Our economy continues to shed jobs, which means people’s lives are impacted. With an unexpected job loss comes anger, the topic of this week’s blog, an excerpt from my book, How Long, O Lord, How Long? Devotions for the Unemployed and Those Who Love Them.  Please share.

Note: I will be vacationing next week and won’t be publishing a blog. I’ll see you again in May.

I’M ANGRY! I JUST want to scream! This isn’t supposed to happen like this. I wasn’t supposed to lose my job. It wasn’t in my plans. It’s not how I saw the future. I’m really pissed off. Sound familiar? Have any these thoughts come to mind lately? I think you are normal if they have, and I’d worry more if you had no anger at all.

Who are you most mad at? The person who let you go, likely your boss? The person from human resources who sat with your boss and helped deliver the message? Your coworkers? Your staff? The president of the company? The board of directors? How about the economy? Our nation’s president? After all, isn’t the economy his job? Congress? They pass the laws, don’t they? The list is endless, but somehow we tend to come back to God. We’re mad at him because he let this happen. He’s God; he could have stopped it but he didn’t. So let’s be mad at God.

We live in an imperfect world—full of imperfect people and full of sin and pain. Because of this, bad things happen—even to good people. Our God loves you more than anyone else could ever love and care for you. Think about it. If you’re a parent, what do you do when your children go through pain? You hurt for them and you probably even shed tears. I believe our Heavenly Father has and is shedding tears at the pain you are going through because of his love for you. Could God have stopped it? Yes, he has that type of power. But remember, it is in our weakness that he is the strongest.

How do we deal with this anger? You need to get it out. First, God needs to hear your anger. He wants to hear from you and he’s ready. It’s probably not one conversation either; it’s many. The psalmist in Psalm 55 says it’s morning, noon and night that he cries out: As for me, I call to God, and the Lord saves me. Evening, morning and noon I cry out in distress, and he hears my voice (Psalm 55:16-17). Ask God to hear your cry of anger and to take it away. The more we cry out to God, the quicker the anger will go away and the closer we will get to him. He wants us to be close to him. We read in Psalm 145:18 that the Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.

In your conversation with God, let him hear all of it. Don’t pull any punches. You can’t move forward until you get the anger out and that may take a few weeks; it might even take a couple of months. In Ephesians 4:26-27, we are reminded that if we stay angry, we give the devil a foothold in our heart: In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.

The devil uses your anger to doubt and not trust, to lash out and hurt others. Don’t give him a chance.