On my computer, if things get really messed up, you can exit out of the program and start again. You can refresh. Would you do that with your life?

If things are really, really bad with the computer, you can reset it completely. You get the pick the date that it was last and best working, and push reset to that date. Anything that happened after that date is erased forever.

If you had a reset button on your life, would you set it? I’m being serious. Would you?

Take a quiet moment and think of some of your dark days. They are different for each of us. A death. An addiction. A betrayal from a close friend. Arguments. Disappointments. Despair.

Would you push reset and miss those things entirely??? It’s tempting.

One of my favorite “feel better” greeting cards says, “Wouldn’t it be great if life were a VCR tape and you could fast forward through the bad parts?”

Maybe you wouldn’t get rid of the challenges altogether. Maybe instead of reset, you’d push fast forward.

I'd like to erase this morning. I had an argument with one of my teenaged sons before school. I said, “Not another word or you’re grounded for the weekend.”

He had another word. Several hundred more words. I got more and more angry.

His argument was that his “more words” were used to explain his position and justify his actions. My argument was that “not another word” was an absolute. God gives parents authority over their kids. (Yet in the pursuit to be cool, many parents don't exercise this authority and often that leads to trouble for the whole family.) I’m not an authority junkie. I don’t like to argue. Yet what I tried to convey to him (loudly) was that by continuing to speak when told to be silent, he was really saying:

--I don’t respect you.
--You can’t make me.
--You’re not the boss of me.

Acknowledge it or not, I’m the boss of that boy.

Acknowledge it or not, God is the boss of us.

Yet, He is merciful. He allows us to “have a say.” He’ll hear us out.

The good, bad and unlovely things we have to say to God. He can take it. Let it out! Read the Psalms and you’ll see that David as often yells or whines or begs God as he does praise and magnify His name and His creation.

God said that David was a man after His own heart. I take this to mean that he likes the raw emotion.

Bring it.

I served at a retreat with my speaking ministry, and some raw emotion came forth. A woman pointed a finger in my face and yelled, “I can’t pray like YOU do! I can’t do what YOU say.”

But she wasn’t mad at me, really. She was mad at God. Somehow, it felt safer to tell me.

Voice cracking, heart breaking, she told me, all right. But I'm just a human. I have no healing touch. Tell the Lord, I begged her. He's listening right now.

Take it to the Lord. He can take it.

But she was afraid. She’d been taught that it’s not okay to be mad at God.

I’m here to tell you, it’s okay.

It was okay when my son got mad at me. We came to an understanding of each other's positions. That's what the Lord wants from us. Frank talk. That's how we'll come to know each other better. God desires to enter an eternal conversation with you and some yelling will be okay.

Come to think of it, I wouldn't refresh or erase the morning. It's brought us closer, after the storm.