Is God Mad At Me?
What people think and feel about God’s disappointment and anger at them:
“God is punishing me.”
Some people may believe that when they have problems in life it is because God is angry with them for some past sin. I have heard people say things like, “I had a miscarriage and I wonder if God is punishing me for the way I lived in the past.” Statements like this prove that people have an incorrect view of God. He doesn’t punish us for past sins by bringing bad things into our lives.
Our troubles are not a sign that God is angry with us! We are in the world and Jesus said that in the world we would have tribulation. He also told us to cheer up because He had overcome the world (see John 16:33).
Why they may feel that way:
One of our most urgent needs in life is to feel safe. But children who grow up with angry, absent or abusive fathers often don’t feel safe. They have a feeling of impending doom or danger hanging over them most of the time.
But God is not like people. If your father was absent, you need to know that God will never leave you. If your father was abusive or angry, your heavenly Father is slow to anger, loving and compassionate.
One woman said:
Initially I didn’t understand that my background skewed my perception. It was as if the atmosphere of anger in my childhood home had warped my brain cells, and my experience blocked the truth of who and how God really was.
Truth began seeping in after a conversation with a friend. I shared, through hot tears, that I desperately wanted to please God, but it felt like He was always angry with me. My friend said, “God is not angry with you, Julie. He loves you, and He understands you.”
This truth was the beginning of a massive boulder of a lie dislodging from my heart. God is nothing like my past experience had shaped Him to be.
Another testimony said:
I naturally have a hard time embracing God’s love for me. I have a sensitive conscience and find it difficult to get out from under the guilt of my many failures. I think because of my inclination to gaze upon my sins, I envision a version of God who just tolerates me, but doesn’t actually love or enjoy me. And then I have friends who are exactly the opposite. Their sins tend not to bother them quite as much – or really, at all – and they seem to be able to effortlessly believe they are forever safe in God’s loving embrace. They’re never really in anguish, even momentarily, over their failures.
what is God really like? If there was ever an all important, life-altering question for us to ask ourselves, this is it. Who we believe God to be affects every facet of our lives. But this isn’t a question that can be answered out of personal preference. We don’t have authority or permission to decide what shade we like God painted in the best and then just live our lives as if our preferred version of him is correct. God precedes us. He made us; we do not get to make him. He is who he is forever and always, and we must submit to his true, unchangeable nature as it is revealed in the written Word of God.
How God really feels:
We serve a loving God who, even though He might not like everything we do, never stops loving us. Any belief that God is angry is a myth.
And unlike parents and other significant others in our lives, God never flies off the handle with anger. The bible says that the Lord is “slow to anger” 9 times (using the NIV).
It also says in those same scriptures that he is
- abounding in love
- abounding in faithfulness
- compassionate and gracious (10 times in the bible)
- forgiving sin and rebellion
- does not desert us
- great in power
When you can begin to fully understand His grace, forgiveness, mercy, and unconditional love, you can know with certainty His attitude toward you is merciful—not angry. No matter what you’ve done in life or no matter how many misconceptions you have about God’s feelings toward you, God will never stop loving you. God is not mad at you!
“The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and abounding in mercy and loving-kindness.” Psalm 145:8 (AMP)
God is for us, not against us (Romans 8:31). He has good plans for our lives (Jeremiah 29:11), and He loves us with an everlasting love (Jeremiah 31:3).
Romans 8:31, “What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us?” (NLT)
Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
Jeremiah 31:3, ““I have loved you with an everlasting love;
I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.’”
Jeremiah 31:18
Restore me, and I will return,
because you are the Lord my God.
19 After I strayed,
I repented;
after I came to understand,
I beat my breast.
I was ashamed and humiliated
because I bore the disgrace of my youth.’
20 Is not Ephraim my dear son,
the child in whom I delight?
Though I often speak against him,
I still remember him.
Therefore my heart yearns for him;
I have great compassion for him,”
declares the Lord.
If you question God’s heart towards the repentant backslider, then you need to read Luke 15, where Jesus uses a parable of the prodigal son, to illustrate the heart of the Father towards those who return to Him.
And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry.
Luke 15:20-24
Jer 3:22 – “Return, faithless people;
I will cure you of backsliding.”
“Yes, we will come to you,
for you are the Lord our God.
Psalm 108:8 The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
slow to anger, abounding in love.
9 He will not always accuse,
nor will he harbor his anger forever;
10 he does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
13 As a father has compassion on his children,
so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
14 for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust.
Joel 2:13 (NLT) Don’t tear your clothing in your grief; instead, tear your hearts.” Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful. He is not easily angered. He is filled with kindness and is eager not to punish you.
Wrath and Mercy:
If it weren’t for the grace of God, He would have to be mad at us because His holiness demands justice for sin. A sacrifice must be made to atone for sin, but because of His grace, He made the sacrifice Himself by offering His Son’s life for ours. Jesus took the punishment that we deserved for our sins, and offers to care for and bless us instead of giving us what we deserve.
God hates our sins with infinite intensity. The Bible is maximally clear that God does not minimize sin, but that he is a God of vengeance (Hebrews 10:30; Romans 12:19) who by no means will clear the guilty (Exodus 34: 7; Numbers 14:18; Nahum 1:3). The judgment of God falls on all sin.
But God is also merciful, loving and kind, and wants us to be with Him in heaven forever. He wants to adopt us as His own children to lavish His love upon us.
So, in the person of His Son, God took on human flesh, lived a perfectly righteous life – unlike you and me – and then drank the cup of God’s burning wrath for our sins on the Cross. Through this beautiful and painful substitutionary work of Jesus, God is able to pardon our transgressions without compromising his justice. Our sins have been atoned for. Someone has endured God’s wrath for them. It just wasn’t us – it was God.
(John 3:17) For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
Col 1:21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of[a] your evil behavior. 22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— 23 if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.
The guilt-ridden Christian gazes so continuously upon their sin that they neglect to look to the Cross – where their monstrous sin debt was paid in full by the precious blood of God’s Son. And the Christian who barely feels a smidgen of remorse over their sin also neglects to look to the Cross – where the severity of their transgression is vividly portrayed.
Christians, if we take our eyes off of God’s slain and resurrected Son, we will end up viewing God and handling our personal sin so wrongly. When we fall, we must look to the Cross and feel the weight of our failure. And when we fall, we must look to the Cross, see the shed blood, and know that payment for every one of our sins has been submitted and accepted. If you struggle to feel remorse over sin, or if you struggle to escape continual and debilitating guilt over sin, look to the Cross of Jesus! See the severity of your sin . . . and see the depth and richness of God’s love for you.
Isaiah 43:25 “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.
Conviction and Condemnation:
Conviction is the feeling that you feel once you have done something wrong that makes you want to apologize to God or whomever you’ve offended. The Bible tells us that the Spirit of God convicts us in order to lead us to repentance. But once we repent, his spirit stops convicting us and lavishes us in his grace, love, and his mercy.
(Romans 2:4) Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?
Condemnation on the other hand tends to occur right after you have asked for forgiveness. It is the nagging guilt that won’t go away no matter how many times you repent, apologize, and no matter how many times you try to forget about it.
If you repent of your sin yet still feel guilty of them — then that is no longer God’s spirit of conviction that is causing the guilt — but it is now the spirit of condemnation that is trying to attach itself to you. This spirit is NOT of God and should be rebuked. If you do not rebuke this spirit of Condemnation and correct your way of thinking — It will continue to torture you (as it did me).
The Bible tells us that there is no condemnation to them who are in Christ and to those who desire to walk by the Spirit and not the flesh. (Those who desire to live righteously)
(Romans 8:1) There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
Conviction moves us closer to God. It makes us seek him, it makes us repent, it makes us want to do better, It makes us want to get closer.
Condemnation on the other hand tries to pull us away from God. It makes us ashamed, it makes us sad, it makes us want to hide, it makes us depressed, and most importantly it makes us want to QUIT.
The worst thing we can think when we make a mistake is that God is angry with or disappointed in us — not only because it is not true, but because that condemnation pulls us away from God. Instead of causing us to seek God, The guilt and shame causes us to hide from him. But this is not what God wants us to do when we sin, he wants us to run TO him — not from him. We can observe this in the book of Genesis with Adam and Eve. (Genesis 3) When they sinned against God, they immediately felt condemned and hid themselves in their shame.
Once a person feels distant from God, for some reason or another, their interests are often directed elsewhere because they are discouraged in their relationship with God. This often leads to depression, addictions, obsessions (crafts, movies, sex, sports, etc.), spending binges, and unbalanced priorities. After a while, the person loses more and more interest in their relationship with God, until they simply don’t even bother to pick up their Bibles and spend time with Him. This is how Satan will use discouragement to destroy a person’s relationship with God.
The whole reason that Satan (who works through evil spirits) wants us to feel discouraged, is because he wants to get us to a place where we will give up. He wants our relationship with God to just seem “impossible” and too hard to maintain. This leads a person to lukewarmness, and deflates their faith in God, because they have no confidence in their relationship with God. The Bible tells us to draw near to God with assurance, having our heart’s sprinkled clean from an evil conscience!
Hebrews 10:22 Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.
Satan will also work diligently to convince a person that because of a certain failure(s) in their past, that they cannot be restored in right standing before God. This often involves one sin in particular, such as abortion or fornication. Even though the sin has been repented of (confessed as sin and turned from), the enemy will continue to badger the person with guilt and shame over what they have done, as if they never repented of it! This is known as false guilt, because once a sin is repented of, that failure is washed away by the Blood of Christ. In other words, Satan is pointing at something that is no longer on your account! God’s Word tells us that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us. This is a promise!
1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
What do I have to do to please God:
Although the scriptures tell us that God is angry with the wicked every day (Pslam 7:11) — this is not the same as when a believer sins.
Although Christians are not perfected — Because we place our faith in he who was perfect (Jesus), it is counted to us as righteousness even as Abraham’s faith was counted unto him as righteousness.
(Genesis 15:6) And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness.
(Romans 4:3) For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.
John 6:28 Then they (crowds that were following him around to see and receive miracles) asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”
29 Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
Have faith in Jesus. Do you still believe that Jesus is the Son of God? Do you believe that His death on the cross paid for your sins and incurred all of God’s wrath in your place? Have you surrendered to Him as your Lord and Savior, desiring to please God (although never perfectly achieving it)?
The moment that sin no longer bothers you, and you no longer think it is wrong, that is when you should start to worry. The very act of being bothered by your sin shows that you are saved and have the Holy Spirit in you. You have someone who is after God’s heart – wanting to please Him and make Him happy. This is what stops God from being angry at you – your faith in His Son, Jesus.