How can we keep our hearts from resenting God in hard times?

There are moments in our lives when we are in danger, such as when we sin and don’t immediately repent but rather we nurse that sin or nurse a grievance when things don’t go our way. For example, we wanted someone and thought we were marrying one person, but he turned out to be someone else. We wanted to be rich. We wanted to live in a big house, have wonderful vacations, and so on.

It’s a struggle. For someone, it might be, “I had dreams, but cancer came.” Then you begin to nurse resentment. You need to confess that resentment to the Lord and ask Him to forgive you. You need to ask Him to bring you back into a right relationship, in which you accept God’s providence. That doesn’t mean things can’t change, and it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pray for things to change. However, you don’t want to nurse wounds and grievances.

I’ve seen it too many times: someone is angry about something that happened thirty or forty years ago and still talking about it, still nursing it. That person has wasted all these years, unable to do certain things because of the burden of anger, frustration, and resentment. To reference 1 Peter 5:6: “Humble yourselves beneath the mighty hand of God, and He will exalt you in due season.”

This transcript is from a live Ask Ligonier event with Derek Thomas and has been lightly edited for readability. To ask Ligonier a biblical or theological question, email ask@ligonier.org or message us on Facebook or Twitter.