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and welcome to the less stress family podcast where we believe you are valuable and what you do matters. This is Episode 11. It's time for me to talk. Thanks. Thanks.
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How are you?
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I'm good.
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I'm Justin. You're Shauna, right? Yes. I'm in the right place now.
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Good. Welcome. So what are we talking about today? We're talking
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about being pissed off when we pray. Pissed off prayer.
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All right. So certainly never heard that preached in church.
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I don't think I have either, but it's It happens a lot in scripture.
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It does. It does. So what have you got for scripture wise, this is one of those voices would be, Let's say, Well, what's your
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favorite birds or what? Your life fairies or whatever. When I just mess with people, I say, Oh, definitely Psalms at 1 37 890 yeah, that's but that's a good one. It was like, Oh, it's a good one, all right?
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And this is when I slink away from it's
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his own daughter of Babylon. Do doomed to destruction. Happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us. And verse nine. He who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks. So he's praying that they're in writes. Some women take their their enemies and the enemies babies and smashed against the rocks, right?
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Yeah, just like such a sick thing. I struggled. I
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know it is. It's a psalm in the Bible, right?
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I know which. What air, psalms,
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psalms, our prayers. Right, Frank? Sometimes, I guess, chanted
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so prayers and songs that a real person was praying to the Lord.
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Right? Right, right. And I also like the passage in her backpack. Witches have a cooker. It's one of the little books toward the end, the Old Testament and the first few vices in Chapter one. He basically tells God how bad God is doing as God e love, that
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which takes a lot of gumption. Well,
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here's the deal. I think we have to understand that being pissed off should lead us to prayer. No, I'm away from prayer. So when we're ticked off and anger and we can't understand, you know, like something just doesn't make sense and obviously hits a nerve with us, right? Like we should be praying Maur, But not like the made up fake prayers you know, right? We should be really talking to God. Right? Um, Fiddler on the roof is always via, you know, and
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his hidden in such
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a good Yeah, It's such a good everything. Because that's how we should be good and bad upset. So we're gonna talk about when we're upset and how God doesn't fall off his throne and how Yeah. Do you have a story?
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Well, it doesn't remind me of one thing. I was doing a Bible study with some business women in the community, and we were just talking about the importance of being authentic and genuine with Lord And just like any other relationship, you know, you know what's socially appropriate. There are certain levels that you share with people, particularly in the south. Someone asks you how you are, and you just respond Good. And it doesn't matter that, like, your leg got cut off three hours earlier. And you you know, whatever the terrible thing happened and the South people just say, how are you? And you say good? Um von Fine. Uh, but then you have your friends and they ask you How are you doing? You like, uh, my kids failing out of school or whatever, and you're more genuine. And then you have your very closest inner circle and you share things just like raw emotion. And so I shared with these ladies that I was in the midst of a difficult circumstance and I was so angry about it that that morning I had taken my journal out and I had written, and guys like I just normally don't use your very positive bad language. And I don't like focus on the negative. And I'm telling you, like that whole first paragraph in my journal was bad words that I tell my Children not to say and it was written was so much anger that I literally my pin went through the page like it tour the paper. But by the time I got to the second paragraph, my handwriting was nice again on my language was nice again. But it was like I had to have that emotional release with the Lord in a totally unfiltered way,
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right? Yeah. So the problem. So the problem with prayer as faras dealing with just when you're totally angry and pissed off, right, pissed off her hair that if you don't understand it's part of the process, then I mean, how much are you really gonna pray? You know what I mean? Like if you don't feel like you can really share right what you're thinking, what you're feeling we've got and it has to fit into certain, I don't know, feelings got only and he could only send this email. You know what I mean when you have this emotion tied to it. But if you have this other, you know, you know what I mean,
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Right? And that was why I shared with those ladies because they were younger in their faith and were at the level of just having surfaced conversation when they journal with the Lord. Just about the positive happy things. And I was like, Guys, you gotta just lay it all out there. I mean, he knows what's on our heart anyway, You can't really connect and stay in the shallow waters for very long
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because you're not authentic. You're not being your authentic self right. And and I think when you don't pray when you're angry at God until God, that he's not doing a very good job. Sometimes you just have to do that. But if you don't, I think you just make prayer and life just too simple. I think a lot of times, like when we just give Sunday school answers in Sunday school prayers, there's just such a disconnect. And people are like, This is just fake and completely shallow, right? Not where people are at, you know, Right. So I'm not saying people need to just go on a rant necessarily in there next Sunday school class. Although it would be fun if you do, please
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video t that don't
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encourage that. So what else is the problem? And I think people will stop being prayerful. That was what else I was gonna say. You know, like, I stopped praying when I feel like if I don't start expressing the anger like I just like, forget it. I'm not talking to you. God, just like when I'm angry with you. And I'm like, I'm not gonna deal with this. I'm just going to shut down or, you know, move away from you,
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right? And it is the same. Like in our house. You can tell if Justin and I are fighting because there is immense silence. Her house is so quiet,
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well known, that
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the kids
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between us,
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between us, it's silent, and I think that's a really easy place for people to shift into. Like life is bad. They don't have anything necessarily positive that they want to say to the Lord, and so they just slip into that silent mountains. But the problem is, God's not laying in the bed next to you, snoring to remind you that he's there every day, like your marriage, you know? So it's easy for a little bit of silence to grow into a lot of silence, and then a big space. We feel so distant from the
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world. So I think part of the part of the solution, if you will, you need to understand that it's okay to pray when you're just ticked off and it's okay. Still guide like he's done a terrible job. He's not gonna fall off his throne. He's not going to stop being with you. Its presence is always with us. Um, that's not gonna be the problem, right? But it's a time you don't want to stay that ticked off. Yeah, like, but you just want to get it out right? So part of that solution is the practical steps we can take. So what do you do? You talk about journaling?
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Yeah. Dirt. Erling is I have to awesome times with the Lord. And it's generally journaling in the morning because I had seclude myself into a quiet semi, quasi quiet, quiet for years, different quiet for a chair in our room. But then also, I I talked to the Lord a whole lot whenever I'm driving in that kind of thing. Um, so but practically being able, particularly if I have a problem, it's helpful for me to write it out,
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All right? And for me, once I get that like you're talking about earlier that surge of emotion and anger and just whatever I'm feeling, I try to move toward thankfulness. Yes, that is really what shifts me. And we talked before about the podcast. Like, if I need to think about, you know, I think about, uh what Christ did his obedience to bring me salvation. Or I start thinking about, um, even just what soldiers, the price they paid and their families paid the ones who died and the ones who just served so that I could just sit in my chair, comfortable chair right on a Tuesday morning, you know, and just be, you know, nobody's shooting at me. There's, you know, to me, right? So if I could move to that, that is a lot of times will shift me where I can say, you know what? I'm really angry about this, but there's a lot of other people who are who be the paid a price or who are paying a price right now That's much higher.
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Oh, my Just in worse circumstances, right? Whatever your problem is, it could always be worse. A gratitude that you are not in that worst place. And even this morning, you know, I woke up ticked off because of this dream, and it's like a really life issue that I know I'm having to deal with. And I started journaling and the like. Lord, I'm so upset about this. I'm so angry towards these people and I don't want to be angry. And so you know, by the time I got to the bottom of the page, it had turned around and I was blessing those people that I was thankful for. The circumstances that are not in that icky place,
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right? I would also say we're hitting the scriptures and reading the psalms. And don't sugarcoat home with Sunday school answers for everything, right? You know, because there are a lot of ticked off people in the Scriptures, right? And God doesn't zap him.
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Yeah, he's so merciful, so good. I'm not God. Like I'm just lightning bolt in all kinds of people from the Lord. I would have been like you
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would
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a
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lightning bolt in May. Probably long time ago, probably. There we go. What else? Anything else that helps you
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add. That's the main thing for me.
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Very good. I think that's for me to
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It's just, you know, remembering that a relationship with Lord is like a relationship with any person as faras the Maur authentic you are with them, the richer that relationship can be. And I think you know, the irony is the Lord knows everything that's in our hearts, every thought that we have. So it's kind of just funny that we would be feeling an intensive motion and then try to sugarcoat it and make it cotton candy like when we speak to him, because he's like, I know that. It's so like our kids the way they go and they, like, punch their brother and then come in and they tell us like, Well, there was a bug on his shoulder and so I gently tapped it off. You know, it's like I just watched the whole thing. I know the truth. Just be genuine and real with me.
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Exactly. And it's just it's so amazing and so frank when you realize you don't have to have a fake conversation with God, right? And it takes a process to get to that place where you can be like and it's a daily process, You know what I mean?
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It's like, Am
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I going to share what's really going on with the Lord or not? Nah, I'm gonna I'm gonna fake it.
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Right? Right. All right, guys. So you know, this is a great way to decrease your stress, because if you feel like you can't even be often taken genuine and express what you're feeling to the Lord, that's a lot just to be carrying
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around. What iss iss? Trust me. I've done it a lot.
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A lot of days Didn't work out so well for you. Did it. I'm learning. So you know, we just encourage you to be authentic, be genuine, being real community with Lord, um And we would like to be in community with you as well. You can find us on Facebook if you to search for less stress. Family podcast. You can look us up on our personal instagrams. You can even, um look at l s f podcast dot com new. It's no fantastic to connect with us. Most of all, we want you to remember that you are valuable and what you do matters. We hope you have a blessed day. Thank you.