Disappointment can be dreadful: that feeling we have when the good thing we expected doesn’t happen or isn’t what we expected. Most of us had it happen as children and as adults we learn from experience that the anticipation of something can sometimes exceed the event!
Yet when we find ourselves disappointed with God it can be very serious:
Last Sunday morning we saw from Deuteronomy chs 2 & 3 how Moses described the Israelites’ disappointment on their first encounter with the promised land after escaping slavery in Egypt. It’s not that the land was poor but that they couldn’t see past the evil giant pagan people they had encountered.
Their disappointment was driven by a lack of faith: forgetting how far the LORD had brought them, how amazingly He had blessed them and how well He keeps His promises. Yet even then He continued to sustain and bless them:
“…These forty years the LORD your God has been with you, and you have not lacked…” (Deut 2:7)
Before we condemn them, the truth is that as Christians we can do the same:
- We can find ourselves disappointed the LORD hasn’t fulfilled our expectations, when all along they were false.
- We express a lack of faith in Him fulfilling His promises, when He hadn’t promised those things in the first place but something actually much better that we have forgotten or ignored.
Only when we understand His plans and that they are not necessarily for our comfort but actually for our eternal good, will we learn not to be disappointed but to trust Him properly.
Spencer Shaw