“Such things were written in the Scriptures long ago to teach us. And the Scriptures give us hope and encouragement as we wait patiently for God’s promises to be fulfilled.” Romans 15:4 (NLT)
A friend of mine used to say with tongue-in-cheek, “Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed!”
Recently I’ve been doing some thinking on the subject of disappointment. If I’m honest, deep feelings of disappointment have been hounding me for a long time in these middle years of life. I doubt that I’m unique in this but I find inner tapes playing in my head which repeatedly say things like –
Is this all I’ve accomplished up to this point in my life?
Is the rest of my life going to be all downhill from here?
Why hasn’t my life “turned out better”? (as if I’m a good judge of this!)
Is this all I get after putting this much effort into _______?
In my journal I began to list a number of things that I was personally disappointed about. I then saw certain common denominators surface –
- Some of my disappointments related to things that were largely out of my control
- Often I was disappointed by my own choices made in the past and now having to live with the consequences
- I had to admit being disappointed with God for not coming through for me in ways that I had “expected” of Him
The whole area of disappointment says so much about our inner lives and expectations.
When I was younger I had many “aspirations” but probably not enough goals. When we set our sights on something and yet don’t have a determined plan with personal goals to accomplish them we can grow disgruntled and have many regrets. I’m learning that this is a reminder to set personal goals to reach new targets. It’s all in the process of becoming the person God designed us to be in the first place.
As long as we are alive (and in reasonably good health) the potential exists for us to set new goals instead of living with regrets and disappointment. Perhaps what we need is renewal and refocus when darkness seems to creep in upon us.
Often the good things we expect to come our way don’t materialize and instead we are landed with a set of circumstances that we didn’t anticipate.
We expect good health and end up with illness.
We expect a happy marriage and end up in a difficult relationship or even single.
We expect children and end up barren.
We expect a satisfying job and end up unemployed.
We expect our children to do well and they struggle.
And the list goes on.
We look to our own accomplishments and to people and things around us to give life meaning and fulfillment. When we don’t get what we think we want – or what we expected to have – we become disillusioned. It also doesn’t help when we observe others who seem to be enjoying the things that we so deeply desire and don’t presently have.
After doing a short survey I found that the Bible, my source of ultimate truth, says very little about “expectations” but says a great deal about hope and waiting for God.
I’m beginning to realize that disappointment is a human trait that God uses in our lives. We were definitely created for something “more” than what we are currently experiencing. The Biblical concept of hope is a tremendous antidote to the poison of disappointment.
As noted above the Apostle Paul once said, “Such things were written in the Scriptures long ago to teach us. And the Scriptures give us hope and encouragement as we wait patiently for God’s promises to be fulfilled.”
It just might be that God is there for us more than anyone else and anything else when we experience failure, disappointment and disillusionment. We have far more than we realize in the personal relationship He offers us through Jesus Christ His Son.
Expectations are that in upcoming posts we will learn more about how God uses the disappointments in our lives to bring us to a deeper appreciation of Himself and a different perspective on our place in His wonderful plans.
When we begin to place all our hopes, dreams, and aspirations in God’s hands the potential exists for us to live a different life than we “expected.” I find myself having to recommit to the process every day.
Thanks Jesse, I’ve been doing a lot of reflection on disappointment lately. I wrote a post on my blog(philandmartha.org) last month on disappointment. The Lord is teaching us something important in this. Great post.
LikeLike