This one is tough for me. This is a topic I mostly stay away from as much as I can. Because I know I’m unworthy to ever feel anger or offense at God, and if anyone needs to seek forgiveness, it would be me. Lingering frustration and bitterness toward God are things I haven’t struggled with that much in my life.

So, suddenly experiencing it and having to come to grips with these uglier parts of myself has not been fun. I also can’t claim to be fully beyond it. It’s a process and a journey. 

What I’m learning is He can handle my emotions. He can even handle my anger. 

I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t lose a close loved one, my marriage didn’t fall apart, and I wasn’t faced with a terminal illness. These are the kinds of things I expected might someday challenge my walk with Him, so when it was something much milder in nature, I was ashamed. Thinking, “You mean to tell me the thing that got me doubting His goodness is this?”

For me it started with feeling deceived and tricked by His plans. Because I’d gone through a very challenging season, begged for God’s clarity and direction, and believed I’d gotten it. I’d put so much energy and time and even money into this path of my life only to hit brick wall after brick wall. And this didn’t happen once. This happened multiple times during this season. 

I questioned myself. I questioned my ability to hear His voice anymore. I questioned Him. 

Did He tend to send us on meaningless exploits? Was it His will to have me spend time and energy, exerting myself on things He never intended to bless? The constant feelings of hopes up and then hopes dashed were brutal. 

This had not been my past experience with Him. This was different. When I heard His “yes” in the past, it often came with hard work, sweat, and tears, but I always saw a breakthrough. 

Not this time. 

Forgiving God is a strange concept because normally forgiving someone implies they did something wrong. Their actions caused harm or offense. And certainly, my mind knows God is incapable of doing wrong. Everything He does is right. 

Which means, it’s less about forgiving Him and more about introspection. I have to uncover what part of me thought I knew better than Him. Comprehend the box I had placed Him in and what values of mine I’d projected onto Him. Seeing those things in myself and then repenting of them. And asking Him to reveal more of Himself to me. This process involves great humility. So, rather than pulling grace from myself to offer someone forgiveness, I have to take ownership that it was my perspective, expectations, and perhaps my pride that caused my own offense. 

I recently saw a post from a woman discussing how she’d had to grieve a dream. It was a dream to which she’d felt God say, “yes” and everyone else say, “no.” 

That struck a very vivid cord for me, and I realized that it wasn’t so much that I needed to forgive God, but rather that I needed to grieve what I thought would be and open myself back up to what He might have for me next. Still trusting His hand. Regardless, I needed to let the lingering bitterness go and allow Him to heal me.

This is hard. Opening ourselves back up after a dashed dream is no easy feat. It requires vulnerability and understanding that the pain could happen again. 

To recap. Forgiving God actually requires deep introspection of ourselves and humility. Here’s a few steps that I find necessary and helpful along the journey: 

1. Allowing the grieving process to happen, acknowledging and accepting our dreams didn’t pan out like we hoped. 
   
2. Recognizing how our expectations may have been misaligned. That we may have projected our own goals onto Him, believing His were the same. 
   
3. Accepting that He knows what’s best, not us. (I know I would tell someone in a second that I already believe that, but walking with that kind of faith is much more difficult.) 
   
4. Asking Him to reveal more of Himself to us. The real Him, not what we hope for. 
   
5. Spending time in prayer and in the Word, seeking the truth about who God is. 
   
6. Opening ourselves back up to His will even when it might not look like what we want it to, trusting the skilled hands of a Physician who doesn’t stab us, but performs necessary, life-saving surgery with each cut. 
   
7. Starting a daily practice of gratitude, thanking God for the multitude of blessings in our lives now. Looking at the “small” things and acknowledging how He’s offered provision and safety even if it’s not what we expected. 
   

The reality is, sometimes He calls us to do something, but His objective and end result can look very different than our ideas. He plays the long game, and just because He has us pouring into something that doesn’t have our expected outcome, doesn’t mean that season was a waste. He sees ahead, and He knows what He will do with our efforts in the future. And sometimes, He’s building character in us for the journey ahead, too.

Romans 8:28 (NLT), “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose for them.”

Written by: Anna Wetherington. Anna lives in Valdosta, GA with her husband and daughter.