him." And honestly, I'd already believed that, too.

The timing, the conviction, it was all too much to be a coincidence. I could see God's hand in me finding him. But the pastor friend made me say something out loud I'd been avoiding saying. Why couldn't God have used me 4 hours earlier? My friend had everything going for him. A new job, a baby on the way. I was blindsided and I got angry. And I realized my anger wasn't random.

Anger is simply the heart's cry for justice. It's what happens when we know that the world shouldn't be this way. For a moment, I was angry at my friend, but that didn't last. So, the only place left for my anger to go was towards God. And I had a choice. Either run from God or bring my anger to him honestly. Trusting that he sees what I can't.

Because anger done right doesn't teach us to trust in our own understanding of how things should go. It teaches us to be still and to trust God. We're going to continue talking about anger in this next video.

Transcript from YouTube's automatic captions, lightly tidied. Watch the full video on YouTube.