Disappointment

 Disappointment. We all experience it at some point. Things don't turn out as we had hoped. Life has not turned out as we had hoped. Disappointment can be so hard to cope with. Seemingly impossible at times. Never more than when we find ourselves disappointed with God.

When I first came to Christ, I remember being told about the "beautiful plan God had for my life." This was exciting. My life desperately needed beauty. It was so good to know that things would now be different. Let the beauty begin. I was ready. What a shock to learn the beautiful plan had a few stops that were decidedly not beautiful at all. I wondered if I had been misled. Had I believed in a God that wasn't able to bring "beauty from ashes" just as He'd promised? When would the plan begin to unfold? I was disappointed with God.

A great part of our problem is that neither those who proclaim it or those who hear it, really understand what God's idea of beauty really is. We,as we do with so much else, define beauty as to what we see happening on the surface. Our idea of a beautiful plan is one where He brings us through this life with as little pain, loss, and heartache as possible, and as great a supply of material and temporal blessings as we can hold. Then, He takes us home to heaven. Our idea has no place for a cross, for any kind of suffering, for any kind of real sacrifice or pain. We've believed in an illusion, and the result will always be disappointment. Especially with our being disappointed in Him. He hasn't "delivered." We've prayed, believed, even begged Him for a desired result, and it hasn't happened. We feel like we did everything right. We followed the "steps" and memorized His promises. Why hasn't He done something? But He has. He is....if we had eyes to see it.

I have had places of deep disappointment with Him. My disappointment came because my eyes were focused upon the outcome I wanted, and not upon the Lord who was working in me and in the circumstances around me. He was dealing with so many issues in my heart and spirit. My sense of entitlement, and yes, my sense that somehow, He owed me. I'd kept my part of the "bargain," now He needed to keep His. It was all about me and He was simply a "tool" I needed to get what I wanted to have and where I wanted to be. I wanted a beautiful life. He wanted a more beautiful me. Just as He wants a more beautiful you. How's the process going for each of us?

The Lord does give us beautiful things and He does satisfy so many of our here and now desires, but His deepest work is to make us more like His Son, Jesus, and He uses our disappointments to bring the dross in our hearts and lives to the surface, that we might be more and more His silver and gold. He polishes us until He sees the face of His Son in us. In Romans 5 Paul writes that we have been given a "confident expectation" and that this expectation "will not disappoint us." In our disappointments, He works so that our expectations are changed from being focused on what we want to have or see Him do, to simply having a full expectation of Him and His goodness. In the midst of even pain and suffering, we have a steadfast confidence in His goodness and love. We know that somehow and someway, He will bring beauty from ashes. This yields a hope in Him, not in the outcomes we want. We live in all places with a joy, hope, and peace that yields true beauty in our lives.

Scripture says that the hope He gives, "will not disappoint." It won't disappoint because it is rooted in Christ and the knowledge that He is in control, that He, as the Bible says, "holds all things together." He said we would have trouble in this fallen world, and trouble always brings some level of disappointment. Yet the trouble cannot sway what He is working in us and doing around us. As Romans 8 promises, "He works all things together for good." Even our disappointments. Weeping may last for the night, "but joy comes in the morning." Hold on in trust in the midst of every disappointment. Where you are is not where He'll leave you. He really does have a beautiful plan. Let Him show you how truly beautiful it is.

Blessings,
Pastor O