Jesus is in our bad days, bad weeks, bad years, bad decades

I was insufferable at work today.  I had to deal with people who wouldn’t listen and wouldn’t learn.  My boss set me of with a “traditionally, we have …”  He is a great boss.  He has the extremely tough job of digging our department out of a hole that he inherited.  And, truly, I don’t know of anyone better to do it.  He is highly skilled.  He chooses his battles wisely.  And he builds trust, and calls bullshit.

But I had enough going into work today.  So I said, don’t follow the patterns that your predecessor established, he was a nincompoop.

So I ended up leaving work early.  I was so cynical.  There was work to do.   There is always work to do, especially when nincompoops staff the department at 1/3rd to 1/5 the size of peer organizations.  We will do things, without regard to whether they have value or not, so that boxes can be checked.  Our organization doesn’t value thinking.

This is just bile coming up.  Bitterness. Bitterness at God.  I was there with Job again, wanting to give God a piece of my mind.  I was there with with the psalmist in Ps 129  “I have been afflicted from my youth … “The plowers plowed upon my back;
They lengthened their furrows.”

Ps 129 does have confidence in God.  I am not there yet.  Not today.

Six or seven years ago, the Lord brought me to Isaiah 30:20 “Although the Lord has given you bread of privation and water of oppression, He, your Teacher will no longer hide Himself, but your eyes will behold your Teacher.”(NASB)  I was so excited.  All the years of deprivation, and affliction, and oppression had a purpose.  Six or seven years later, I see my Teacher, but the deprivation, affliction, and oppression haven’t ended, and in some ways have gotten worse.

I am not the happy Christian.  I am not full of the joy of the Lord.

The hardest part is that I am a lonely follower of Jesus.  I want someone to go with me.  Somehow I don’t get it that I am never alone, and Jesus is Emmanuel, the One who never leaves nor forsakes.  He sees the things suffered in secret. But as the Kerry Roberts song goes “it’s not real yet”

So why am I writing that I follow Jesus, but I have no fruit of the Spirit.

Well, there’s my problem.  Yes, Eliphaz, I know.

What I am about is the name of the blog, Jesus Day By Day.  He is with me in today.  I badly need the comfort of Holy Spirit, but there is another problem, I don’t receive comfort well.  I don’t want comfort.  Far too many times I have needed comfort, and there was none, or worse, rejection because I needed comfort.  It hurts too much to get my hopes up.  Hope deferred makes the heart sick. (Pro 13:12)  I have a heart that is on death’s door.  The other half of that verse “A desire fulfilled is tree of life” is something that I know little of.

Yet, He is still with me.  He knows my pain.  He is with me in my pain, whether I can feel it or not.

I know that there are people who will tell me that my bitterness is sin, and my sin separates me from God.  I would say to you “You are nincompoops.”  Go back and read that Jesus dying words are “It is finished”, and that He will never leave us nor forsake us.

And Jesus was right in Mat 5:22 ““But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire.”

I need Jesus because I am in danger of hell fire.  Only He can save, heal, make me well, give me peace.  He will bind up my broken heart, and free me where I am not free, and will give me good news.