Oh, this is the right side. I've been wearing this wrong the entire time. Hello there.
What is up? I hope you can't see my. What is up everybody and welcome back to the young
and love podcast. My name is Darius coming to and I am the host of this amazing I think
it's an amazing podcast on the young love podcast. We talk about all things love. We
don't do the we don't do the toxic competition, you know, guys are better than women. We
don't do that kind of those kind of conversations. The young and love podcast is a podcast. Again,
when we talk about love and we don't and being young in love has nothing to do with your
age and love, but it has all to do with your maturity and your growth over time. We talk
about three sectors of love. That is the love with God, the love with your faith. That's
so that's one the love with God and the love with your faith. And then we do the love that
you have for others and then the love that you have for yourself. So God others and then
yourself. I am excited about today's episode. I feel like I always say I'm excited about
the episode they're about to film, but I am excited and nervous about filming this episode.
I do have another new camera setup. It is the same camera that I always always use my
phone. Same camera, different setup. I would usually not be showing all of, you know, this
over here and all of this over here. But I figured I wanted to today. So now you can
see how, you know, how much crap I have on this couch. And you can see this plant that's
just sitting in front of the, of the camera. You can see this light here that it's on,
but you, you know, so yeah, we're here. We're here today's episode is, first of all, if
you're watching this on YouTube, you get an extra, extra special. Thank you. I love it
when you all watch on YouTube. I love to see the numbers on YouTube grow. I'm trying to
grow the YouTube channel. I'm going to say I try. I'm trying to passively grow. I'm not
really promoting on any other. I'm not promoting on Tik Tok or Instagram. So thank you. If
you found it, if you found this here, thank you for finding us here. Today's episode is
a hard, I should have brought some tissue over here because I might shed a tear or two
out. Probably not. I'm a, I might be fine. But today's episode, as you saw by the thumbnail
by the title, there we go already. It's about forgiving God. I posted this video on Tik
Tok the other day that went viral and I just talked about the experience of how it feels
to sometimes be disappointed by God. And I did get a few comments and people were like,
you, God doesn't disappoint us. I don't think that God does anything wrong. Right. I think
that we are oftentimes disappointed because we have expectations of what we expect God
to do. And when he does not do that by natural feeling of what happens to human beings, we
get disappointed. There were more people who agreed with me than there were people. There
weren't really a lot of, I might have only saw one or two comments of people saying that
they don't, they haven't experienced that. And that's fine. It's your experience. But
I know what it is. I know what it feels like to have expectations, reasonable expectations
of God. I'm not talking about God give me a million dollars or God let me win this lottery
and then you lose and you're disappointed. I know what it is to, we bear full honesty
over in this podcast. I know what it is to pray for God to keep somebody alive. And
that just not be the plan that God has, you know, and so something as extreme as that
stay in something as extreme as that. When that happens in my experience for a moment
in time, you're hit with disappointment because you expected God to be faithful in that area.
And by definite, he was not faithful in what you expected him to do in that moment. And
so today's episode again is about forgiving God in moments where you have expectations
for God to do one thing and he doesn't do it. And I mean, there are times where you
are, we are faithful to God. And we were doing what we, you know, what we're supposed to
do, we're living the life that the Lord has called us to live. And we have a prayer or
request. And he just does not come through in the way that we expected him to come through.
So as we go over the next few episodes of this podcast, we're going to do, I'm going
to call this the forgiveness series where we're going to talk about forgiving God, forgiving
others. So forgiving God for experiences that we have had with God, it have kind of put
us in a weird place where we are challenged in moments of being disappointed by God. And
then moving on to write. So God, then yourself, moving on to forgiving other people who might
have hurt you. And sometimes those other people are people who are very, very close to us,
parents, siblings, people that we were in relationships with who have done things to
us that we might, you know, that might have disappointed us. And just talking about the
need to forgiving them. And then forgiving ourselves for experiences that we've had that
are either rooted in choices that we made that put us in the situations that we're in,
or what I find to be most common are situations that we experienced in our life that we did
not put ourselves in. We were just put into by the circumstances of life. And because we
did not react the way that we probably thought we should have reacted. We have held kind of
a personal grudge to ourselves of wishing that I would have responded this way or wishing
that I would have spoke up and said this thing. And because I didn't, you know, now
you live with this, this grudge of unforgiveness in your heart against yourself. I was reading
the Bible and I heard one of my friends Elaine Janelle McGyver who has a podcast called renewed
talk or had a podcast. I'm gonna say she has it has a podcast called renewed talk. And
she preached the sermon once and she talked about the story of Elijah and how Elijah had
ran and hid under the Juniper tree. And I think this comes from Kings, let's see, I want
to say Kings 18. I see Elijah Kings night first Kings 19 and that's verse four says,
but he went himself a day journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a Juniper
tree and he requested for himself that he might die. So Elijah was in this weird, you
can read the story, this is not a Bible study, but Elijah was in this weird place where he
had just, you know, a chapter previous to this chapter. So chapter 18, he was obedient
to an assignment that was given to him by God. And then it has a result of that assignment,
some things that happened in between, you know, chapter 19 and or at the beginning of
I think it was the beginning of chapter 19 or the end of chapter 18. But something had
happened, somebody had sent a message to him. He got scared and he ran away as the Bible
tells us he won a day's journey into the wilderness. And he went under this Juniper tree and wished
that he not wanted to commit suicide, but wish that he would just rather that he would die.
And I thought about kind of the significance or the relation of that story to experiences
that we might have in life where we might not always wish that we would physically die.
But I think that oftentimes we experienced these Juniper tree moments where we get disappointed
in God and we run and we hide in a place that is oftentimes isolated, that's lonely. And
we spiritually sometimes mentally sometimes emotionally die or decay because of experiences
that we've had where God has just not come through in the way that we expected God to
come through for us. I remember I'll tell this story and I will tell this story and
not cry is the goal. I'm not a cryer at all. But whatever this specific story gets involved,
I'm looking around for tissue, whatever this specific story gets involved, it affects it
affects me. And 2000 and something, maybe it was 2021. It was such a blur for me, if
I'm honest, 2021. Last year was 2223 was Oh yeah. So then it was 2021. April. Yeah. No.
I don't man. I don't I'm bad at dates. I think it was 2021. My grandmother was doing
fine one day. And then the next day she wasn't. I remember my mother calling me and telling
me that my grandmother was in the hospital. And at the at that time at the so the first
phone call that I got, she was telling me that the doctors were not giving us any, anything
positive they you know, and you know, basically telling us to come and get some time in while
you can because it might not last. She might not last that much longer. I remember one
day getting in my car and driving down to the hospital and I went in there and to see
to see somebody who I'd never seen my grandmother hooked up to as many I'd never seen anybody
if I'm honest hooked up to as many wires and cords as she was hooked up to in that moment
when I saw her. And I remember walking into that hospital room and just crying. And she
couldn't they told us that she could not hear us. I don't know if she was in a coma or again,
it was such a blur or it's such a blur now. But I remember them telling us that she could
not she could not communicate with us. She couldn't speak to us, but we she could hear
us if we spoke to her. And so we're being in the hospital room with her and just crying,
crying. And you know, towards the end of the visit with her did a prayer with her. And
then I left and I remember just driving home and just praying, you know, like God, like
be faithful. You know, she was an old she wasn't old at all. She was maybe 60 something,
I think definitely not 70 60 something. And in my experience with with my grandmother,
and I don't want to make this an episode about my grandmother. So I promise I'm gonna
it's gonna come full circle. In my experience with my grandmother, she was funny. That lady
loved me and she made it known that she loved me. And I knew that she would do anything
that she could do if I needed it to be done. And so experiencing experiencing that with
a person, I naturally was like, I can't wait till I get married because I want my life to
experience my grandmother because I experienced her in such a good way. And then saying I
can't wait till I have children because I cannot wait for my children to see how fun
I would think that all the time I can't wait for them to see how funny this lady like everything
she said was funny. And I couldn't wait to have I could wait to have kids because I
ain't in a rush. But I couldn't wait for my children to be able to experience what I
experienced in my grandmother. And I remember they called us and they were like, she's
doing better. Oh, look at look at the Lord. And she eventually made it out of I think
she was in the ICU unit. I don't I don't I don't really know much about medical terms.
But I think she was in the ICU unit and she eventually made it out of the hospital into
rehab. And rehab, you know, there was one day where they said she got up and walked. There
was one day where they said she got up and you know, she was opening her eyes and being
alert and attentive. And so obviously I felt like the prayers of the righteous man are
availing much. And then fast forward a few weeks. I will never forget. I will never forget
this Sunday morning we were still my church was still doing church virtually. And I would
wake up I will I served on our tech team at the time at the time that I was, you know,
literally attending that church. I served on the tech team. So every morning we wake
up, you know, so one of us would log in, let the people in, you know, from the waiting
room, let the men share our screen, share music until the service started. I remember
at church started at 11. And so it was virtual. I wake up at 1055 brush your teeth, wash your
face, throw a shirt on, keep your pajamas on and show, you know, from the chest up.
I remember waking up that day to a phone call at six o'clock in the morning or around six.
I want to say it was around four or five or six o'clock in the morning from my mother.
And I woke up and I just like, you know, silence the phone. And I, I remember going
back to sleep, but in the process, it took me like two seconds to fall back to sleep.
In the process of going back to sleep, I remember thinking to myself, like this is not a good
phone call because my mother doesn't call me. Nobody calls me at that time of the day.
So I remember waking up again to another phone call. I think she called me the next time
around nine or 10. And I could tell by her voice as something was up. And she called
me and she said, you know, grandma just had a stroke or a seizure or something. She said
the doctors are saying that she only has a couple hours left to it. And the devastation,
the devastation that went through my body because I felt that I was praying to a God
who could do all things was praying to a God who could solve all problems. I was praying
to a God who could heal all conditions and to match the expectation to that phone call
did not make sense at all. But I remember going to the hospital and we were in the waiting
room. They put us in this, you know, this room where we were all to the family was all
together by ourselves in this room. And I remember my mother went out to my grandmother.
They had transported her to the hospital from the rehab center. And they had said to, you
know, they said two people can come see her right now. So my aunt and my uncle went to
go see her. And then they came back and they told my mom that she can go see her. And I
remember, I remember, I remember being in the room and my mother walking out of the room
and asking her brother, which is my uncle, why, why something? I think she was saying,
why do I have to go or something like that? And then up two seconds, three seconds later,
I just heard screaming. I just heard screaming and crying. And you know how like you like
you experience something like that. And you know that it's not good, but you don't want
to be confronted with that moment of what's, you know, what of reality. So my grandmother's
husband, who was not my grandfather, she had married him. But that's not my mother's. That
was not my mother's father. But she had, he had, he had left the room as well. And he
walked back into the room and he hugged me. Nothing is funny. I'm just laughing to keep
these tears. But he hugged me and he was like, I'm sorry. And I was like, sorry, what? And
it was like, I knew, I knew what was going on, but I did not want to accept what was
going on without being told what was going on. And so he hugged me and he said, I'm sorry.
And I was like, why? And he was like, grandma didn't make it. And I remember we all went
into the room and went from a rule of like only two of y'all can be in here to all five
of us, all six of us being in the room. And I remember seeing her lifeless. And I just
kneeled at the side of her bed and I just cried. And I was so disappointed with God because
to get a phone call that what you expected God to do didn't happen is one thing, right?
To be standing next to you, to be standing in front of, to be standing in the same room
of a prayer that was not answered. It's a little bit different. It's a little bit different.
And I remember just being in that room and crying and being so disappointed. I mean,
like overwhelmed with disappointment that God did not show up the way that I expected
God to show up. That didn't mean that God was a failure. It didn't mean that God was
not able to answer that prayer. I was just disappointed because I had an expectation
of God to be faithful. And in that moment, he did. And there are other moments in life,
right? Where I've experienced things where I've had prayers very similar to this. People
didn't die, but very similar to having an expectation of God to come through and God
just not coming through in the way that you expected God or that that I expected God to
come through.
And so on all of those moments, there is a level of disappointment because I love it.
This is not a brag and this is not a, I'm not trying to sound boastful at all or concede
at all. But knowing how I serve God and how I serve the church, there is automatically
and it is what it is. There is automatically an expectation of faithfulness from God, right?
The Seekie first, the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these other things would
be added. I had expected all these other things to be added to me to be answered prayers.
And the reality is, right? When we talk about being disappointed by God, the reality is,
is that the Bible talks about that God's ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not
our thoughts. And that God knows the plans that he has for us. And it's to bring us to
this expected end that there are prayers that God does not answer in the way that we want
them to be answered because God knows best. I would love, and I, I have had this thought
a thousand times, I would love to be able to have a, another conversation, one more conversation
with my grandmother about it. We could, we could talk about crowns and I will be so satisfied
with being able to have a conversation with her.
But for whatever reason, it was not God's plan to extend her life more than he already
had. And the reality is, is that initially when they said that she wasn't going to make,
like I had an opportunity to spend time with her and I did. I had an opportunity to pray
with her and I did and God was faithful in that moment. And so I think that oftentimes
we cast aside the moments that God has been faithful. We cast aside the moment that God
has actually answered prayers. We cast aside the prayers and the time that God has actually
come through in situations. We cast those aside and we highlight the, the negative experiences
and the negative encounters that we've had with God. And so can we really say that God
has disappointed us when all the other times God has been faithful, God has been faithful
and God has come through every other time that I needed him to come through. And so
I can't allow this one experience of disappointment to shape the entire, the entire character
that I perceive God to be in this moment of disappointment. So then with that, we have
to understand that God wants what's best for us. And so a moment where God does not answer
the prayers that we, the way that we want him to answer the prayers, like I have to
always understand that God actually wants what's best for me. And so if he's not answering
this and if he's not doing this, if he's not responding to this, the way that I would
want him to do and to respond and to answer this, then I have to just accept the fact,
the fact that God always wants what's best for me. And so if he's not giving me, if he's
not answering this thing and the way that I want him to answer this thing, then it's
because that's not what's best for me. It might feel good if I have it. It might, it
might, it might feel a void that I wanted to feel if God gave it to me. But the reality
is I don't, I don't think that God holds withholds any good thing from us. I just don't, I don't
think that there is a good thing in this world that belongs to us, that God withholds from
us. And so I have to know that if I'm praying to God for a job, for a career, for a relationship,
for whatever it is that we're praying and we're asking God for, and he doesn't give
us those things, it's probably not best for you to have. And there's something else out
here in the world or whatever that God intends for you to have. And in the time that you're
supposed to have it, God will give it to you. And then I think that there are some of us
who have just experienced situations in life that by our, in our, in our experience of
those situations, like it is tainted our view on how, on the, on the faithfulness of God.
But what I've come to learn is that everything that happens or what I've come to accept
is that everything that happens in my life happens for my good. And I think that I can
say that because I'm able to transform moments of negativity into moments of positivity.
It might hurt, it might not feel good in the moment, but when I have to deal with that
thing years later, months later, weeks later, sometimes I'm able to look at those situations
and say, how has that work? Like what did I learn in those moments where I did not feel
that God was being faithful to me? What did I learn in those moments? And when I start
to really peel back the layers and understand how those moments, what I, what I learned
in those moments, I didn't understand how those moments actually were good to me. I
understand how those moments were good for me. And the, and the reality is in the moment,
I, I want to say this, and it's going to be like two sided in the moment, looking at
experience, negative experiences with God, looking at them in the moment. It's very hard
to see the positivity of those, of those situations in the moment, right? It's, it's hard to see
the goodness of God when this situation doesn't feel good. It's hard to say, this is working
for me, when in the reality, in the current moment, this is not working at all. It is
hard to say that God intends everything to be for our good. When the prayers that I have
are good prayers and God just does not answer them the way that we want them to be answered.
Those are like the in real, in reality, realistically, it is hard to say that God is good when it
does not feel like God is good. What I've learned though, is the discipline it takes
and the importance of always understanding, even in the current situation that God is
good. Like to be able to rehearse in a moment that God is good, like in the face of disappointment,
in the face of not being able to really be like this with God, when you know, you once
were like this with God and now you're like this with God to be able to understand even
in every one of those moments that God is still good, that God is still faithful, that
His promises are still yesterday, amen, that if He has spoken a thing over my life, then
it's going to come to pass regardless of what this situation currently looks like. To be
able to rehearse those things and to believe those things, literally in those actual moments,
it shapes and it changes how we respond to situations as we are currently living in them.
So we talk about forgiving God, and so when we talk about and we deal with forgiving God,
a lot of that happens after we've overcome, after we have gotten out of those negative
experiences, but I think that there is something to be said for being able to in the moment
acknowledge the goodness of God even when it does not feel like God is good.
And then the last thing that I will say, and I think that this is the most important thing,
if you heard nothing else in this entire episode, that's okay. Hear this, forgiving God is more
than just saying, I'm over it. Forgiving God is more than just saying, all right, whatever.
I pray that prayer and it didn't work out. All right, let's move on. Forgiving God, forgiving
anything is more than just moving past it. Forgiving God is also trusting Him again.
Forgiving God is also trusting Him again. I think a lot of us will experience situations
where we pray certain things and because of whatever, it just doesn't work out the way
that we thought or the way that we expected it to work out. And we'll move on with the
mindset that, you know, all right, well, that God didn't answer that prayer. That's cool.
We'll move on and we would never pray that. I remember a very similar situation that somebody,
I remember a situation that somebody was going through, somebody very close to me was going
through and I was praying for them. I was praying with them and God just did not answer
the prayer, the way that we expected God to answer the prayer. And I remember saying,
I will never, I literally remember after that moment, situation ended. I remember I hate
doing the whole like we got to talk around the situation. I'm not going to talk around.
I remember somebody very close to me was experiencing trouble in their pregnancy. And I remember
praying for them, you know, that God, like God be faithful, God be a healer, God, you
know, whatever. And as an end result, that person actually had a miscarriage. And because
the person was close to me, but also because I was very closely involved with the situation,
it wasn't a miscarriage. I wasn't my kid. I was going to say I was very closely involved
with the situation. And I'm just saying because I was there praying with the person, literally
there at the hospital with the person, you know, and ultimately, the person did have
a miscarriage. And I remember, and it wasn't like a miscarriage at like, you know, early
prayer, it wasn't miscarriage. Like we know the gender, we know the name, people started
buying gifts. I remember that night finding out that the person miscarried or miscarried.
And I remember saying to myself, I will never pray a prayer like that ever again. I remember
in that moment not being able to trust God and saying to my, I will never pray that prayer
again or pray for this, pray for a situation like this again, because it will never work.
Like it will never work. I remember being so disappointed with God that I felt like I would
never pray this kind of prayer again. I would know if this situation happens again tomorrow
with somebody else as close to me, I would never ever pray this prayer again because
I tried it once and it didn't work. Forgiving God looks like saying, if this happens again
tomorrow, I don't care how this situation turned out. If the same situation, if the
same situation happens again tomorrow, I forgiven God of my disappointment in him that I, and
I know he's faithful so much so that I'll pray this prayer again tomorrow if it happens
again. And I think that we need to move to a place where we are able to trust God in
the way that we trusted him before this situation happened. To be able to trust God to say, God,
you gave me this plan, you gave me this vision, you gave me this dream, and I went after it
and I never saw the results of this thing. I think to forgive God, truly to forgive God
of disappointment is to not say, well, you know, we'll move on to something else. But
I think it's to say that if God gives you another vision or if God gives you that vision
again with a different perspective at a different time, to say that didn't work out before at
one time, but I'm going to do it again now because I still trust, I still forgive, I
still trust and forgive God of that moment where, you know, I might have been disappointed
in an outcome of a situation where I had a certain expectation of God. Whoa, I just
found out I passed. I was writing two papers and I passed. That's nice to know. That's
so random. But all this to say, this was a, this was a little less heavy than I thought
it was going to be. I was trying to keep the tears in as best as I could and I think I
did a pretty good job at that. Talking about my grandmother is not a very, still not an
easy, not an easy thing for me to do because she died and I designed her program, planned
her funeral. I was at the funeral house with her mom and my aunt, my great grandmother
and her aunt, picking out the casket. I preached her eulogy. I committed her. I should not have
done that, but I committed her. And, you know, I was calling around looking for places to
make reservations for the repass. It was a lot. And so I don't feel like I ever had
the time to really sit in, sit in the moment, sit in, to sit in reality. And I think because
of that, it had a huge impact on how I felt God showed up in the situation or did not
show up, I guess, in this situation for me. And so I'll say to everybody to really close
this full episode out, take some time and really think about that thing that God might
have disappointed you with. For a lot of you, it might be, you know, something that you
wanted. I hear like, feel people, you know, for some people might be like the child that
you wanted that you didn't get to have or the person in your life that you lost that
you thought would be around longer than they were around. Or some people might be like
the circumstances of your life that you're experiencing today, that you expected God
to change for you. And that you're still in and still in expectation that God will change
for you. And he just hasn't up until this moment. I think forgiving God of the disappointment
looks like trusting God again. And so I pray that you would be able to trust God again.
I pray that you would be able to hear God again. I pray that you'd be able to sing again,
to dance again, to preach again, to live again, to dream again, to work the business out again,
to love again, to birth again. You know, I pray I really, really do pray and hope that
any disappointment that has been caused from the expectations that we've had on God, I
pray that we'll be able to move to learn why those did not work out the way we expected
it. Those situations did not work out the way that we expected it to work out and to
move forward into the plan that God has set out for us and still have expectations for
God to be good. I could clap to still I forgive God of every man. Listen, I forgive God. There
were times where I expected God to show up in a way and he did not show up in those ways.
And I have been disappointed. But my forgiveness of those moments says even though God has
not shown up in the way that I've expected him or that I needed him to show up in the
past, moving forward, I still expect God to be good. I don't allow those situations.
I don't allow those expectations that were not that that God did not come through the
way that I needed him to come through. I will not allow those expectations to negatively
determine how I expect God or how I see God showing up for me moving forward. I will always
expect God to be good no matter what because God is good despite my expectations.
Thank you guys for watching for listening to come for coming back. If you got a notification,
you click the notification. Thank you for coming back. If you're new here. Thank you
for watching. Thank you for coming by. Yeah, thank you for watching the Younger Love podcast.
The next episode, we're going to talk about forgiving other people who who might have
done this wrong, who might have hurt us and what it looks like to not forgive and what
it looks like to actually move on and forgive, forgive people who who have done wrong things
to us. And then we'll move on from that one and we'll end this series off with forgiving
ourselves because I just had an experience this Sunday. The Sunday at church where I
have had to forgive myself from situations that I had not caused to myself, but situations
that I allowed to happen and then I lived in the bondage of those situations. Yeah. So
again, thank you for watching. Please if you're not following us on whatever platform you're
watching this on, be it YouTube, subscribe, Apple podcast, follow, subscribe, Spotify,
follow, subscribe, wherever else this podcast is being broadcasted out to make sure that
you are following and subscribing. Until next time, I'll see y'all later. I don't really
have an outro. That's why it takes me so long. But goodbye.