Anger at Being Unloved

Lord, it strike me that when Z says they feel angry at the church for not loving him well enough... that really reveals that your love is either not real enough / valuable enough to him.

That exact same thing is true of me as well – when I'm angry at Marilyn for not loving me "enough" (however I want her to show that)... it reveals that your love is not real enough / valuable enough to me, either.

Anger at not being loved or cared for the way we think we deserve is a sign of the unreality of the gospel in our life...

When the goal / purpose / telos we have for our lives feels out of reach or unattainable (or just non-existent), we lapse into self-pity and self-indulgence.

Lord, what Z needs is a sense of calling / purpose... Why have you built him? To what end? That's what he desperately needs to figure out.

Lord, at the end of the day, all the tuff we are doing – the labor, the work, teaching people to read and pray and hear your voice and respond... this is never going to make the history books, because it's not big, flashy, sexy, etc. But at the end of the day, this is the work of the church – to love you, to love our neighbors, and to learn to mortify our flesh by taking up our cross and following you. And it is small and slow and no one notices. But this is how the kingdom comes...

And I suspect that there have been hundreds of thousands of churches, pastors and simple Christians who have quietly done this over the past two millenia... but again, it doesn't make the history books, so we think it isn't happening.