After the death of our Lord, the disciples were fearful to go out and about. They had been crushed by disappointment. They had hoped that they would enter Jerusalem, and Jesus would set up God’s kingdom, and they would reign with him. No more Romans about, no more legalistic religious people. Can you imagine their sadness and disappointment? But then Jesus appeared to them and they realised that their hopes had been in the wrong place. God’s plan had been far bigger than throwing the Romans out of Jerusalem - it was his plan to conquer sin and death through his Son.
We may have been disappointed by something in the past, and we may now be fearful of the future. ‘I had a good friend once, but she let me down, so I’m not going to get close to anyone again.’
Billy Joel captures this sentiment in his song Innocent Man:
"Some people stay far away from the door,
if there's a chance of it opening up,
they hear a voice in the hall outside,
and hope that it passes by.
Some people live with the fear of the touch,
and the anger of having been a fool;
they will not listen to anyone,
so nobody tells them a lie."
Or we might think: ‘Yes, I had hoped to do this, I prayed about it, but the Lord did not bring it to pass. So, I’m giving up on prayer and, I think now that God has few plans for me.’
That’s not the way God wants us to live. The world is not impressed by Christians who don’t take any risks for the Lord. The world is impressed by Christians who show the world that God is more important to us than anything else, so that we risk disappointment. Esther overcame the disappointment of her parents death and then leaving her uncle’s house, to enter the king’s palace. She overcame her fear and risked her life to speak to the king, even though it was illegal.
Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego overcame the disappointment of Jerusalem being captured and their being relocated to Babylon. But they lived by faith, telling the king they would not bow down to his idol. Paul overcame his disappointments and lived by faith, and so he was useful in the Lord’s service. He showed the world that knowing Jesus Christ was more important to him than anything else. He was faithful unto death.
The point is, how we handle loss and disappointment shows the world who and where our treasure is. The world is not impressed when Christians get rich and say thanks to God. They are impressed when God is so satisfying that we can give our riches away for Christ’s sake and count it gain. We must not fear living life and perhaps taking risks for the Lord, for fear of disappointment. One of the biggest fears a pastor has is that he will be unable to persuade you to live for Jesus and not to waste your life.
Jesus calls us to live now. That’s why I used to get cross with the amount of time I spent watching TV, or messing around on Facebook. At the end of time, I didn't want to say to the Lord, ‘look Lord, how I spent the time you gave me. 30,000 hours of watching TV.’
Doesn't it seem a waste of life to spend hours looking at flickering images that we cannot remember the next day?
Doesn’t it seem to you that Jesus is calling us to a higher life?
In life we will have disappointments. And God wants us to overcome them. Romans 5 shows us the way:
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Disappointments are simply unrealised hopes. That’s all they are. Disappointments produce endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And we are to hope in the glory of God. Not that our children might become brain surgeons, nor that we might become CEOs, but in the glory of God. That God might be the most important thing in our lives.
In the resurrection of Jesus we see God conquering disappointment. Whatever disappointments we feel now, or will feel this week, lets not lose sight of the fact that Jesus comes to his disciples and says ‘do you love me, more than all these other things? Then come, I have work for you to do.’ Don’t let fear of failure stop us from living for the Lord. Don’t let it stop you from writing the book you always wanted to write. Don’t let it stop you from having the child you always wanted. Don’t let disappointments stop you from living. Disappointments are part of life itself. We're not living if we're not having disappointments!
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Hey, in a busy world where you have many things to do, thanks for taking the time to read this blog. I really appreciate it.
May the Lord make His face shine upon you today.
May He lift you up.
May He give you JOY!
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