27. Disappointed with God - with Sara Hall, part 1 of 2

Hello and welcome to episode 27 of the Testimony Podcast.

We praise God for those times in life when we can feel hope and joy, when we see God’s blessing in our lives, and when we rightly exercise the discipline of celebration. God is good and loves us.

But sometimes the circumstances in our lives mean that it’s hard for us to be joyful, it’s difficult for us to be hopeful, and we find ourselves feeling angry, confused, and disappointed with God.

Expressing these feelings to our brothers and sisters in the church can be difficult, many people won’t know how to respond to us, even if they know the circumstances that might have driven us to this point. Those we love might fall back on unconvincing and even unbiblical phrases like “God works all things for our good”, “we should be joyful all the time”, or “count your blessings and the negative feelings will go away”.

There are times when talking to others can be an encouragement, especially wise people who have themselves suffered, but often we can feel frustrated and isolated, that no one understands our particular circumstances and needs.

It is with all these things in mind that I want to share the next two episodes of the podcast with you. These next two episodes are two halves of a conversation I had with Sara Hall. Sara is a wife, a mum, a blogger and counselor and author of “Tasting Dirt – When you’re disappointed with God”. I have to tell you, this is one of the most important conversations I’ve had with anyone for the podcast, and I think there is real value and wisdom in what Sara has to say for everyone who has wrestled with pain in their lives, with disappointment with the Lord, and the challenge of navigating through to some kind of reconciliation with a God in with whom we are disappointed and angry, and yet still love and want a relationship with.

Sara has suffered a number of tragedies in her life, and she has wrestled with all of these things disappointment, despair, anger, and all of the related feelings that we have to confront in our lives.

But through it all, she has kept the faith and remains a faithful follower of Jesus. In facing and winning these battles, she is able to give us valuable insights into our own lives.  She speaks from a place of experience, and of having to do the hard work of reconciling the challenges and tragedies of her life with a faithful walk with God, and so she offers us the kind of hard-won wisdom that is authentic and engages with each of us where we feel our own pain. 

So, in the first of these two episodes, Sara and I discuss her background, some of the circumstances she’s been through and then we go on to talk about how we can draw comfort and encouragement from God by looking at how he engages with characters from the bible, from prophecy like Elijah, and especially Mary of Bethany, whose encounters with Jesus speak so much truth about how God engages with a troubled soul and a broken heart. I hope you enjoy the first part of this conversation with Sara, here it is.