All of us experience disappointment; it is a part of life. In the early parts of life, our disappointments often focus on specific actions and events. Let me give you an example from my life. As you all know, I play piano. I began taking lessons when I was five, and continued to take lessons all through my growing up years. As a teenager, I began to enter piano competitions. One of my keenest disappointments I remember at this time was practicing like crazy before a competition, and then, during the competition, playing my pieces well, even perhaps the best I had ever played them. Then we all had to leave the room while the judges deliberated, and when we were told to come back I was nervous, far more nervous than I was when I played for the judges! First maybe they announced the honorable mentions – I was not included. I still had my hopes up; I thought I was at least in the top 5, although I kind of doubted I was the best. One or two just seemed pretty flawless, although maybe I was more musical. Then they announce 3rd place. Not me. I guess I managed to be 2nd, I thought. Then they announced 2nd. Not me.
Ironically, at this point my hopes get much brighter; I am either 1st place or I didn’t place at all. Surely I placed; I must be first! The first place winners from all the competitions that day will perform in a special concert later that evening. Now I am thinking about what I will play at that concert. Meanwhile they announce the first place winner. Not me. Not me? Not me! Not me. Waves of disappointment wash over me. “I’m never going to enter another one of these stupid competitions again!” “How stupid I was to think I could place!” “How foolish I was to get my hopes up!” All this is mixed with “What’s wrong with these judges? Are they deaf? I know I was good enough to place!” Yes, these are completely contradictory thoughts, but surely I’m not the only one who has thought like this.
Other disappointments from my childhood: the girl I have a crush on doesn’t even like me, not at all. I’m not cool enough to have any cool friends. Why do I always get picked last when they choose baseball teams? (Well, I knew why, but this was a rhetorical question.) My parents don’t let me do anything I really want to do. I am sure each of you have your own set of disappointments you can point to at least somewhat along these lines.
But as we get older and we progress through life, as our responsibilities grow, so do our disappointments. No longer are they just about specific events, although these still occur. In my case, I think I choose not to pursue a career in music largely to avoid disappointments about not winning competitions. Instead I chose engineering, and ultimately, I chose to become a professor. The irony is that a significant aspect of being a professor is attempting to win research grants, and the process of discovery and disappointment is remarkably similar to piano competitions! But in addition to these types of disappointments, as we get older we also become more metaphysical, more philosophical. We can look back at our lives and regret specific decisions we have made, or worse, we can be disappointed in our own fundamental weaknesses. Sometimes these weaknesses lead to dramatic and lasting trouble and problems in our lives.
One example of this kind of large-scale disappointment is in Lamentations, where the people mourn because they realize that it is their own sin that has led to the destruction of Jerusalem; God had warned them centuries ago that they must follow Him or He would remove His blessings from them. It is their sin that has led to their people being slaughtered or carried off into exile. It is their fault!
My sins have been bound into a yoke; by his hands they were woven together. They have been hung on my neck, and the Lord has sapped my strength. He has given me into the hands of those I cannot withstand. The Lord has rejected all the warriors in my midst; he has summoned an army against me to crush my young men. In his winepress the Lord has trampled Virgin Daughter Judah. This is why I weep and my eyes overflow with tears. No one is near to comfort me, no one to restore my spirit. – Lam. 1:14-16
As for us, I think of issues such as when a spouse chooses to divorce and we know we are part of the reason, or when a child has major problems and we can see how we perhaps contributed to these problems, or even when we become addicted to something and we see there is no one to blame but ourselves.
Disappointment in the actions and behavior of others is another category of disappointment. These are especially heart-rending when we have certain expectations of others, perhaps because of past behavior which seemed to justify these expectations, or because it turns out the people had completely deceived us (in which case we are also disappointed in ourselves for not realizing this).
One example of this in Scripture is Moses. Listen to Stephen’s account in Acts 7:
Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action. – Acts 7:22
Moses had been trained for leadership. He has an MBA from Egypt U. Not only was he trained; he was talented. He had it all; he didn’t just talk smoothly; he got things done. Every indication is that he was loved by the Egyptians.
“When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites. He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian. – Acts 7:23-24
Moses is risking his life for his people. Despite his cushy life, he loves his own people more. He would do anything for them. It is wrong how they are mistreated! Out of his love for them he will fix the wrongs he can fix.
Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not. The next day Moses came upon two Israelites who were fighting. He tried to reconcile them by saying, ‘Men, you are brothers; why do you want to hurt each other?’ – Acts 7:25-26
Again, Moses simply desires to use the gifts God has given him; his natural leadership abilities along with all his training from the Egyptians.
But the man who was mistreating the other pushed Moses aside and said, ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’ – Acts 7:27-28
This was a devastating blow to Moses. He fled, leaving behind everything, his position, his unique abilities to help the Israelites, the cushy benefits of his unique relationship with the Egyptians – everything, and fled to Midian. What a disappointment! His own people weren’t his allies, but were unappreciative, nasty, fighting one another, and apparently completely willing to betray him! We can also only imagine Moses’ later countless disappointments with the Israelites out in the desert. There were even times with Aaron and Miriam, two people most close to him, either spoke against Moses or acted against the Lord. What great disappointments these must have been for Moses!
Typical examples of disappointment in others today include when a child or friend suddenly seems to stop following or believing in God, when friends close to us suddenly reject us or leave our church, when someone close to us reveals that they have “blown it” in one of the big ways that we talked about just a bit ago that leads to disappointment in self, things like divorce, addiction, even criminal behavior. These are all giant disappointments that completely shake our world.
And then there is the whole area of disappointment in God. I think of prayers that aren’t answered the way we want, people close to us who die before, as far as we can tell, they ever turn to Christ, or simply going through hard or tragic things that we know God, being all-powerful, could have prevented or made happen differently. Often we bury this kind of disappointment, not wanting to even admit to ourselves that we feel this way. I did this when years ago my mother passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. As far as I know she never turned to Christ. Part of me felt terribly guilty – I certainly could have prayed more, or I could have tried harder to share the gospel with her – but another part of me felt angry at God. Couldn’t He have given her more time? Why should it be my responsibility to pray for her or share the gospel? I’m just a weak sinner! That should be God’s responsibility! As I went through this, this was the one time in my life when I actually experienced significant depression. I felt a combination of numbness and heaviness, almost like someone was sitting on my chest. I think I fell into depression because I buried my true anger at God – after all, I thought, you aren’t allowed to be angry at God. It was only when I finally vented my true frustrations to God, and then wept in prayer at the loss of my mother that my depression lifted.
Biblically, there are multiple examples of people expressing their disappointment to God, some not-so-impressive, such as Jonah, who has his meltdown when God doesn’t wipe out the people of Nineveh, or Job’s friends, who, while they certainly know how to talk for a really long time, don’t seem to know what they are talking about. But there are also what I think are good examples, such as Habbakuk or even David. David and the other psalm writers frequently expressed their disappointment with God in the Psalms. Just searching on the phrase “how long” in the Psalms includes a variety of passages including these:
1. My soul is in deep anguish. How long, Lord, how long? – Psalm 6:3
2. How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? – Psalm 13:1
3. How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? – Psalm 13:2
4. How long, Lord, will You look on? Rescue me from their ravages, my precious life from these lions. – Psalm 35:17
5. How long will the enemy mock you, God? Will the foe revile Your name forever? – Psalm 74:10
6. How long, Lord? Will you be angry forever? How long will your jealousy burn like fire? – Psalm 79:5
7. How, long, Lord God Almighty, will your anger smolder against the prayers of your people? – Psalm 80:4
8. How long, Lord? Will you hide yourself forever? How long will your wrath burn like fire? – Psalm 89:46
9. Relent, Lord! How long will it be? Have compassion on your servants. – Psalm 90:13
10. How long, Lord, will the wicked, how long will the wicked be jubilant? – Psalm 94:3
11. How long must your servant wait? When will you punish my persecutors? – Psalm 119:84
It’s a little shocking, isn’t it? How impudent! How impertinent! It seems like the psalmists do complain a lot! Of course, we are just taking individual verses out of longer poems and prayers to God. That’s not just all they write about. But to our western ears, we who are taught to be polite and never complain, it is shocking to see these verses together. This is God these are directed to! Don’t you know what He can do to you?
Beside the psalmists, another example is Mary, Lazarus’ sister who was deeply disappointed in Jesus when Lazarus died:
When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” – John 11:32
And just imagine how disappointed the disciples were as they dealt with the reality of Jesus’ death by crucifixion! “How could this be?” they thought. He said He would leave them, but how could He really do it? How could He die?
So how are we supposed to “suffer well” when it comes to disappointment? Well, I simply want to share a few things that I see in Scripture.
First of all, disappointment, if it leads to humility and dependence on God, can actually be a good thing. I love what Paul writes in the middle of 2 Corinthians:
But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. – 2 Cor. 4:7-9
Nobody wants to be common clay pot; we want to be a beautifully carved and painted Grecian urn! But we aren’t! We’re clay pots; with chips here and there, nothing much to look at. But our very nature of being unimpressive is something God seeks to use in us. God in us is something amazing and beautiful to look at, and when circumstances, our own failures, and the failures of others bring us down, it enables God’s goodness, love, grace, and mercy to shine forth. Without these humbling events in our lives, we end up being like the proverbial pig putting on lipstick. Nobody wants to see that!
Another way disappointment can be a good thing is that it can make us compassionate towards others as they go through their own disappointments. As we have learned to become humble and dependent on God through our struggles, we can likewise help others to do the same. This is essentially what Paul says at the beginning of 2 Corinthians:
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. – 2 Cor. 1:3-4
For me personally it seems like heart pain is the only way God softens my heart and makes me compassionate. I wish there was an easier way, a less painful way, but I have not seen it in my life. So do I welcome heart pain? Do I welcome disappointment? No, but I am glad for the fruit that it causes. So disappointment can be a good thing.
However, I would also say that disappointment that is a result of comparing oneself to others is usually a bad thing. It is definitely a bad thing when we decide we are “good” because we are better than others; 2 Cor. 10:12 says that those who do this are “without understanding,” (that’s a polite way of saying that they are being stupid!), and Gal. 6:4 says that each should test their own actions without comparing themselves to someone else. However, when we compare ourselves to others and don’t measure up, we are disappointed and may even grow to resent those who outshine us. God has made us all differently. Each of us has strengths in Christ and each of us also has many weaknesses in ourselves. Comparisons are pointless and either fuel pride or depression. Don’t do it!
I would also repeat something I have heard a pastor in our association share on more than one occasion – and that is, that if you are struggling with disappointment or discouragement, or indeed, with any kind of negative emotion, choose to get involved with others who are sharing their faith. Get in a Bible study that includes unbelievers. Help with passing out materials with the campus ministry. Get up the nerve to share your faith with a coworker or at least invite them to church. You will be amazed how God changes your perspective when you do this. Extended disappointment can only occur if you keep your eyes on yourself. Just as you cannot focus on something up close and something far away at the same time, neither can you be simultaneously outwardly and inwardly focused.
In closing, let me again quote Paul from 2 Corinthians. Here he is describing his life and those of his co-laborers in the gospel. Notice his attitude and perspective. Here is someone who does not deny the pain but also has his eyes fixed elsewhere (on Christ):
[We are] sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything. – 2 Cor. 6:10
How well does this describe you? You may have the “sorrowful”, the “poor”, and the “having nothing” down, but how about the “always rejoicing”, the “making many rich”, and the “possessing everything”?
As we spend time remembering the Lord today with the bread and the cup, reflect on how this verse perfectly describes Christ. Was Jesus sorrowful? Yes; He wept over Jerusalem; He wept over Lazarus. Isaiah called Him the man of sorrows, the man of suffering. He agonized over what God was asking Him to do, to die on the cross, to take on Himself the penalty from God that God’s justice required of us. Was Jesus poor, having nothing? Yes; He was often homeless “with no place to lay His head.” Truly Jesus was sorrowful, yet always rejoicing – He still rejoices every time one of the “lost sheep” comes to Him; Jesus was poor, yet making many rich – we are rich beyond imagination, having eternal life because of His death. And Jesus was one having nothing, and yet possessing everything! We are His, the sheep of His pasture, the object of His love; nothing can snatch us from His Hand!
Ultimately, when we get to the end of our lives on this earth, we will not be disappointed. We will know the fullness and intimacy of His love, we will be finally free from our “Old Man” that continually tempts us, we will be free from the Devil that seeks to drag us down and tear us apart or accuse us and tell us that we are no good, we will have new bodies that don’t suffer through pain, we will no longer grieve, and our time of waiting will be over. Let us worship Jesus, praising Him for giving us Himself!
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