Is God Mad At Me? | When Heaven Meets Tuesday | Pastor Derick Amsler

I'm excited about this installment. We're called When Heaven Meets Tuesday. Everybody say Tuesday. And you know why we are calling it Tuesday. Did you know that according to psychologists, Tuesday is the most depressing day of the week?

You know that I always thought it was Monday, right? Because nobody likes Monday. Come to find out if you like your job, Monday's not that big of a deal. But if you hate your job, you spend all weekend psyching yourself up to go to work on Monday. But then it's on Tuesday where the weekend psych up has now, has now been drained and you are just hating life.

This series is looking at this call of God that God has given us life and life to the fullest. But where does all this gather and growing that we spend on Sunday? Where does that collide with practical, reliable living on Tuesday? Everybody tell the person next to you you're looking better already. Come on, just let them know you're looking better.

You just look. You're just looking good. Let's talk about it.

Several, several years ago, our family, my family had a stalker. And I don't mean the secret admirer, Happy Valentine's Day, guess who it is. Kind of secret admirer.

I'm talking about where some people had to get involved kind of stalker. I mean somebody who would park down our street at our house and watch us come and watch us go. I'm talking about they would call local businesses here in Martinsburg pretending to be my personal assistant so they could gain information about my kids doctor's appointments. That kind of stalker. I'm talking about we just happen to need groceries every day all at the same time.

What are you doing? I'm just getting milk too. Oh, what are you. And to be honest with you, that season was really unsettling as you can imagine. And I won't even go into all the details, but it was unsettling.

And here's what I noticed in that season. My soul did not contain the fear. The fear leaked into other environments of my life to the point where my suspicion then generated my projection about everything and everyone that was going on around me. It got to the point where. I don't want to use hyperbolic language, but if I was outside playing, playing with my kids in our backyard and a cat went by my house, I was checking it for meta glasses.

You know what I'm talking about. If a bird flew over my house, I'm checking for a GoPro. I'm looking for surveillance on this thing. And I knew I had a problem when I was over here at Panera Bread, studying. And this woman in the church, she's in her mid-80s, very sweet, very kind.

She recognized me. She came up to me with open arms for a hug. And my first thought was, not good to see you. My first thought was you, Baroness of betrayal. Blink twice if you're wearing surveillance cameras right now.

Who sent you? Sultan of. And I was like, okay, I need to see somebody. And it's crazy how a suspicious eye sends bad memos into an anxious mind. And now we start reading everything as evidence that something has shifted in the atmosphere, in the environment.

Somebody's out to get me. We start reading silence and distance and conversations. We start reading into them. Not evidence, not fact evidence anyway. But rather our suspicion tells the story.

And this is backed by science, by the way ambiguity activates the brain's threat detection network. It looks like this when. When some. When something feels uncertain, the amygdala flags it as a potential important threat. The ACC notices that something's off.

The insula registers the tightness feeling in your chest. The hippocampus pulls up memories or a filing system. And then your prefrontal cortex writes a story, all in an effort for you to protect yourself.

Relationships trained us to have a suspicious eye where our eyesight informs our insight and our insight writes a script. Who is a friend? Who's a foe? Do I fight? Do I take flight?

What do I do? Relationships taught us that move. For example, according to family counselors growing up, if you had a parent whose love was selfish or narcissistic, if you had a parent whose their temperament was always unstable and unpredictable, you developed a suspicious eye to gauge their mood. So you could either brace yourself or make manage your own expectations or go into hyper peacemaking mode. Perhaps you work in a environment right now where everybody talks bad about each other behind their back and there's always this gossip and slander taking place in conversations.

So now you have a suspicious eye. Who do I need to become? So I feel like I carry a sense of belonging. I want to belong. But because I know the temperature and the temperament of my co workers and colleagues, I've got to keep an eye on them, maybe a spouse.

Their sense of connection and love feels more manipulative and deceiving than intimate and honest. And so you have a suspicious eye. You're trying to prevent yourself from disappointment in everything I just said. And in scenarios like that, we develop an I to stabilize. I want to feel secure.

I want to feel at peace. I want to feel belonging. I want to feel Community and intimacy. I want to know that I'm okay. But when our past relationships and when a suspicious eye crowds out the purity of our soul, we begin to look for danger in times of peace.

It's an eye trained to stabilize our life. The problem is when we take that suspicious eye and we turn it towards God. And so we pray for the job and nothing happens. And we pray for the marriage and nothing changes. And we pray for the diagnosis and we didn't receive the one we wanted.

And we pray for reconciliation and it never came. And now our suspicious eye begins to read the silence or the decline or the delay. Something has shifted in our relationship. And if you're going to treat me like that and if you're going to respond to me like that, and if you're going to do me like that, then what's the purpose of coming back to you?

Now my soul is in a paradox, and I don't know what to do. Because we claim songs and we proclaim promises. God is good. Can I go for it? Watch this.

God is good. And all the time. And that may be good for you, but if you consult my prayer life, that doesn't seem to be so accurate. And now our suspicious eye begins to read evidence. Watch this.

So now we start saying things like this.

If God is good and God is powerful, my faith wants to believe that. So maybe it's not him. Maybe it's me. Maybe God is just disappointed in me. Maybe God is just.

Maybe the reason why God is distant is because of his disappointment. Maybe we never say this out loud, but maybe.

Maybe God is mad at me.

Maybe that's the reason why my prayer feels distant and my soul feels separated and my faith feels isolated. Maybe that's the reason why all these bad things keep happening to me. Legally, he has forgiven me. Relationally, he's still holding on to something. And somewhere between prayer 20 and prayer 100, the eye of doubt begins to build a case of evidence that God is somehow mad at me.

And the problem with that thought is that it's so unsettling. It brings a whole family of fears with it. It's not just is God mad at me, it unopens Pandora's box inside of our soul. And now we're not just wr with one thought, we're taking on a whole family of fears.

Some of us don't even realize who we've made God until somebody gives a language. And once language is spoken and it impacts us in our soul with such depth and clarity, we're able to say oh, that's how I've been viewing him. Is God mad at me? When we have a suspicious eye towards God, this is who we start visualizing God as.

I'll put him on the screen for you. There's what we would call the petty God. This is where he's upset over something minor. And if we're being honest about it, he's just a little bit immature. And so I did something way back when, and I don't even remember what I did.

I moved on. But buddy, he's still. He's still hanging on to that. He put it on his iPhone, on in 1989. Derek Joseph Amsler.

He did. Ha ha. Let him ask for something this time and I'm gonna show him. The last time you asked for something and I bless you. Here's how you squandered it.

Boom. So ask again, big boy. And we start looking at God like he's a petty God. Or then there's this version of the God where God is just. He's bitter.

He's bitter. He's still hanging on to something. The reason why I can't approach God and ask him to bless my family or to bless my kids or to favor my job is because he is still bitter over something that I've done. There's the score keeping God. This is where I feel like my relationship with God is less relational than it is transactional.

And so I'm always under performance review with him and I'm always failing. This is where you, you grew up in a performance driven household where love and affection and admiration and validation were based upon you doing something. And because you felt like you haven't done enough to earn God's good graces, you got to work for it. Then there's the favoritism. God.

Well, of course God chose them. Look at them. Of course God chose him. Look at him. And now bitterness starts to rise up on the inside of me.

Because God, if would have gave me their skill, if you would have gave me their capacity, if you would have gave me their brain, then maybe you could use me like you're using them. I want to be used, God. But of course you're using them. They got more to offer than me. But now I'm mad because you are the creator of the cosmos.

You're the one that said that you knit me together in my mother's womb. So if you would have put more in me, you could have got more out of me. So now I'm not even mad at me. I'm mad at you, pastor, you feel this. I know.

Then there's the disappointed God.

This one sounds like your dad or your mom.

I saw so much potential in you.

I put so much talent in you. Look at how much I've given you. You have an eye to see how you are so overly blessed when you compare your life to somebody else and look at the way you squander it, you prodigal son, daughter. And God is somehow disappointed in you.

And then there's the done God. This is the God who just says, I'm done.

There was a season where everything felt alive between us and God. I would walk into his presence and I felt his kindness. I would open the Bible and I felt like he was speaking to me. I would pray and the atmosphere of my soul would shift. But somewhere between that season and now, going through the emotions and nothing's actually changing.

I want it. He's not responding. He is done.

One of those versions of God probably spark something on the inside of you. And what I would encourage you to do is not move too quickly. What we tend to do is whenever a truth impacts us deeply, we feel it. But because the feeling makes us uncomfortable, we quickly avoid it. So God shows us a mirror of what's going on.

But we don't like the resemblance, so we quickly look away. Spiritual formation happens when we're able to make eye contact. I don't like what I'm seeing. So God fixed the man.

A 4th century spiritual father. We would call him a desert father today. His name was Abba Moses. He said this. Someone came up to him and said, teach me how to hear God's voice.

Here's how he responded. Go sit in your cell and your cell will teach you everything. In other words, silence reveals what you deeply believe. Already there's something about silence that surfaces what you already believe.

So we're so quick for God, speak, God, speak. God, move. God move. God speak. God move, God move, God speak.

That we forget often. It's not until we are quiet that God speaks. And sometimes by speaking, what we're asking God for is a new revelation. Show me something new, something that surprises me. And sometimes the way God speaks is in the silence.

What we believe about him begins to surface. And when it surfaces now we're able to confront the mirror. The reason why you want to pay attention to what one of those gods you house inside of your mind and your soul. Watch this is because that's the God you pray to.

So if God's petty reverse engineer your prayers, it sounds like you're Praying to a petty God. If God is bitter, that's why you beg. If God is disappointed, that's why you keep asking for him to use you more and do more and use you more and do more. Because you're trying to earn the approval of someone you believe is already disappointed. By identifying the version of God you've been praying to, now you're able to understand the anxiety you have when you pray.

The reason why we don't like being quiet is because sometimes we don't want to deal with the answer.

However, there is good news. And I know what you're thinking. Thank God, because this is heavy.

In Romans, chapter 7, Paul is dealing with an internal struggle. In Romans 7, Paul ends on this internal verbalization of what's going on in the invisible space in his own soul. He says this, guys, I know I'm an apostle. I know I'm a church planner. I know I'm a missionary.

I know I'm a pastor. But don't get it twisted. The stage and the title do not make an individual more holy. I'm still a work in progress on the inside. Let me break it down.

This is. This is the apostle Paul saying. He says, there are things that I desperately want to do for God, but somehow I can't figure out how to do those things. And then there's other things in my life that I don't want to do because of what they cause my relationship to become between me and God. And somehow I do those things.

I don't do what I want to do, and then I end up doing the very thing that I don't want to do. Who can save me from myself? I'm a mixed bag of emotions and desires and affections and love on the inside. Who outside of me can reach on the inside of me and heal this broken man? Who can save me from myself?

He says. And then he answers his own question. He says, thanks, be unto God. Jesus Christ can. And he does.

Sometimes you got to answer your own self. With that as the backdrop, Romans 7 comes Romans 8. Here's what he says. Romans 8. There is, therefore.

Remember the context. He's talking about this internal war on the inside. There is, therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. This is huge. This is big.

Elbow the person next to you and say, pay attention. This is big. Come on. Let them know. Come on.

This is big right here. This is big. Because the reason why we have a bad view of God, the reason why we have a suspicious eye towards God is because we've Been listening to one of three voices inside our own head. Condemnation, conviction or conscience. We tend to think that all three are the same thing.

They're just semantics. They all mean the same thing. We're just using different verbs to be poetic. No, these are three different rooms, if you will. Paul says, I've been praying to the wrong God at times I've been having a suspicious eye towards God sometimes.

I've been overly hard and harsh on myself sometimes because I've been listening to a wrong voice sometimes. But I've come to the conclusion there is now no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus. Now, what is said is important. What is not said is equally as important. Notice what is not said.

There is now no guilt for those. There is now no conviction for those. It doesn't say that. There is now no conscience for those. It doesn't say that there's now no barriers or sin or guardrails anymore.

Everybody can just do whatever they want to do as long as they profess the name of the big man up. That's not what it says. It says there is now no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus. So there is some condemnation for some people. It's just not for those that are in Christ Jesus.

So there's a truth here. But the truth doesn't apply to everyone because it says this only applies to those that are in Christ Jesus. This is one of those verses that ancient theologians would call explosive in the sense that every word packs a dynamite. Every word in the text. For time's sake, I'm not going to go through every word, but I do want to hit a few of them.

It says, therefore. Remember, he's talking in the context of this internal war. So he doesn't say after the battle, after you prove yourself, after you believe that God's no longer disappointed, after you prove to yourself, thinking that you're proving something to God. He says in the middle of you stabilizing yourself. Now.

Now is a timestamp. It's a reference to time. Now is present tense. So not after you mature, after you get it, to get. Therefore, when you're trying to stabilize right now, there is no what is no.

It's an authoritative absolute decline. You know what it means no in Spanish? No. It means no, none. So not a reduction.

None there in the middle of stabilization. Now, there is no. But there's no what? Condemnation. The word condemnation, obviously is a courtroom term.

It means to be condemned. It means that condemnation comes from an accusation that you have been proven guilty and therefore having Been proven guilty. There should be legality, separation and judgment. That's what the condemnation is all about. It's about separating yourself.

This is why a person found guilty is going to go somewhere. They're not going to go live freely, are they? They're going to go to a prison or a jail. There is separation, there is legal consequences, and there is judgment. Condemnation is.

The condemnation is coming from the accusation of a guilty verdict. But here's what it does. It isolates you, it shames you and it imprisons you. Condemnation doesn't say what you did was wrong. It says you are wrong.

Look at you, you liar. Look at you. This is what you always do. You always make a mess of things. It's not.

What you did was embarrassing. You're an embarrassment and it imprisons you in shame. It pushes you. Watch this. Here's how it plays out in the church world.

Are you ready? It pushes individuals to shrink back from God, hide from God's people, and then ultimately pull away from God's truth. Oh, church is just judging me. No, your conscience is judging you. Condemnation is judging you.

The church the Bible describes, the one that God breathes on is not a courtroom. It's a living room. It's a hospital, not a holy huddle. Have you made a mistake? Condemnation says, better run.

I know those church people can be judging you. Maybe in an unhealthy church filled with unhealthy people. But at the end of the day, who among us does not need the grace of the cross and the power of a savior and the might of a deliverer? That's where we find our commonality and our unity. It's not in what is not in our preference.

It's not in our style and preference of worship and music. It's at the foot of the cross where you messed up. Me too. Did you need Jesus? Me too.

We find ourselves at the foot of the cross saying if it wasn't but for the grace of God, we're all doomed to hell. Condemnation says, you better hide from God's people. You better go away. And here's how the devil works. The devil will use this internal language as self accusation, but through the projection of a suspicious eye.

Oh, I know they're talking about me.

And what has the devil successfully done at this point? He has now separated you. He's isolated you. And you are forever imprisoned in shame. Because wherever you go, there you are.

Condemnation is a verdict. Conviction is an invitation. Conviction is an invitation. Condemnation is a legal language. Conviction is a relational term.

It doesn't it? Condemnation questions your belonging. Conviction reforms you from a place of belonging because you belong. Let's repent, let's repair, let's reconcile, let's grow conviction.

Conviction is not about creating distance. It's about creating restoration through repentance. So condemnation builds a prison. Convictions opens up doors. The difference, here's what it is.

I've heard it taught that the difference between conviction and condemnation is how heavy the weight feels. But that's a poor metric to use because sometimes, in God's love for you, the Holy Spirit will convict you heavily. And that heaviness. I've seen people. I've seen people lie about something, they feel bad about it, and they come asking for, oh, Pastor, I've been rebuking that condemnation.

No, no, but that's not condemnation. You're rebuking something that God is using to try to repair your soul. Right? Heaviness is not a good indicator because both can feel weighty. It's just the end goal is what you have.

Is this weight pushing me away from God and God's truth and God's people? Or is this weight getting me realigned with God, God's truth in God's people? One is going to shame me and scatter me. The other one is going to repair me and invite me. One says, case closed.

The other one says, come closer.

Condemnation is a verdict. Conviction is an invitation into alignment. Then there's the conscience. The conscience comes, just comes from the word that we get, our English word and our legal term, witness. That's all it means.

Your conscience is an eyewitness. It would look like this if we put them all together. It is. It is a signal of awareness and information. Your conscience says, I saw something that was misaligned.

We need to get in alignment. That's what it says. Now watch this. Here's the tension. Here's the tension.

Talking about condemnation, conviction, conscience. The tension is that your conscience can tell the truth and it can lie.

We've all seen the movies, somebody's on the stand, courtroom drama, and they lying. They put their hand on the Bible and they lying. And we know they're lying because we've seen them movie before and we saw what other people didn't see, and they on that stand and they lying about it. Our conscience can do the same thing. Our conscience can flick our heart.

Hey, that was out of line with God's truth, God's principle, God's heart. You need to get back into alignment. But sometimes a feared conscience, an unhealthy conscience an eyewitness marked by shame and guilt. Performance driven metrics. It can actually lie to ourselves and even use spiritual language to lie.

So we think it's telling us something from God because it's using the same word that God uses in the Bible. But the tone, the tenor, the direction is anything but God. Can I give you some examples? We want to be practical. It would look like this.

An unhealthy conscience would call healthy relational boundaries as rebellion or disrespect. Oh, you're pushing away from me. No, they're boundaries.

An unhealthy conscience would call healthy needed rest for your soul, laziness. Because if you took a moment to Sabbath and to spend time with God or to recoup emotionally when you should be out working and on your grind and proving your value, improving your. No, that's an unhealthy conscience. It would call a normal struggle as an identity fracture or failure. Watch this.

Now, our conscience signals. Our conscience provides information of a circumstance and event. The Holy Spirit interprets the behavior. An unhealthy conscience is going to lead towards condemnation. A conscience that has been informed by God's truth, God's peace, God's voice, God's wisdom is not going to lead to separation, isolation and condemnation.

It's going to lead to repentance and renewal and reconciliation.

So let's widen this even a little more. This is where I get the emails. I've been looking forward to this part all week long. Let's widen this a little bit because what's at stake is too valuable for us to leave room for ambiguity. We're talking about condemnation, we're talking about conviction, and we're talking about our conscience.

Here's the problem. The Bible says that in the last days, talking about before this world winds itself up, before Jesus nods at old Gabriel, gives him the wink and he blows the trumpet and the crowd begins to chant. All hell, the king and the clouds begin to part, roll up like a scroll and Jesus himself descends from heaven and he takes the church, his bride, his followers, back to home. The Bible says that before that event happens, people will be lovers of the flesh. They just want to do whatever they want to do.

And they will have an ear longing to be tickled. Just tell me what I want to hear. Just tell me what's good, Tell me what's pleasant. Don't tell me the full truth, just tell me part of the truth wrapped in so much cotton candy that it doesn't feel like truth anymore. And.

Y', all, it's. It's no wonder.

It's no wonder that non Christians struggle to believe what Christians believe.

It's no wonder that their number one adjective to describe followers of Christ is that they're just a bunch of hypocrites. Because the chasm, the distance between what they believe we should be believing and what we celebrate in terms of belief sometimes are just two different mountains and they can't even reconcile. Where do they actually stand? Because sometimes Christians celebrate things that contradict God's heart in order to just appear loving and connected.

So a man leaves his wife and kids to go fornicate and begin a new life with a woman and her kids.

And then it celebrated, oh, it's so good to see you happy. Oh, good for you. That was so brave. Oh, I so admire you. You deserve this.

And what we've just done in order to appear loving and connected in the relationship, we have clouded their conscience. So now they are having a hard time listening to good, healthy conviction in their heart that God is using to try to repair the relationship. Because now our affirmation sounds like God approval and we are clouding the conscience of people that God is trying, look, I desperately want to have a relationship with you. And you're drifting. There's misalignment taking place.

And so the Holy Spirit, yes, he is a comforter, yes, he is a counselor. Yes, he is a guide. Yes, he is a director, yes, he is strength, yes, he's power, yes, he's peace. But he's also sent to bring us into alignment with God so that we are in Christ. Why do we need to be in Christ?

Because the Bible says one day we will stand before God not as just the Lord is my shepherd, but God, the judge of the universe. And watch me now. The gavel will fall. But if you're not in Christ, the gavel falls on us. But if we are in Christ, the gavel falls on him.

And God uses conviction to bring people back into alignment. But if we celebrate what God condones, we're clouding the very mechanism that God is using to try to bring people back into repentance and cover them. But we just want to be loving and kind and empathetic and I get it. And nobody's saying that we need to be rude. That's not of God.

Nobody's saying that we need to be legalistic terrorists. Nobody's saying that either. Nobody's saying that we need to. No, no, no. But this passage is just not for our freedom.

There's now no more condemnation. It's for our awareness that some people need to be under conviction. Some of us. Me at times. Right.

We all at times need the Holy Spirit to convict us. Hey, that was a little out of pocket. That doesn't reflect love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self control. But at the end of the day, don't call good what God calls evil.

And so it will. It would look like this. Noah, come here for a second.

At the end of the day, what does condemnation and conviction feel like? Condemnation looks like this. You are under arrest. Now I'm removing you from the people of God, from the truth of God. You are under investigation.

You are under arrest. Conviction looks like this.

They're both silent, but one is taking you somewhere, the other is staying with you. Hey, I know you. You know. And you know that I know.

Come with me. Let's learn the unforced rhythms of grace.

I loved you back there, you know that? Yeah. I love you too much to leave you there though. So we got to get back in alignment. For I know the plans that I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and to give you hope in the future.

I love you too much to leave you under a cloud of ambiguity and celebrating what will ultimately kill you. So I needed to bring some things to your mind, that is the Holy Spirit. Both can operate in silence, but if you sit in your cell long enough, your cell will teach you what God you've been praying to. So for everyone under the weight of condemnation, if you you are in Christ, that is not of God. For there is now no none, zero condemnation.

Guilty verdict for those that are in Christ Jesus. Well, how do I know if I'm in Christ? Have you had a moment where you've offered God your sin? God, this is what I've been dealing this, dealing with. This is my baggage.

This is my sin. This is my pride, this is my control, this is my affections, my desires that I've not really wanted to give over to you.

But God, all that I know how in this moment, I release it. Would you take away my sin?

Would you transform my heart.

And God, I really don't want to pray this part, but I will. Would you continue convict me at times because I want to stay in alignment with you so I can be in you when you come stand up with me across this place.

Hey, listen to me.

For those that are in Christ, you are not under arrest. You are under adoption.

Live like it.

God just wants you back. If you're not in Christ, the Holy Spirit is now flicking your heart so you can get back in Christ with your heads bowed and your eyes closed. If you would say, he's flicking my heart right now. I've been living under condemnation. I've been going my own way, doing my own thing.

But all that I know how in this moment, I give him my life and I make him Lord, which means boss and savior of my life. I'm ready to commit my life to him and walk with him with his arms around my shoulder. I want to be led by God. If that's you, as an outward sign of this heart transformation and commitment, would you just put your hand in the air? Just want to pray with you, that's all.

Yeah. Yeah. So many with a concert of voices. We'll repeat this together. Lord Jesus, thank you for grace, thank you for mercy.

Thank you for walking with me, for leading me, guiding me, forgiving me, directing me. I give you me. I receive you. I want to be in Christ. And so, Lord, now I pray over every heart and life and mind that has heard this truth.

May it sear inside their spirit. Spirit, give us the ability to discern the voice of the God and the voice of our adversary. Give us a right perspective of a right God, not the one we created through a suspicious lens. We want to see you in your purity, authenticity and glory, and we want to hear your voice reflect the same. So this week, would you remind us what you sound like?

And would you remind us the spirit of adoption is still stronger than this prison cells of condemnation. For in you, your yoke is easy and your burden is light. And we still choose to follow you in your powerful name. Amen. God bless you, church.