Have you ever been in this place before? It’s that place where each new day seems to be accompanied by another reminder that life is hard–possibly, too hard. It’s a place where hurt and disappointment doesn’t seem to relent. And when you optimistically hope and pray that a reprieve from what you have been going through is just around the corner, this is the place that leaves you feeling as though that corner is just too far away. The lyrics from the Broadway musical, Annie, encouragingly say:

The sun’ll come out tomorrow.

Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow,

there’ll be sun.

But you’ve come to the conclusion that if you were Annie, you’d have no bottom dollars left! Because when your tomorrow arrives, you find yourself asking, “Ok, where’s the sun?”

It’s not like you are unversed in God’s Word. I’m sure Romans 8:28 has been indelibly etched upon your heart. “For we know that all things work together for the good to those who love the Lord.”

Perhaps, you have repeated Jeremiah 29:11 more times than you can count. “For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you, not to harm you, but to give you a hope and a future.”

In fact, I bet you have made Galatians 6:9, “Persevere and don’t give up for at the proper time you will reap a harvest,” your personal life’s motto.

But with complete honesty, you’re not really seeing any harvest from your attempts at persevering. And although you try to convince yourself that God’s hand is at work in this situation, you can’t see how what you are going through can possibly lead to anything good. You can reason that the “hope and future” God refers to in Jeremiah regards your heavenly home, but that doesn’t change your desire for wanting that hope and future God promised to be for this home–the here and now.  

When God disappoints…

In that deepest place of your heart, you realize it’s really not all the whats in your life you are so disappointed with, as much as it is the Who you are so disappointed in. And as you wait for your situation to improve, you don’t fear that God won’t show up. Your biggest fear is that He already has.

When God disappoints…

Maybe you’ve cried out to God, “Lord, if what You are allowing me to go through is evidence of Your love, then please have mercy on me and don’t love me so much!” Or maybe you have taken a sabbatical from praying about your situation at all. You reason if you don’t pray about it and it never gets better, then you can blame yourself. But if you continue to pray that your circumstances will improve, and instead they stay on their current course (or for that matter, appear to get worse) you fear you will blame God and become even more disappointed in Him.

So again I ask, have you been here before? Does this place I’ve described sound familiar? Or maybe, is this the place where you currently find yourself living–where God disappoints?

Candidly, you may find it disconcerting to admit that this is the place where you are right now. You haven’t considered yourself a “baby Christian” for years. In fact, you’re often the one who’s been there to build up and encourage others when they are going through difficult times. You have whole-heartedly expressed the words of Paul, “we can rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope…” (Romans 5:3.) But right now the only thing that sounds remotely hopeful to you, is running as far away as you possibly can from developing any more character!  

When God disappoints…

I recently read that, “disappointment happens when our expectations are not met by our experiences.” Even as a child of God, we often expect that He should protect us from the barrage of hurts and sufferings this fallen world frequently brings with it. When that protection doesn’t seem to occur, we find ourselves profoundly disappointed in Him. Maybe if we could hear an audible voice from heaven acknowledging our painful circumstances, or an assurance that indeed, our sun will come out tomorrow, we would have a renewed strength to persevere.

Lately, I too, have found myself in this place. Like an accomplished defense attorney, I feel I can present a valid argument for why I’m entitled to be disappointed in God. Additionally, it appears I’ve also emotionally entered the healthcare profession. I have been quite proficient at nursing these disappointments of mine–keeping them alive and well. But each day that I hold on to these disappointments, refusing to let them go (because it justifies the silent treatment I’m giving God right now) only keeps me in deeper bondage to my pain. But God’s word says that, “the truth will set us free” (John 8:32.) So what is the truth?

Truth number 1: Our God is an all-loving God. He is big enough to hear all of our disappointments in Him and still love us beyond anything we can imagine. Moses, Job, Jeremiah and David all had moments in their life where they questioned God’s plan and expressed their disappointments. God is no stranger to hearing our disappointments either. In fact, He encourages it. “Cast your burdens on Me and I will take care of you…”(Psalm 55:22.) “Come to me when you are weary and burdened and I will give you rest” (Matthew11:28.) And in Phillipians 4:6, “through prayer and petition make your requests known to God.”

Truth number 2: “All the ways of the LORD are loving and faithful…” (Psalm 25:10.) And I believe there is probably an unwritten addendum to that verse: whether we understand those ways or not. God also tells us that, His ways are not our ways. They are higher and far beyond anything we can imagine (Psalm 55:8-9.)

Truth number 3: God promises, “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you” (Joshua 1:5.) Is it possible that during those moments in our life when we don’t feel God’s presence, it’s not because He has turned His back on us, but rather that we have turned our back on Him?

Truth number 4: When Paul tells us we can rejoice in our troubles, (James 1:2-4) he isn’t telling us to rejoice in the pain those troubles bring with it, but instead we can rejoice in the results that pain will eventually bring about.

Truth number 5: God is working something out in our life. He never wastes a crisis. Our pain isn’t for naught and our pleas for relief isn’t falling on deaf ears either. “For He who began a good work in us will be faithful to bring it to completion” (Phillipians 1:6.) Like you, I also wish that completing process didn’t have to be so painful. However, God does promise that He is “near to the broken-hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18.)

Truth number 6: Actually we do have an assurance that our sun will come out tomorrow. Psalm 30:5 does say that “…weeping may last through the night but joy comes in the morning.” Our morning may not arrive by tomorrow. But until it does, even in the midst of all our hurts and disappointment, we can continue to pour our heart out to God. We can continue to persevere and not give up. And we can believe that at the proper time our pain will reap a harvest of joy–someday.