PLEAD TO GOD LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT—BECAUSE IT DOES

Shar Walker 

When life gets hard, I find myself turning to slave narratives and Negro spirituals and poetry. That, and the book of Psalms.

The Negro spirituals remind me I come from a long line of men and women who have endured horrific seasons of excruciation that seemed eternal. These songs and poetry are evidence of my ancestors’ hope and faith that God heard them, even when it felt like their suffering had no end—even when it seemed like God was silent. It’s comforting reading and singing about the perseverance of others.

The Psalms remind me that my spiritual lineage goes back even farther to God’s people who are no strangers to lament (Ps. 6:6; 13:1–4; 102:1–11). From wilderness wanderings to prosperity to conquest to exile, the Israelites knew suffering as a close—and often unwanted—confidant.

THE POWER OF LAMENT

When we feel helpless, out of control, or scared, some of us are tempted to go into action mode. We do everything we can to ensure our suffering is minimized with little collateral damage.

But what if our first response was to sit in our mess and pray to God? What if, instead of trying to fix this, we were honest to God how we’re doing and what we’re feeling. What if we simply lamented?

Lament is crying out to God with no immediate hope of relief. Or as Canadian writer Jen Pollock Michel describes lament in Surprised by Paradox:

In language that seems hardly admissible in God’s throne room, as men and women pray to God, they try making faithful sense of the mystery of their suffering—and the love of God in the worst of circumstances. Lament, with its clear-eyed appraisal of suffering alongside its commitment to finding audience with God, is a paradoxical practice of faith.

In America, where we have come to expect prosperity, lament likely seems strange to many of us. Foreign, even. Biblically, there is a powerful history of lament—in the wilderness, throughout Psalms, during the exile.

As our hands crack from the ever-growing stain of soap and hand sanitizer and we breathe recycled air through masks, the current season of pandemic presents the joyous opportunity to have our faith strengthened through this foreign, but ancient, form of prayer.

REMEMBER GOD’S TRACK RECORD—IT’S GOOD

We’re forgetful beings. We’re prone to absent-mindedness. When life is good we tend to feel like we don’t need God.

We’re equally prone to forget God’s track record of faithfulness when things are bad because grief easily overwhelms us to the point where we can only see the despair of the moment. Looking forward—to the ever-growing ambiguity of the future—only causes more anxiety. The stress of what is can cloud our memory of what was. Sadness can blur our recollection of how God has shown up in the past.

In Psalm 44—a corporate psalm of lament—the psalmist begins by reminding readers of God’s goodness, a truth that had been passed down for generations. Truth celebrated by the covenant community. “God, we have heard with our ears—our ancestors have told us—the work you accomplished in their days, in days long ago” (Ps. 44:1).

We worship the same God as our spiritual ancestors. When we read stories that are thousands of years old and we hear the miraculous ways God showed up for his people, we can easily assume a “that was then, this is now” mentality. And yes, in some exegetical circumstances, this is true. Yet he’s still the same God. When moments come that make it hard to see God in our present times, we must not forget to look back. In her book, Michel goes on observing:

Lament was carried on in these acts of remembering. Whenever it became difficult to see God in the present, these ancient men and women conjured up scenes from the past. They let their story part the clouds of divine obscurity and tell them something about God’s nature.

Israel told and retold the story of their deliverance. They recalled and passed on to generations the narrative of God’s faithfulness despite their failures. Perhaps, in this season you need to be reminded of the Lord’s character. Remind your church how God has provided for you and been near to you in past seasons of suffering. As a church, remember and thank the Lord for the previous seasons of corporate trials you have endured.

DESCRIBE YOUR FRUSTRATION TO GOD IN DETAIL—HE CAN HANDLE IT

“Have you been honest with God about your disappointment?” I was shocked by the question from a trusted friend. I was more surprised that my answer was “no”.

Prepping and planning comes naturally to me in the face of unexpected change—prayer doesn’t. Honestly, I’d vented in my head and to my husband a bit, but I didn’t do much beyond that. There were people who have it much worse, so why complain about my small issues from the stresses of working from home with an infant?

But God doesn’t keep score when listening to our prayers. When we’ve completed our lament, he doesn’t follow up with, “Well, that person has it way worse so you should be grateful.” His ever-listening attentiveness is saying, “Tell me more.”

In Psalm 44:9-16, the psalmist details Israel’s national distress: “You hand us over to be eaten like sheep and scatter us among the nations” (Ps. 44:11).

Humiliation, disgrace, and shame are upon them as an unwanted covering. They felt the weight of all this humiliation, disgrace, and shame. The psalmist holds nothing back in his outpouring to the Father. Telling God of the present disaster and distress opens up an opportunity for one to recognize his merciful response. Again, Michel is so helpful here:

There is every indication that God’s mercy is as reliable for suffering that is banal as for suffering that is big. And this is one of the great mysteries of divine love, that I need make no defense for the worthiness of my trouble and the rightfulness of my need.

Of course, there are times we should be more grateful, but biblical lament invites us into an honest and vulnerable conversation with the Lord, no matter how seemingly big or small our problems.

PLEAD TO GOD LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT—BECAUSE IT DOES

Lament can feel like we’re praying to an empty room. We pour out our hearts to God, and it feels like he is silent. The psalmist exclaims, “Wake up, LORD! Why are you sleeping? Get up! Don’t reject us forever! . . . Rise up! Help us! Redeem us because of your faithful love” (Ps. 44:23, 26).

Over and over the psalmist comes back to the Lord and makes his pleas known boldly and clearly. In fact, his prayers of lament and his pleas to God are evidence of his faith.

Our faith in God likewise is strengthened through persistent prayer. After all, we keep returning to the throne room of grace because we believe God is still with us and hears us amid our trials. As soon as we forget this, our suffering appears unbearable.

At times, our life is full of tear-stained pleas to God. We come back, again and again and again, through prayer. We call out knowing he has a proven track record, realizing he can handle all our frustrations. We can cry out to him in honest petition.

He’s a God who hears, and he is a God who sees. He has heard the cries of our spiritual ancestors. Let’s lament knowing he hears our tear-stained pleas as well.

SharDavia “Shar” Walker lives in Atlanta, GA with her husband and son. She serves as the Senior Writer for the North American Mission Board (NAMB). Shar is a writer and a speaker and is currently pursuing an M.A. in Christian Studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. You can find more of her work at www.sharwalker.com.

Posted at: https://gcdiscipleship.com/article-feed/plead-to-god

Everything's Canceled! Dealing with Disappointment

Abbey Wedgeworth

On March 14, actress Jennifer Garner extended a social-media invitation to “preschoolers to professionals” whose games, meets, recitals, and productions had been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She urged them to share what they’d been working on (using the hashtag #heyjenlookatme) so that she could share it “with the world,” adding tenderly, “because I want to see.”

I enjoyed following along as she shared dance routines and monologues, but I’ve also grieved as I’ve considered the tangential losses that the coronavirus has caused all over the world: massive denominations with canceled meetings, brides with canceled weddings, seniors who won’t get to walk across the stage in cap and gown, athletes who have lost the chance to compete, students who have lost one-eighth of their college experience, families whose vacations have been canceled, fans who don’t get to see their favorite artists, children who won’t be able to share cupcakes with friends on their birthdays. Some of these things can be rescheduled, but some cannot.

It can be hard to know how to deal with personal disappointments, how to feel about our own feels in response to loss. But life in a fallen world is marked by suffering, great and small, and pandemics only highlight what has always been true.

Here are four places the Bible invites you to look as you suffer disappointment.

1. Look Upward

Rather than dismiss our own sufferings compared to those of others, or distance ourselves from God in frustration, we can draw near to our Savior, who suffered greatly so that we can pour out our hearts before God (Heb. 4:16). We can be honest in prayer. God knows our thoughts before they’re formed, our words before they’re on our tongues (Ps. 139:2–4). His knowledge of us and of how this pandemic uniquely affects us is perfect and complete.

God also knows by experience the sorrow of this world through the life of his Son, Jesus (Isa. 53:3). Our great high priest both sympathizes with us and intercedes for us (Heb. 4:15). When we look to Jesus, we’re reminded that God loves us and is working for our good (Rom 8:28; 1 John 4:10).

The cross of Christ is the powerful declaration that God not only sees you—he is with you.

Better than a celebrity’s expressed desire to see our video clips, the cross of Christ is the powerful declaration that God not only sees you—he is with you. Take your feelings of disappointment and loneliness straight to him, and learn afresh his comfort, care, and concern for you.

2. Look Inward

Desire and anticipation are not wrong, and neither are disappointment and grief. But the disappointment we feel in response to what we’ve lost to the COVID-19 pandemic can tell us a great deal about our hearts.

The object of our disappointment tells us what we love (e.g., fun, family, events or experiences, competition, learning,  memory-making, and so on). But the magnitude of that disappointment can sometimes reveal an inordinate desire or disordered love, unmasking something we love or desire more than God himself.

As we pray about our disappointments, God often tenderly reveals our sin to us. Thanks be to God that in Christ we are offered both forgiveness for disordered loves and the help of the Spirit to reorder them (1 John 1:9). And by his grace, through this reorientation of our hearts, we, like the apostle Paul, learn the secret to being content in all circumstances (Phil. 4:11–13).

3. Look Around

In Scripture, one of God’s clearly expressed purposes for our pain is that through it, he makes us able to comfort others. As you draw near and receive the comfort of the Lord in your place of disappointment, you become better able to minister to others in their grief (1 Cor. 3:1–7). As he reorders your affections, helping you obey the greatest commandment, you become better able to fulfill the second: to love your neighbor as yourself (Matt. 22:36–40).

And so, a third place to look in the midst of disappointment is at the people around you. Consider how you might be a blessing. A friend whose wedding was canceled by her venue donated her flowers to nursing homes where residents were lonely without visits from their loved ones. Artist Andrew Peterson’s tour was postponed, but he is reading aloud to homebound fans via the internet.

Who is your neighbor? Who do you know who might be sick, or lonely, or afraid? Do they know the truth of the gospel? Consider the disappointments of others, and ask God what good works he may have for you to walk in during this strange time (Eph. 2:10). Show them that you see, so that they will know that he sees.

4. Look Ahead

Any disappointment we experience in this life is a reminder that this world is not as it should be. Though hope deferred makes the heart sick, a promise fulfilled is a tree of life, and all of God’s promises in Jesus Christ are Yes and Amen (Prov. 13:12; 2 Cor. 1:20).

Though we need not borrow trouble from tomorrow, and though we’re wise to rest in the knowledge that we’re held and kept in this present moment, we do well to look far, far ahead—through the disappointment we now feel so acutely, into eternity, where there will be no more reason for sorrow, no more cause for disappointment, and no more sickness threatening our loved ones or livelihood.

The marriage supper of the lamb is a feast that cannot be delayed and will not be canceled.

This is cause for rejoicing even, and perhaps especially, amid griefs great and small. This hope provides an anchor for the soul in uncertain times (Heb. 6:19). This hope will not disappoint or put us to shame (Rom. 5:5).

As we draw near to our faithful Savior in disappointment, he wipes away our tears, cures us of blindness to our sin, helps us to see the hurts and needs of others, and lifts our gaze to see how he’s at work in the present to bring about the redemption of all things. The marriage supper of the lamb is a feast that cannot be delayed and will not be canceled. The plans of God, often perplexing and always perfect, can never be thwarted.

Abbey Wedgeworth is a wife, mother, and nap-time writer living in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. She is passionate about helping young moms apply the riches of Christ to the realities of motherhood. You can find more of her writing on her blog or connect with her through Instagram.

Posted at: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/canceled-disappointment-pandemic/

Your Unfulfulled Desires are a Treasury, Not a Tragedy

by Tyler Greene

“And I pleaded with the LORD at that time, saying, ‘O Lord GOD, you have only begun to show your servant your greatness and your mighty hand. For what god is there in heaven or on earth who can do such works and mighty acts as yours? Please let me go over and see the good land beyond the Jordan, that good hill country and Lebanon.’ But the LORD was angry with me because of you and would not listen to me. And the LORD said to me, ‘Enough from you; do not speak to me of this matter again. Go up to the top of Pisgah and lift up your eyes westward and northward and southward and eastward, and look at it with your eyes, for you shall not go over this Jordan. But charge Joshua, and encourage and strengthen him, for he shall go over at the head of this people, and he shall put them in possession of the land that you shall see.’” (Deuteronomy 3:23-28)

Four decades—that’s how long Moses had invested his life to lead the nation of Israel toward the land God had promised to Abraham (Gen. 12:7). However, as the Lord would have it, he would never set foot on Canaanite soil. That privilege would be left to Joshua. Of course, this is a source of tension for Moses—an unfulfilled desire that had been nagging him ever since the incident at the waters of Meribah (Num. 20:12). Even though he “pleaded with the Lord” to reconsider, his admission into the Promised Land would not be granted.

This episode in Moses’s life beckons an important question for our own: what should we do with our unfulfilled desires—those sources of unresolved tension in our lives that have left us disappointed, devastated, or despondent? Sadly, too few of us are equipped to face such a question. Ronald Rolheiser observes, “We stand before life too full of expectations that cannot be realized…we are convinced that all lack, all tension, all unfulfilled yearning is tragic.” Whether it pertains to romance and sexuality, career, sickness and disease, parenting, or ministry, many assume that to live with unmet expectations is an insufferable misery that must be resolved as quickly as possible. However, the Bible offers a different perspective. It reveals that while we are fixated on what we don’t have, God’s focus is on what we are becoming for the sake of His purpose.

This is what happened to Moses. Silenced by divine rebuke, he stopped pleading with God about his unmet expectations and started listening. God’s Word on the matter would result in Moses being consumed with one burning passion for his remaining days—to see God’s people love, worship, and obey Him under Joshua’s leadership and beyond (Deut. 4-32). By not getting what he wanted, he became what God wanted, which is infinitely better.

Perhaps God wants to do something similar through your unfulfilled desires. Maybe that’s why He’s not answering your prayers the way you’d like. Could it be that He wants to use the tension you feel to prepare you for His purpose in a specific way? Is it possible that He wants you to become something that will make a difference in someone else’s life?

Our Lord Himself, having experienced all that is common to man, is not unfamiliar with unfulfilled desires and the role they can play in God’s greater purpose. With the cross looming on the horizon, He prayed, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me” (Matt. 26:39). The cup, of course, would not pass from Him. But had it happened any other way, there would be no gospel, and we would be eternally shut out of the kingdom of heaven. In a sense, then, God’s only “no” to Jesus turned out to be the only way He could say "yes" to sinners. And Jesus, knowing this, surrendered His desire, praying that God’s purpose would prevail: “Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done.”

In the end, we must accept that there are times when God chooses not to fulfill our desires. Yet we must recognize that such times, though difficult, are sovereignly orchestrated opportunities out of which we are being called to “bear more fruit” for the kingdom of God (Jn. 15:2). By not fulfilling Moses’s desires, God prepared Joshua and the Israelites for their entrance into the Promised Land; by not allowing the cup to pass from Jesus, full atonement was made so that eternal life could be offered to the world. What about you? Have you thought about how your unfulfilled desires might have an important part to play in God’s purpose?

Don’t believe for a moment that the longings you have long felt can be written off as a tragedy you must survive. Instead you must see them as a treasury that is brimming with potential blessing, fruitfulness, and eternal glory. Perhaps, then, the greatest tragedy of all would be that you never become the kind of person who can say, “Not my will but yours be done” and truly mean it.

Tyler Greene

Tyler Greene serves as the Associate Pastor of Worship Ministries for LifePoint Church in Ozark, MO. He resides near Ozark with his wife Erin and their three children. 

Hang on to God in Hard Times

Shepherd’s Press

Psalm 46 was written for difficult times, times like this past weekend in El Paso and Dayton. These opening verses are filled with the drama of life-dominating events. But even in chaos and turmoil, God is our refuge, the one we can hang on to:

“God is our refuge and strength,

a helper who is always found

in times of trouble.

Therefore we will not be afraid,

though the earth trembles

and the mountains topple

into the depths of the seas,

though its water roars and foams

and the mountains quake with its turmoil.”

Jacob was someone who knew that he needed to trust God. He made a mess out of his life. He struggled with God and with people. He conspired with his mother to steal his brother Esau’s birthright and blessing. He was deceived by his father-in-law about whom he would marry. He, in turn, managed to turn the tables and deceived his father-in-law to get his best livestock. Finally, it all caught up with Jacob. He fled from his father-in-law only to learn that Esau was coming to find him. One night when he was alone and worried he came across a man. But it was not just an ordinary man. Jacob wrestled with the man all through the night and would not let him go. The man, actually an angel of God or a theophany, responded by injuring his hip. But, still, Jacob would still not let go, so we read in Genesis 32:

Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

Jacob, the conniver, the con artist, is nonetheless a model for your faith. He held on to God with all that he had. He understood this is God’s world and he needed the blessing of God to survive. Jacob’s story is not one that would be typically held out as a model to follow. But throughout his life, he knew that God was God and he was not. Hebrews 11 lists Jacob as a man who lived by faith.

As Psalm 46 reminds us that the God of Jacob is our refuge and our strength. No, Jacob did not get everything right. But he got God right. Jacob is an example to you and to me that our hope lies not in how good we are, but in how good God is. Jacob knew that the most important thing in life is clinging to the promises of a faithful God. Many of the days of humanity are dark. But even in the darkest valley, God is still our God and merciful shepherd. Follow Jacob and hang on to the living God of heaven and earth!

Posted at: https://www.shepherdpress.com/hang-on-to-god-in-hard-times/?fbclid=IwAR2E80pC6IFeL-NEq9cxdmHMWUZf_9vGptXMZMU438TISXTDXhMunVPx5KY

The Reality of Disappointment

by Jeremy Pierre

Life is one long, steady disappointment. This dawns on most people by their thirties. Childhood is all potentiality. The teenage years are all angst—but even angst betrays some hope, since it is only quiet outrage that things could be better. A person can still carry into his twenties the illusion that the world will soon blossom. Not until his thirties does a person realize that much of what’s coming won’t be better than what has come. The forties, fifties, and on often only reinforce Alexander Pope’s infamous beatitude, “Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.” To live is to be disappointed.

So cheer up. Oddly enough, disappointment can be an indicator you are seeing the world correctly. No one enjoys feeling disappointment. In itself, disappointment is akin to the sadness of loss, and ultimately we were not designed for it. But like all emotions, disappointment is a gauge of how a person perceives his life—what he believes about it and wants from it. When you’re living in a broken world, sometimes believing and wanting the right things means you’ll be disappointed.

THE EXPERIENCE OF DISAPPOINTMENT

Human beings are capable of disappointment because they are capable of having expectations. We were made to dream of better days. Every Cleveland sports fan knows this. So does every acne-faced teenager, every sleepless parent of a newborn, every young professional clawing for a career, every recent divorcée sitting in a house now quiet. All of us cast in our minds a widescreen projection of a better reality to move around in, free of the most painful parts of the present. We live in a desert but imagine a garden.

Disappointment is what we experience when that garden never blooms. Of course, we know it won’t blossom immediately. But maybe it will incrementally? Maybe in the next phase of life? Maybe around the next bend? All of these maybes are the projectors on the screen of the mind. What they project we could call expectations.

We experience disappointment as a sense of loss when reality fails to meet our expectations. The key words there are reality and expectations, and both of these terms are charged with theological meaning.

Disappointment is a gauge of how a person perceives his life—what he believes about it and wants from it.SHARE

A THEOLOGY OF DISAPPOINTMENT

Reality is the world that surrounds us, a world that existed before any of us first took in a lungful of oxygen. The world is a given component of our experience, the context we are born into and move around in. It is beyond our control, it is outside our determination, and it operates according to laws we had no say in laying down. Reality is, well, reality. And it constantly fails to match the Eden we love to inhabit in our minds.

Reality is the world in which God placed us. It’s easy to overlook the theological significance of Genesis 2:8: “And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.” God made Adam to be an embodied image of Him in a physical location. This world preceded Adam. It was outside his determination yet under his dominion to be the context of his obedience (1:28). Adam could not have simply lived in his head; he had to traffic in a reality outside his head.

Expectations, on the other hand, are a human response to reality; and as responses, we do have a say in them. Expectations are part hope, part prediction of what reality will be. They are part hope in the sense that they are an expectancy of good. No one is disappointed when something bad they were expecting fails to come about; instead, they experience relief. Hope is the anticipation that reality will be characterized by greater joy, greater provision, greater accomplishment, greater peace.

Adam lost his spot in an ideal reality by disobeying God, who sent him and his wife out of Eden and into the ultimate disappointment of a world stalked by death and decay (Gen. 3:8–24). A world that was once generous with fruit became hostile with thorns. This is the reality that Adam’s grandchildren have inherited. But they’ve also inherited the memory of that garden. Our very ability to be disappointed shows that we carry expectations of a world better than the one we live in.

So, in a sense, disappointment is an accurate response to a disappointing world. We see disappointed expectations all over the place in Scripture—from Job cursing the day he was born, to the sons of Korah comparing this place to the land of the dead, to Paul describing creation itself as groaning in pain and disillusionment (Job 3:3; Ps. 88:12; Rom. 8:19–22). This collective disappointment is a sure sign that we know to expect more.

So, how do we process our personal disappointment? Here are a few principles.

Your specific disappointments are only the manifestations of a broader disappointment. As we acknowledged at the outset, life is one long, steady disappointment. This long disappointment manifests itself in a thousand short ones. Broken families, failed careers, declining health. Years of planning and labor that result only in more uncertainty, not less. Fear that your adult children won’t carry on the values of the family. Relationships that should have been lifelong don’t even attain their half-life. Or perhaps worst of all, you’ve attained the objects of your desire, and they simply fail to deliver what they promised.

These regular disappointments are about so much more than the situation that’s disappointing you. The wise man of Ecclesiastes, sitting under the swaying fruit trees of his sunlit garden, feasting with fawning dignitaries from around the world, stared blankly into the sky, saying, “I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind” (Eccl. 1:14).

The Preacher’s disappointment was not ultimately about the trees or the food or the dignitaries. His disappointment was an all-encompassing realization not simply that this world doesn’t provide ultimate satisfaction, but that it can’t provide ultimate satisfaction. Your specific disappointments are only your personal realization of this same reality.

If you want to handle disappointment in a godly way, you must start by simply acknowledging that your specific disappointments are not exclusive to you. The world is not uniquely unfair to you. It is unfair to everyone. To think that your own disappointments are a greater burden to you than those of others are to them will lead quickly to self-pity and to self-pity’s more subtle cousin, self-hatred.

Your disappointments may show that your expectations don’t line up with what God says about reality. God tells us the world is broken. Your disappointments may be because you expected more out of this world than God said it would deliver. Everyone secretly prefers an immediate return to the old garden over patient endurance to the new one. But God says that this world is marked by futility and difficulty. The happiness we experience is genuine, but it is fleeting. The question is, are we willing to accept God’s description of life in a fallen world?

Take, for instance, the types of disappointment I just mentioned: a broken family, a failed career, or declining health. God, indeed, designed family to provide intimacy and security, but in a fallen world, relationships are broken. Expecting an ideal family has prevented many people from enjoying their actual family. Work and career are an essential part of our calling, meant to provide satisfaction and provision, but in a fallen world, careers are not guaranteed. Expecting an ideal career makes us anxious about a job we might otherwise enjoy. The same is true for personal health. God made the human body to heal itself, but our fallen condition is evident in every ache and pain. Our longing for perfect health can make us unthankful for each day of life.

We expect a world untouched by the fall. When we do that, we are insisting on our own version of what the world ought to be, rather than trusting God in the world that is.

Your disappointments may, on the other hand, show that your expectations do line up with what God says about reality. Even though God tells you the world is broken, He also tells you it shouldn’t be. Your disappointments may show that you agree with Him. You feel the sorrow of a broken family because you know we were made for intimacy. You are disillusioned at the unexpected loss of your job because God designed work to yield reward. You are frustrated with a body that won’t respond how you want it to because you know God made bodies to be whole. The difference between expectations that line up with God’s and those that don’t is in your willingness to submit to God’s testimony of what your life is: plagued with difficulty for now in order to sharpen your desire for the world to come. The grief of realizing the world is broken can be a platform to worship the God who even now is preparing an unbroken world.

Your disappointments should provoke two actions from you: lamentation and seeking. The Preacher of Ecclesiastes teaches us to lament our disappointment. To lament means to give a faith-filled complaint to God. Expressing our disappointments to God is the opposite of harboring them in our souls. Lament is a way of releasing our expectations to Him, trusting Him to restore the situation according to His wisdom and His timing.

The people of faith in Hebrews 11 teach us to seek a better country. Faith makes people act oddly in their present reality: they don’t settle for it. Land-dwellers build boats to save themselves from coming destruction. Wealthy men leave everything to wander. Disgraced old women give birth to nations. Princes identify with slaves to gain a better kingdom. Prostitutes become the only ones with eyes to see a better life. All were dissatisfied with the present in hope of a better future—future with God.

So cheer up. Disappointment can be refined for good use. If our present reality teaches us to lament and to seek, we are well on our way through this long, steady disappointment. And in the unbroken world that awaits us, we will solidly arrive at disappointment’s end.

Dr. Jeremy Pierre is dean of students and assistant professor of biblical counseling at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., a pastor at Clifton Baptist Church, and coauthor of The Pastor and Counseling.

Posted at: https://tabletalkmagazine.com/article/2018/05/the-reality-of-disappointment/?utm_content=buffer8db2a&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=buffer&fbclid=IwAR1KStcSzNrD5Bvn1XZfu7gLTpbEzhqgr1lS2gNKVFUYZnvNAX2KBwjRALo