63 Sermon Illustrations on Disappointment

Faith in the promises of God.

1. Disappointed Faith.

a. The healing that never comes. (Excellent examples given throughout.)

b. The equal yoke that breaks.

2. Hard Questions and Easy Answers.

a. The promises don't fail; people do.

b. The promises are "spiritual", not literal.

'Those who have spiritual eyes don't spiritualize and thereby tell

spiritual lies.'

c. The "promises" are general statements of fact or they are addressed to

others; they are not personal guarantees to us.

3. Faith in Formulas.

True faith is trusting God no matter what happens.

Miracles may be rare, but they can happen. Pat Robertson's attitude on miracles:

"It is better to ask confidently for supernatural help, even

expect it - and sometimes be disappointed - than not to risk

asking at all.

"God, of course, can do what He wants, regardless of the faith or

expectations of any human being. But it's part of His scheme of

things in the universe to involve men and women in His work -

including miraculous work."

Are our expectations divinely appointed? Scripture presents a viewpoint we naturally resist: reality.

1. Many Christians experience dashed expectations.

a. We continue to struggle in the faith.

b. Non-Christians don't respond to the gospel.

c. Prayer is not answered.

2. Why doesn't God answer my prayers?

a. In Bible, struggle is usually portrayed as a normal part of life.

b. Many unseen variables, apart from us, determine how people respond

to the gospel.

c. What we view as problems are often the vehicles God uses to teach us

lessons we otherwise might never learn.

3. The fruit of faulty foundations.

a. Inventions of an evangelical subculture.

4. The blessing of Biblical expectations.

a. Reshaping expectations by Biblical criteria.

5. How to identify and re-adjust expectations:

a. Pray.

b. Objectively analyze and condense expectation into one sentence.

c. Assess the fruit of your expectation.

d. Study your Bible.

e. Restate the expectation.

f. Pray to internalize God's expectation.

6. Is God enough?

Real question: On what or whom will I base and focus my expectations and hopes?

When Jesus prayed to the one who could save him from death, he did not get that salvation; he got instead the salvation of the world.

---------------------------------

When prayer seems more like struggle than relationship, when I find myself repeating the same requests over and over and even wonder, "Is anyone really listening?," I take no small comfort in remembering that Jesus, too, had unanswered prayers. Three come to mind.

As Luke records, Jesus spent an entire night in prayer before choosing the inner core of twelve disciples. Yet if you read the Gospels, you marvel that this dodgy dozen could be the answer to any prayer. They included, Luke pointedly notes, "Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor," not to mention the pettily ambitious Sons of Thunder and the hothead Simon, whom Jesus would once address as "Satan."

"O unbelieving generation," Jesus would sigh about these twelve, "how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you?" I wonder if, in that moment of exasperation, Jesus questioned the Father's guidance.

Technically, I admit, the particular makeup of the twelve does not qualify as an unanswered prayer, for we have no reason to believe that any other choices might have served Jesus better. Yet I find it comforting that while on earth Jesus faced the same limitations as does anyone in leadership. The Son of God himself could only work with the talent pool available.

Eventually, except for Judas, the twelve underwent a slow but steady transformation, providing a kind of long-term answer. John, a Son of Thunder, softened into "the apostle of Love." Peter, who earned Jesus' rebuke by recoiling from the idea of Messiah's suffering, later urged his followers to "follow in his steps" by suffering as Christ did.

The second "unanswered prayer" occurred in the Garden of Gethsemane when, as Luther put it, "God struggled with God." While Jesus lay prostrate on the ground, sweat falling from him like drops of blood, his prayers took on an uncharacteristic tone of pleading. He "offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death," the Letter to the Hebrews says, but of course Jesus knew he would not be saved from death. As that awareness grew, Jesus felt distress. He had no community of support -- they had all fallen asleep. "Could you not keep watch for one hour?" he chided.

A dramatic change takes place, however, between that scene in the garden and what follows. The Gospel accounts of Gethsemane show a person in anguish. Afterward they show one who, more than Pilate, more than Herod, acts in utter control. At his trials Jesus is no victim; he is serene, the master of his destiny.

What happened in the garden? What made the difference? We have few details about the content of Jesus' prayers, since potential witnesses were all dozing. He may have reviewed his entire ministry on earth. The weight of all that went undone may have borne down upon him: his disciples were unstable, irresponsible; the movement seemed in peril; God's chosen people had rejected him; the world still harbored evil and much suffering.

Jesus himself seemed at the very edge of human endurance. He no more relished the idea of pain and death than you or I do. "Everything is possible for you," Jesus pleaded to the Father. "Take this cup from me."

Somehow, though, in Gethsemane Jesus worked through that crisis by transferring the burden to the Father. It was God's will he had come to do, after all, and his plea resolved into these words: "Yet not what I will, but what you will." Not many hours later he could cry out, in profound summation, "It is finished."

Hebrews mysteriously concludes that, though Jesus was not saved from death, nevertheless "he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered."

How many times have I prayed for one thing only to receive another? I long for the sense of detachment, of trust, that I see in Gethsemane. God and God alone is qualified to answer my prayers, even if it means transmuting them from my own self-protective will into God's perfect will. When Jesus prayed to the one who could save him from death, he did not get that salvation; he got instead the salvation of the world.

The third unanswered prayer appears in an intimate scene recorded by John, Jesus' last supper with his disciples. Jesus expands the scope of his prayer far beyond the walls of the Upper Room, to encompass even those of us who live today:

My prayer is not for them [the disciples] alone. I pray also for

those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them

may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they

also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I

have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as

we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete

unity to let the world know that you sent me.

Disunity virtually defines the history of the church. Pick at random any year of history -- pick today -- and you will see how far short we fall of Jesus' final request. The church, and the watching world, still await an answer.

________

Copyright(c) 1998 by the author or Christianity Today, Inc./Christianity Today magazine.

===================

Condensed version.

Even God’s Son didn’t get an instant reply.

______

When prayer seems more like struggle than relationship, when I find myself repeating the same requests over and over and even wonder, “Is anyone really listening?” I take comfort in remembering that Jesus, too, had unanswered prayers. Three come to mind.

As Luke records, Jesus spent an entire night in prayer before choosing the twelve disciples. Yet if you read the Gospels, you marvel that this dodgy dozen could be the answer to any prayer. They included, Luke pointedly notes, “Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor,” not to mention the pettily ambitious Sons of Thunder and the hothead Simon, whom Jesus would once address as “Satan.”

“O unbelieving generation,” Jesus would sigh about these twelve, “how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you?” I wonder if, in that moment of exasperation, Jesus questioned the Father’s guidance.

Technically, I admit, the particular makeup of the twelve does not qualify as an unanswered prayer, for we have no reason to believe that any other choices might have served Jesus better. Yet I find it comforting that while on earth Jesus faced the same limitations as does anyone in leadership. The Son of God himself could only work with the talent pool available.

Eventually, except for Judas, the twelve underwent a slow but steady transformation, providing a kind of long-term answer. John, a Son of Thunder, softened into “the apostle of Love.” Peter, who earned Jesus’ rebuke by recoiling from the idea of Messiah’s suffering, later urged his followers to “follow in his steps” by suffering as Christ did.

A CUP NOT REMOVED

The second “unanswered prayer” occurred in the Garden of Gethsemane when, as Luther put it, “God struggled with God.” While Jesus lay prostrate on the ground, sweat falling from him like drops of blood, his prayers took on an uncharacteristic tone of pleading. He “offered up prayer and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death,” the letter to the Hebrews says, but of course Jesus knew he would not be saved from death.

As that awareness grew, Jesus felt distress. He had no community of support — they had all fallen asleep. “Could you not keep watch for one hour?” he chided.

A dramatic change takes place, however, between that scene in the garden and what follows. The Gospel accounts of Gethsemane show a person in anguish. Afterward they show one who, more than Pilate, more than Herod, acts in utter control. At his trials Jesus is no victim; he is serene, the master of his destiny.

What happened in the garden? What made the difference? We have few details about the content of Jesus’ prayers, since potential witnesses were all dozing. He may have reviewed his entire ministry on earth. The weight of all that went undone may have borne down upon him: his disciples were unstable, irresponsible; the movement seemed in peril; God’s chosen people had rejected him; the world still harbored evil and much suffering.

Jesus himself seemed at the very edge of human endurance. He no more relished the idea of pain and death than you or I do.

“Everything is possible for you,” Jesus pleaded to the Father. “Take this cup from me.”

Somehow, though, in Gethsemane Jesus worked through that crisis by transferring the burden to the Father. It was God’s will he had come to do, after all, and his plea resolved into these words: “Yet not what I will, but what you will.” Not many hours later he could cry out, in profound summation, “It is finished.”

Hebrews mysteriously concludes that, though Jesus was not saved from death, nevertheless “he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered.”

How many times have I prayed for one thing only to receive another? I long for the sense of trust that I see in Gethsemane. God and God alone is qualified to answer my prayers, even if it means transmuting them from my own self-protective will into God’s perfect will. When Jesus prayed to the one who could save him from death, he did not get that salvation; he got instead the salvation of the world.

A UNITY STILL SOUGHT

The third unanswered prayer appears in an intimate scene recorded by John, Jesus’ last supper with his disciples. Jesus expands the scope of his prayer far beyond the walls of the Upper Room, to encompass even those of us who live today:

“My prayer is not for them [the disciples] alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me.”

Disunity virtually defines the history of the church. Pick at random any year of history — pick today — and you will see how far short we fall of Jesus’ final request.

The church, and the watching world, still await an answer.

________

Condensed from CHRISTIANITY TODAY (February 9, 1998), Copyright © 1998 Philip Yancey.

"Disappointment to a noble soul is what cold water is to

burning metal; it strengthens, tempers, intensifies, but never

destroys it."

- Eliza Tabor

- _Instant Quotation Dictionary_, p. 97.

Though James Long never knew him, his mother's twin brother was his introduction to doubt, long before he embraced faith. The uncle was the subject of unanswered prayer, long before James found answers. This man was, it seemed, the object of Heaven's coldness, long before James discovered the warmth of God's love.

Carl died at 17, electrocuted in a freak accident. He lingered briefly, comatose, in the sterile world of a hospital in Topeka, Kansas. And as he lay, suspended between death and life, his brothers and sisters prayed for him. They clawed to find shreds of faith to hold onto. But he died.

Years later, James' mother would often voice her memories. She told him how she had prayed that Carl would live. And she told him how her mother had finally returned from the hospital one day with the news: Carl would not be coming home.

"But I prayed," James' mother said weakly. "I prayed that he would live."

And Grandma had startled her with the confession: "I prayed that he would NOT live." Had Carl "lived," he would have been incapable of life. Even before he died, that great jolt to his system had done its irreversible work. And Grandma could not bear to see her son live on in such death.

And so James' mother wrestled with doubt and faith, with unanswered and answered prayer, with Heaven's coldness and Heaven's warmth. Years later, James shared in the struggle. And grieved an uncle he never knew.

Christians don't generally set out to doubt God, to call the essence of their faith into question. For most of us, life's pain simply catches us off guard; the reality of hardship trips us up. Doubt overtakes us in the race of faith because earth's suffering screams in our ears, distracting us. If faith cannot reasonably address hurt, what good is it?

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[previous illustration at this location was a duplicate of HolwickID #5166]

Let's say you have a friend who's a classical music fan - and he really likes the music of this composer named Beethoven. Now, you don't know much about this Beethoven guy, but you accept your friend's invitation to go to a concert where Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is going to be presented. The performers are the local junior high band. Now your friend has told you repeatedly that Beethoven was a genius and his music spectacular. But, after hearing the squeaking and squawking of 13-year-olds giving that symphony a go, you walk out saying, "Man, forget this Beethoven guy and his music!"

Well, I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Composer and the Performers."

Of course the problem with that concert was not Beethoven - it was how that band performed what he wrote. Jesus has that same problem with those who try to "perform His music" - that is, try to live what He taught. Now, the Composer is still a genius - but don't judge Him by those who play His music imperfectly.

It may be that you've been burned by religion ... hurt or disillusioned by religious people. Or even by religious leaders. From a fallen tele-evangelist to an adulterous pastor to an abusing priest, most of us have known or known of some "spiritual leader" who has fallen. For believers, it is like a kick in the stomach. For those who already are skeptical about Christianity, it is just another reason not to believe.

But in spite of these flawed performances, Jesus is still the genius who has brought peace and meaning to millions of lives over the years. Not Christianity. Not the Christian religion. Jesus. The great tragedy of seeing the failures of those who play Jesus' "music" imperfectly is that you can miss Jesus. And He's too good to miss. And the cost of missing Him is much too expensive to pay.

Our word for today from the Word of God - 1 Corinthians 2:2 - bottom lines the central issue on which yours and my eternity depends. Jesus' great ambassador, Paul, says, "I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified." That's it - nothing except Jesus and His cross. The cross where the Son of God died to bear the death penalty for every wrong thing you've ever done. It's all about Jesus and what He did for you because He loves you so much.

Everywhere Jesus went, He extended a two-word invitation - "Follow Me." (Mark 1:16) He didn't say, "Follow My religion" or "My leaders" or "My followers." Christians aren't the issue. It's all about Jesus. Now - and on Judgment Day. Because all God is going to want to know is, "What did you do with My Son?" Christianity, the religion, has sometimes wounded people and let people down. But Jesus never has. And He is the issue. For now - and forever.

If you've never experienced the love and the peace of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, the hole in your heart could be filled by Him this very day. If you'll give yourself to this Man who gave Himself for you. Just tell Him - "Jesus, I'm Yours. I'm putting all my trust in You, and You alone, to forgive my sins, to get me to heaven, and to take down the wall between me and God."

In a world where trust has been broken so many times, Jesus is the one safe place for your searching heart. He died for you. He will never do you wrong.

________________

Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. 'Practical Answers to Real Life Issues'

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Many people were shocked when, at a banquet in Orlando, Florida, where he was given an award by the American Humanist Association for his work on behalf of the environment and world peace, cable television mogul Ted Turner criticized fundamentalist Christianity and said Jesus probably would be sick at his stomach over the way his ideas have been twisted.

According to an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Turner said he had a strict Christian upbringing and at one time considered becoming a missionary. "I was saved seven or eight times," the newspaper quoted him as saying. But he said he became disenchanted with Christianity after his sister died, despite his prayers. Turner said the more he strayed from his faith, the better he felt.

________

Spokesman-Review, May 1, 1990

The other day in the airport, I saw a mother and her daughter hustling to make a plane. But the little girl's face was covered with a mask that was basically a screen - she could see through it, but it was protecting her face. In just a glance, I could see that her face had been badly burned. She had long sleeves and long pants on ... my guess is that she probably had burns on other parts of her body, too. I really felt for her - and for her mother. She appeared to be a burn victim, doing all she could to heal and recover.

Well, I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A WORD WITH YOU today about "When You've Been Burned."

It's tragic to be a burn victim - even if you've been spiritually burned. Maybe especially if you've been spiritually burned. Physical burns affect your outside, and they can often be treated medically. When you've been burned spiritually, the scars are inside where they're hard to get at. Someone's reading today who is just such a burn victim.

It can happen many ways. Often you get hurt by some people who claim to be Christians ... or you have a bad experience with a church or a ministry. And whether the causes are real, perceived, or a combination of both, there are way too many people who have withdrawn to the spiritual sidelines because they feel burned. Maybe you've been hurt or disillusioned ... and maybe you've withdrawn and isolated yourself from Christian things ... or you've become reluctant to make any spiritual commitments ... or you've just tried to protect yourself by hardening your heart ... or maybe you're using the hypocrisy of others as an excuse to do wrong things. You're one of Christianity's burn victims.

We probably don't need to talk anymore about your hurt - we need to talk about your healing. Which God talks about in our word for today from the Word of God. I'm hoping that these wonderful promises from Isaiah 61, beginning with verse 1, will help you make today a turning point day - a day when you begin to move from burn victim to burn victor.

In a passage describing the Messiah's mission, the Lord says, "He has sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted ... to comfort all who mourn and provide for those who grieve in Zion - to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of despair." I so want those words to be about you ... and God so wants to do those things for you - if you'll let Him.

God's program of burn therapy and plastic surgery on your soul will include several action steps on your part. They're challenging, but they're the road to healing. It starts when you focus on Christ and not on Christians. Jesus didn't burn you - and the heart of being a Christian is Jesus' simple command - "Follow Me." Next, you need to open up to healing. You've nursed and rehearsed your wounds long enough - now it's time to get well. You also need to recognize your own imperfection. We've all been hurt - but we've all been hurters, too. You and I stand as guilty of hurting people as the people who hurt us.

That makes the next step slightly easier - release the bitterness. The grudges inside are an emotional cancer that poison so much of your life. Ask God to heal you of the bitterness that costs you so much of His grace. (Hebrews 12:15) Then, forgive the hurters - as Colossians 3:13 says, "Forgive as the Lord forgave you." And then I hope you can rejoin the family of God where you belong and become part of the answer. You know what's hurting people in the Church - use that knowledge and experience to help model how it's supposed to be.

Hard steps ... important steps ... steps to healing. Jesus heals burn victims - and replaces their mourning with gladness, their ashes with beauty, their despair with praise. Let Him work that healing miracle in you.

________________

Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

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It's a beautiful area of the Southwestern United States - except for this one horrendous eyesore. It's a graveyard - for cars. Acre after acre, you've seen them, is covered with cars that have been discarded, wrecked, crushed, stacked several cars deep - blah. And every time I pass there and see all these trashed and mashed cars, I can't help thinking to myself, “Just think - one day that car was somebody's dream come true.” Someone probably wished for that car, got that car, showed everybody this car they were so proud of. Look at it now!

Well, I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about “Dreams on the Scrapheap.”

When I look at that auto junkyard, I see what was once somebody's dream now just another piece of junk on the scrap heap. Some of us have lives that are like that junkyard - a pile of what was once our dreams, now laying on the scrap heap. Dreams that either didn't happen or didn't turn out to be what we thought they would. A lot of disappointment, discouragement, disillusionment - and as a result, a search now for a dream that won't let us down, or even turn to a nightmare.

It's strange, in a way that often it's at the end of our dreams that we find the reason we're living. Until then, we're pouring everything we've got into what we think will give us the love and meaning and fulfillment we're looking for. But sooner or later, our path of dreams lets us down; leaves us empty. That's when we might finally be ready to consider what God thinks will make our life make sense. Since He's the One who made you, He's the One who knows why you're here. It was the dream He dreamed for you even before there was a you! It's the destiny you were made for, lived out one meaningful day at a time.

God talks about His plans for you in Jeremiah 29:11, our word for today from the Word of God. “'I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Those are the plans you were created for. Unfortunately, we've spent most of our life on our own dreams - a lot of which are now on the scrap heap. But now may be that time when you finally embrace what you were made for - by embracing the One who made you - the One of whom the Bible says, “All things were created by Him and for Him.” (Colossians 1:16) And that includes you.

But we've been building our life without the Architect - and things keep collapsing on us, disappointing us. We have, in the Bible's words, “gone astray” and turned to our “own way.” (Isaiah 53:6) We've all gotten way off course - and it took the greatest act of love in cosmic history to get us back - the death of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, for our rebellion and our sin; our takeover of the life God made.

But the moment you reach out to Jesus and tell Him you're His from now on, you start to belong to your Creator - to experience His forgiving for every wrong thing you've ever done. You start living God's great dream for your life when you give yourself to Jesus, the One who loved you enough to die for all your sin. The wasted days, the wasted years end the moment you open your life to Jesus Christ. For you, the dream that will never disappoint could begin this very day.

________________

Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #4801]

Deficient love is always central to our problems. When someone appreciates his parents only because he overlooks the pain they caused him, his appreciation is not only superficial, it is really self-protective. Love is never blind to other’s faults. It sees them clearly, but is not threatened. It admits disappointment, but forgives and continues to be warmly involved. Is there a tender concern for the one who treats you wrongly? That is the measure of love. Resentment toward parents (or spouses, children, friends) grows out of a demanding dependency that they satisfy us well.

Depressed people have been disappointed by others and feel a terrible internal vacuum. Their response is to cling desperately to a particular goal or special person they believe will keep them intact. When they don’t reach the goal or the special person lets them down, depression sets in. They have been sinned against and they sin.

We have all been sinned against. We all sin. You have failed to love me as you should and I have failed to love you. Your failure to love me is painful, sometimes profoundly disappointing. But the Lord’s love for me is perfect. Although His love does not remove the sting of your failure, it gives me all I need to stand as a whole person, capable of loving you regardless of the threat of your further failure.

And that is my responsibility, to love you. My love for you (not yours for me) determines in large measure my experience of joy and my sense of intactness. I can love because I am loved perfectly and fully by God. And my love for you matters. It can draw you to Christ, it gives my life power and value in His plan, it brings glory to God. And as I falteringly learn to love you without self-protection, I edge toward the longed-for reality of abundant living.

The struggle to live in disappointing relationships will continue until Heaven. But the good news of the gospel is that there’s a solution to the real problem. The sin of self-protection can be dealt with now.

The purpose of an inside look at our soul (to really look at the pain and disappointment) is to promote that kind of spiritual depth. The more deeply we sense our thirst, the more passionately we’ll pursue water. And the more clearly we recognize how we dig our own wells in search of water, the more fully we can repent of our self-sufficiency and turn to God in obedient trust. As we learn to live in confidence that the deepest concerns of our soul are in good hands, both the shame we feel because of our unworthiness and the terror we have of one day facing exposure and rejection will lose their power to control us. Change from the inside out involves a gradual shift away from self-protective relating to strongly loving involvement. And in order to make that change, we must feel our disappointment as a longing person and face the sin in our heart that results in a commitment to self-protection.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #16639]

I will make an everlasting covenant with you, My faithful love promised to David. — Isaiah 55:3

In David Wilcox’s “Eye of the Hurricane,” he sings about a young woman who has given up on finding what she really wants in life.

“Hope is gone,” she confessed;

“When you lay your dream to rest,

You can get what’s second best;

But it’s hard to get enough.”

That’s the trouble with everything in life that’s second best — it tastes good at first but quickly becomes bitter; it’s initially exciting but eventually boring; it’s never fulfilling and always addictive; it’s a nightmare that begins when we surrender our best dreams, and it has haunted the human heart since the dawn of time.

The prophet Isaiah recorded this invitation from God: “Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to Me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare” (Isaiah 55:2-3).

Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me will never go hungry, and he who believes in Me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35).

Jesus Christ offers life that satisfies. Turning away from sin and giving ourselves to Christ is choosing God’s best. We can do it today, no matter how badly we’ve damaged our yesterdays.

“Second best” is not some kind of lifelong curse that accompanies a bad decision about sex, vocation, or a special call from God. Those are important choices with powerful consequences, but they should not condemn us to perpetual discouragement. Today, tomorrow, and every day to come, it’s possible to embrace God’s best and walk with Him along the pathway of joy.

“Now choose life … that you may love the Lord your God, listen to His voice, and hold fast to Him. For the Lord is your life” (Deuteronomy 30:19-20).

Today can be a new beginning for you. And that’s the best! — DM

REFLECTION

• Which of my past choices leave me feeling that I’ve settled for second best?

• How could choosing to follow Jesus today begin to change my life?

SUGGESTION

As you read the Bible this month, why not begin by praying, Lord, show me Your best for my life, and help me obey Your commands.

In spirituality, second best is worst.

Mike Singletary was a linebacker with the Chicago Bears who has been inducted into the Hall of Fame. He didn’t start out famous. Mike was the youngest of ten children growing up in Houston, Texas. When he was about 12 years old his father, who was a preacher, left his mom for another woman and moved across town, leaving Mike’s mom to work 16 hours a day at two jobs just to provide for Mike and his nine older brothers and sisters.

After his father left, Mike really bonded to his older brother, Grady, who took on a kind of father role in his life. But that same year, Grady was killed by a drunk driver. Mike was only 12 years old, and he was lost, depressed and without direction. That was when his mother called him into the kitchen one day, sat him down and said to him:

Mike, look me in the eye. I want you to know something. I have

prayed for you since before you were born. And I have been

praying for you every day of your life. Mike, I see greatness in

you. You are a child of God and there is greatness in you. I

don’t know where it will lead but it’s there and you will need to

discover it. Now I need you to step up, Son, and take on some

responsibility around this house. I need you. Will you do that?

Mike said that day, after that talk, he went to his room. And for the first time, God exploded a vision for his life. He wrote down goals: To make the varsity football team in high school. Get a scholarship to college. Be an All American, get drafted, play professional football and earn enough money to buy his mom a house.

He achieved all those goals. And in retrospect he would says, “My life began that day!”

________

Jay Mitchell, Menlo Park Presbyterian Church. (DeaconSil.com)

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #6221]

I was there the day my son's dream died. Since he'd been little, playing big-time football had been his dream. If, as they say, biology is destiny - and him being my son - he was not destined to have a football player's size. But he really worked at it, spent hours in the gym, he bulked up, he practiced with focus and intensity. And honestly, he was good at football. Until the day when he went down in a driving drill with a badly injured knee. He had torn his anterior cruciate ligament - an injury dreaded by anyone in sports. One of the top sports med doctors in our area examined our son's knee, and then he said those words that sounded like a death sentence to our boy: “You'll never play football again.”

Well, I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “The Beautiful Truth about Life's Ugliest Words.”

Our son's dream died that day. But God's dream for him was born. He later said, “It was really my god that died that day” - the athletic death sentence from the doctor ultimately helped our son realize that football had become his god and he surrendered his life totally to Christ. He replaced football with learning the guitar and writing songs. Those talents helped him form a unique Native American band to reach reservation young people, and his life was set on the track he was made for - to reach Native young people for Christ.

For our son, “You'll never play football” were some of the ugliest words he'd ever heard. Hey, there are a lot of ugly words in life - cancer, divorce, fired, unemployed, broke, rejected, guilty, bankrupt, incurable - and many more words that sound like a death sentence at the time. But there is an amazing truth that more than balances the other side of the scale and it's displayed in our word for today from the Word of God. In a nutshell, here's the hope-giving truth about life's ugly words - the ugly word is not the final word!

In Luke 7, beginning with verse 2, we meet a Roman centurion whose highly valued servant is “sick and about to die.” The centurion sends messengers to Jesus, desperately pleading for His help. Part of his message went like this: “Say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, 'Go,' and he goes; and that one, 'Come,' and he comes. I say to my servant, 'Do this,' and he does it.” The Bible goes on to say, “When Jesus heard this, He was amazed at him and ... He said, 'I have not found such great faith even in Israel.'“ Jesus said this man had amazing faith. He often upbraided His disciples for their “little faith,” but what was it about this soldier's faith that amazed Jesus and, by the way, brought about the miraculous healing of the servant he loved?

Well, amazing faith is all about authority and what authority will decide the outcome in your situation. Amazing faith believes that Jesus will decide the outcome and nothing else! The disease won't decide it, the boss won't decide it, the economy won't decide it, your enemies won't decide it, the odds won't decide it, the devil won't decide it - Jesus will decide it! If He says “Go to it,” it's got to go! If He says, “Come,” it's got to come! If He says, “Do this,” it has to do it! Jesus, say the word!

Great faith can trigger miraculous outcomes, even when you're living one of life's ugliest words. And great faith - the kind that amazes Jesus - is faith that lives as if Jesus is going to decide this! Because, for a child of God, life's ugly words do not have the final word. Jesus does!

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Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate in KeruxID 25837-26027]

Every once in a while as you're cruising down the highway, you'll see one of those trucks - the ones that are carrying a truckload of smashed cars. We're talking, you know like, steel pancakes here. Sometimes you'll drive by the scrap yard where these junkers end up - and there you'll see row after row with stacks of these flattened old vehicles. “Junk,” you say. Today it is, but there was a day when that hunk of steel was someone's dream come true. It was the new wheels they'd hoped for, saved for - a prize they wouldn't let anyone touch. Now flattened.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “Yesterday's Dreams.”

The last time I passed one of those automobile scrap yards, I got to thinking - in a way, a lot of our life's dreams end up that way. At one time the dream was new and shiny, something we thought would make us happy for a long time. But so many dreams end up letting us down - flattened. Excitement turns to tedium. Having what I wanted turns to restlessness and dissatisfaction. A great gain suddenly becomes a great loss. Yesterday's discovery becomes today's disappointment.

We thought those friends would do it for us. They didn't. A girlfriend, a boyfriend, a husband, a wife, children - good, but not enough. Or sometimes a dream turned into a nightmare. Yesterday's dream job, or home, or degree, or milestone, or money - it's amazing how many of those seem so flat before long. I guess there are at least three ways that yesterday's dream turn into today's disappointment. Your dream gets flattened because you never get it, or because you get it and you lose it, or because you get it and find out that it wasn't the answer you thought it would be.

This cycle of disappointing or disappointed dreams breeds sort of an “un-peace” in our heart - this restlessness to find what is the dream that will finally fulfill us. Our Creator steps into this satisfaction void with a word that might put us on the right track. It's recorded in the Bible in Isaiah 55, beginning with verse 1, our word for today from the Word of God. He says, “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Why spend money (or your life for that matter) on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen to Me and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.” That's it - the end of our lifelong search for meaning, and for peace, for what goes in that hole in our heart.

Jesus Christ has made this amazing promise: “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me will never go hungry, and he who believes in Me will never thirst” (John 6:35). Jesus says He can finally satisfy your lifelong heart-hunger. Here's why: what we're missing in our soul is the God who made us. We're missing Him because we've kept Him on the margins of our life, running things our way, not His way. Which has put an eternal wall between us and Him. But because He loves you so much, He sent His Son Jesus to pay the death penalty for our “me first” lives - and to conquer death by coming back from His grave. You've given yourself to other pursuits that weren't the dream after all. When you do that with Jesus, the wall between you and God comes down forever - and a love relationship with your Creator finally completes you.

In a world of flattened hopes and dreams, the purpose, the relationship you were made for they're right now right in front of you because Jesus is moving in your heart to move you to Him. Your part is to give yourself completely to this one who gave Himself totally on the cross for you. With a faith commitment like that, He will come into your life and do what only He can do.

Without even knowing it, this is what you've been looking for all these years. His name is Jesus. Please, grab Him while He's close.

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Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

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It is tempting to look at the ancients of Israel, particularly as they wandered and grumbled in a desert for forty years, and wonder at their behavior. After being participants in the mouth-dropping events at the Red Sea, how could they doubt God's presence among them, his power, his concern, his plan for their lives? Did they really believe they could be as touched by a golden ornament, molded at their own hands, as they were with the living God? It is tempting to keep their behavior at a healthy distance, as if in its ancient context, it were wholly un-relatable to my own. But imagining that Israel's actions are completely in contrast with mine, I repeatedly discover, is a stretch by any imagination. The behavior of the Israelites is yet among us, at times frustratingly close to home.

Though the events of Egypt could have been held at a distance by the psalmist, the writer stood poised to remember the events of Israel's past so as to see his present situation clearly. The psalmist often speaks bluntly of Israel's experience in the desert as if forging it in his memory: “Then they despised the pleasant land; they did not believe his promise” (106:24).

What does it take to come to despise what once seemed promising? What would it take for you to refuse to believe the one thing you want to believe most? I don't believe their reaction to the desert is so far removed from our own reactions when hopes are dashed in trying places. The Israelites were not unusually slow in understanding; they were perhaps no more stubborn than you or me. They were entirely disappointed; all they longed for seemed altogether unreachable. They could not believe that the wilderness was the way to Canaan. They could not see how their current trouble was consistent with love, or could work for good in the end. Who among us cannot at some point relate?

Whether people of faith or not, we long for someone or some thing or some place that can make right what is so obviously wrong in this world. And yet, carrying ideas of what that someone or something will look like, and not finding it, we end up doubting the promising thought we once held on to. When the route we see in front of us seems irreconcilable with the place we thought we were going, we come to despise what once seemed hopeful, holding in its place shattered expectations, fear, and anger.

When Jesus healed a man who called himself Legion because he was possessed with so many demons, the townspeople had a peculiar response. Mark describes the scene and its aftermath as a crowd began to gather. “When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid” (5:15).

This man was someone they were familiar with?he crowd recognized him. He was the one they saw dodging in and out of nearby caves, living as a total recluse, cast out of society, an outcast even of his own mind. Yet, seeing the one they were used to avoiding suddenly dressed and in his right mind evoked within them, not delight or amazement, but fear. No one suspected that this was a shadow of all they longed for. Seeing Jesus, the instrument of healing, the one who set right what was wrong, they were afraid. And they begged him to leave.

As the Israelites beheld the desert and the townspeople beheld Legion, both missed what God was doing because they were troubled by the unexpected. Do we not still oscillate between being too uncomfortable to trust and being too comfortable to believe? How do we guard against missing our deepest hope, though we fear the unexpected? How do we not come to despise what once seemed promising, though we stand broken in the wilderness?

Like the psalmist we stand poised to remember, seeing God in history, seeing ourselves, seeing today. Though I am tempted to keep the behavior of those who have gone before me at a distance, I am comforted by the proximity of God throughout their story, continually drawing them unto Himself. Though they grumbled and failed and begged him to leave, He continued to lead them, in mercy breaking each idol they put before Him, prying from their hands the things that blocked their view of the promise He would not forget.

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Copyright © 2004 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

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In his classic, “Old Man and the Sea,” Ernest Hemingway tells about a weary old fisherman who, like most of his village, has had hard times most of his life. He's barely eking out a living, and he goes out one day and decides to travel farther than usual to fish. And to his amazement, he hooks the largest fish he's ever seen in his life - so big he can't possibly bring it into his boat. So he begins to tow his prize fish behind his boat, excited about what this catch could mean and how it may be the beginning of a wonderful turn of his fortunes. It's the dream catch of his life! But as he comes into the harbor and up to the dock, his joy turns back to an even greater despair than before. All the while he's been towing his prize; the other creatures of the sea have been feeding on it. And all that's left of his dream is bones.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “The Trouble With Life's Great Catches.”

Maybe one reason that story has enduring interest is that it's a mirror of many of our lives. We pursue what we think will give us what we've needed. We catch it, but our great catches, all too often, turn out to be just carcasses in the end. They gave us hope for a while and then they let us down.

So we go back out, fishing for something else that will be our answer. And ultimately, our next catch disappoints us, too. The trail behind us from our days even as a teenager is littered with the pieces of things that were supposed to make us happy but ultimately didn't. I couldn't help but notice a comment made by Johnny Carson's biographer after Johnny's death. This man who was being lauded as the best in his field, this man who made so many of us laugh so many times... here's what his biographer said: “I can't say that Johnny was ever a truly happy man. I don't think he would ever say he was a happy man.” He's not alone.

In a few sledgehammer words, Jesus Christ exposed all our futile expeditions to find answers for our life; and the only place really worth looking for it. In Mark 8:36, our word for today from the Word of God, Jesus said, “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?” You can catch everything this world has to offer - its acclaim, its wealth, its pleasures, its success - and lose the only thing that really matters - your soul. It's your soul that's always hungry for something that you've never been able to find. And your soul is forever restless because you're away from the One you were made by; the One you were made for. In God's own words, “Your sins have separated you from your God” (Isaiah 59:2).

We've tried to fill a God-sized hole with things and people that can't begin to take His place. If we live like this, we'll live without peace and without meaning. If we die like this, we'll spend eternity without God and His love. Thank God, He didn't leave us separated from Him. He pursued us. He sent His Son, Jesus, to sacrifice His life for yours and mine - to take the rap for all our sin, that defiant self-rule of our lives.

So what gaining the whole world could never do, Jesus can do. He said, “He who comes to Me will never go hungry, and he who believes in Me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35). That could be you ... beginning today. Beginning the moment you admit your need for His forgiveness ... your readiness to turn the driver's seat over to Him ... your complete trust in Jesus and Him alone as your only hope. It is, quite simply, the end of your search.

You've been so busy, fishing for things that cannot save or cannot satisfy your soul. You've neglected your soul, but not anymore. This is the day you can find Jesus and find what your soul has been looking for so long.

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Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #27064]

A while back the devotional “Our Daily Bread” told the story about a woman who had a mentally handicapped child. She wrote: “We would have called our daughter’s handicap the greatest tragedy of our lives if it were not for the fact that through it we came to know the Lord much better. Words cannot fully express our keen disappointment when our little girl failed to experience normal mental development. Yet her condition made us understand just a bit how our dear Savior must feel when his children do not mature spiritually.... We have come through our trials bigger and better Christians and with a new and brighter testimony.”

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There is an uncomfortable line of thought within the Christian worldview, particularly for those who would choose a religion for the favorable qualities it offers. The life of a believer is not void of disappointment. We do not cease to live with discontent because we live with Christ. Though the sources of our disappointment will vary, it can play an important role in the journey of a believer. In fact, God makes good use of disappointment in the lives of those He loves.

In the Old Testament, God speaks of the disappointment in the hearts of the people of Israel as a signpost to truth. When we have wandered away from our first love, when we have settled for something less than God’s promises, disappointment can show us the way back home. God identified the dissatisfaction among the people of ancient Israel as an indicator that all things apart of his presence will always fall short of filling their hearts. The second chapter of Jeremiah is filled with the imagery of inevitable disappointment for those who seek to supplement the love of God with other pursuits.

Now why go to Egypt

to drink water from the Shihor?

And why go to Assyria

to drink water from the River?

Why do you go about so much,

changing your ways?

You will be disappointed by Egypt

as you were by Assyria.

You will also leave that place

with your hands on your head,

for the LORD has rejected those you trust;

you will not be helped by them (2:18, 36-37).

When we face disappointment we are faced with a choice. It can lead us further into our futile pursuit for fulfillment or it can be the signpost that causes us to turn around and be welcomed back into the arms of the Father. If we will allow Him, this is one way God can use disappointment in lives of believers.

But this type of disappointment is far different from what we might call holy discontent, the unsatisfied longing that reminds us we are not yet home. This can be an equally powerful signpost in the hands of God.

Saint Augustine is often quoted for his words about restlessness and dissatisfaction. On the first page of his CONFESSIONS, Augustine summarizes the story of his life in a single confession to God: “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” So often this line is quoted as distinguishing between the unbeliever and the believer. But I don’t think this is where we ought to draw the line. One cannot read Augustine’s CONFESSIONS without realizing that he saw himself as a restless soul; he saw all of us this way, and for a reason. As believers, we still struggle with sin and disappointment. We are still restless, still longing. This longing is partially satisfied now because we are partially sanctified. We have, in the Spirit, a deposit of what is to come. But it is not here yet, and at times we are filled with discontent at the thought of it. I am not yet who I will be when I stand before Christ face to face; neither I am fully at home as a pilgrim who sees only in part what I will one day see in full.

I believe the rest that Augustine is talking about is eschatological rest -- and we are not there yet. Our way there is full of longing, filled with discontent that the world is not as it will be. But how beautiful this longing is! Our disappointment is a testimony to the promise that we WILL rest in Him. It is a signpost that declares we are indeed on our way home. Until then, our restlessness is deeply devotional. Our discontent is a constant confession that we joyfully anticipate being fully restored to the way we were meant to be: in full fellowship with the Father.

In bouts of disappointment and discontent we may feel far from God. We may feel as if the love of Christ is out of our reach and that God is no longer near us. On the contrary, disappointment is a signpost of his very presence. It is a sign that bids us to turn around when we have wandered. It is a sign that boldly reminds us when we are homesick that God has indeed prepared a way home.

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Copyright © 2007 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

The following is part of an answer I sent to a young lady who wrote a long letter about her trials and bitter disappointments in serving in church music. I am using it today because there may be others who have taken a beating while trying to serve the Lord and who are struggling with defeat.

“Sharon (not real name) — our hearts go out to you. Betty and I have had a long career together in church music — 50 years. In that time we’ve been very fortunate — we’ve had only two pastors who were total disappointments — both had personal problems with personality. Pastors, too, are human, and when they got saved, God didn’t necessarily give them a totally different personality. We have to accept that and not be defeated when we discover that they may not be the super saints we thought they should be.

Since you have had problems in a number of situations, you may want to also examine your own personality and motives to see if there is something you can correct to help solve the problem. It is very important to remember that when you are an “up-front person”, you have to bend over backwards to remain humble and not give any impression that looks like pride. It’s a constant battle, and it can sneak up on you.

Jealousy can easily be a problem with any choir. For this reason, I don’t favor today’s “in thing” praise team concept (just my opinion). When you pick out a few for that purpose, psychologically you are telling the remaining choir that these people are better. That opens the door for jealousy and bitterness which you and your husband may have experienced.

The important thing to remember through all this is to keep your confidence in Christ and not in man. Man will often disappoint you, but Jesus — never. Psalm 94:18-19 (niv): “When I said, ‘my foot is slipping,’ your love, O Lord, supported me. When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought joy to my soul.” Make those verses your very own and let God help you to turn your “peeves into pearls.” Never give up!”

I want to look at the theme of God as the Grand Weaver. When I was a teenager growing up in Delhi I was really not doing very well. I was failing at everything. For those of you who have read my story in WALKING FROM EAST TO WEST, you’ll know failure was writ large on my life. My dad basically looked at me and said, “You know, you’re going to be a huge embarrassment to the family — one failure after another.” And he was right given the way I was headed. I just was looking for an escape. I wanted to get out of everything I was setting my hand to, and I lacked discipline.

During this time, India was at war with a neighboring country and the defense academy was looking for pilots to be trained. They were calling them general duties pilots — G.D. pilots. So I applied and I went to be interviewed for this. It was an overnight train journey from the city of Delhi. It was wintertime and it gets quite cold then in the northern part of the country. We were outside freezing in the cold air for about five days as we went through physical endurance tests and all kinds of other tests. There were three hundred applicants; they were going to select ten. On the last day they put their selection of names out on the board, and I was positioned number three.

I phoned my family and said, “You aren’t going to believe this. I’m going to make it. I’m number three. The only thing that’s left is the interview. The psychological testing is tomorrow, and I’ll be home.”

The next morning I began my interview with the chief commanding officer, who looked to me like Churchill sitting across the table. He asked me question after question. Then he leaned forward and said, “Son, I’m going to break your heart today.” I wondered what he was going to say. He continued, “I’m going to reject you. I’m not going to pass you in this test.” “May I ask you why, sir?” I replied. “Yes. Psychologically, you’re not wired to kill. And this job is about killing.”

You know, inside of me I felt that I was on the verge of wanting to prove him wrong right then and there. But I knew better, both for moral reasons and for his size! So I went back to my room and didn’t talk to anybody, packed my bags, got into the train, and arrived in Delhi. My parents and friends were waiting at the platform with garlands and sweets in their hands to congratulate me. No one knew. I thought to myself, “How do I even handle this? Where do I even begin?” They were celebrating, and yet for me, it was all over.

Or so I thought.

Had I been selected, I would have had to commit twenty years to the Indian armed forces. It was the very next year that my father had the opportunity to move to Canada. My brother and I moved there as the first installment, and the rest of them followed. It was there I was in business school and God redirected my paths to theological training. It was there that I met Margie; there my whole life changed. The rest is history. Had I been in the Indian Air Force, who knows what thread I’d have pulled to wreck the fabric.

THANKFULLY, OUR DISAPPOINTMENTS MATTER TO GOD, AND HE HAS A WAY OF TAKING EVEN SOME OF THE BITTEREST MOMENTS WE GO THROUGH AND MAKING THEM INTO SOMETHING OF GREAT SIGNIFICANCE IN OUR LIFE. It’s hard to understand it at the time. Not one of us wants that thread when it is being woven in. Not one of us says, “I can hardly wait to see where this is going to fit.” We all say at that moment, “This is not the pattern I want.”

After a series of miracles, Moses audaciously said to the Lord, “How will I know it is you who’s calling me here?” And the Lord, if you will, with a little grin on his face, probably said, “When you get there, you’ll find out. You will worship me on that mountain.” Moses essentially replies, “Wait a minute. I’m not asking you what I’m going to feel like when I get there because it’s too late then to say I’ve done the wrong thing. I want to know now: what is it you’re really asking me to do and why?”

COMPLEX QUESTIONS

Regarding our disappointments, there are two critical points I want to make before I get into the heart of my response. (Those of you who pick up the book, there’s a study guide at the end of it addressing this in detail. I hope this response will become meaningful for many of you as it was for me.) The first thing is this: when you speak of disappointment, it is impossible to think of it outside of the philosophical issue of suffering itself. That is, it is not just that you’re disappointed in a job interview. It is not just that you’re disappointed that you went on a journey and it turned out to be something other than what you thought it would be. It’s not just that you bought a car and found out it was a lemon.

Rather, it is the fact that life itself sometimes has the word “disappointment” writ large all across it. Despair, for some, is not a moment — it is a way of life. I remember reading the story of a well-known baseball umpire at the peak of his career. Everything was seemingly going well. Then his wife comes home and finds him in the garage, and he’s poisoned himself with carbon monoxide. He’s gone and there’s no note left.

Over the years I have discovered that pain, like despair, comes not in one package or one expression but in different measures and spares nobody. In the process it shapes us uniquely.

I have a very basic philosophical response, and I’ve written on this many other ways. It runs something like this: THE PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM IS ACTUALLY FAR MORE INTENSE THAN THE SKEPTIC ACTUALLY THINKS IT IS. The philosophical problem, or the problem of pain, is actually more complex and complicated than the philosopher actually thinks it is when he or she raises the question. Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens attempt to hit God with both fists. Their biggest problem is the problem of evil. How can God allow all of this?

In fact, Harris actually showed his true colors in an interview with THE SUN magazine in September 2006. He said, “If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion. I think more people are dying as a result of our religious myths than as a result of any other ideology.” I shudder to think, if he has a daughter, whether he’d say that after she was raped, possibly by an irreligious man.

They raise the question of evil, and I’m telling you, it is more complex than they think it is. Why? Because one must QUESTION THE QUESTIONER. If there’s such a thing as evil, you assume there’s such a thing as good. If you assume there’s such a thing as good, you assume there’s such a thing as a moral law on the basis of which to differentiate between good and evil. If you assume there’s such a thing as a moral law, you must posit a moral law giver, but that’s whom they are trying to disprove and not prove. Because if there’s not a moral law giver, there’s no moral law. If there’s no moral law, there’s no good. If there’s no good, there’s no evil. What is their question?

Now you may question the last jump: why do you actually need a moral law giver if you have a moral law? The answer is because the questioner and the issue he or she questions always involve the essential value of a person. That is, YOU CAN NEVER TALK OF MORALITY IN ABSTRACTION. Persons are IMPLICIT to the question and the object of the question. In a nutshell, positing a moral law without a moral law giver would be equivalent to raising the question of evil without a questioner. So you cannot have a moral law unless the moral law itself is intrinsically woven into personhood, which means it demands an intrinsically worthy person if the moral law itself is valued. And that person can only be God.

Second, the question is not only more complex philosophically; the question’s more complex EXPERIENTIALLY. You see, most people end in despair not from disappointment through pain but disappointment with pleasure. The loneliest moment in life is when you have just experienced what you thought would deliver the ultimate — and it has let you down. That’s the reality. Oscar Wilde once suggested, “There is no passion that we cannot feel, no pleasure that we may not gratify, and we can choose the time of our initiation and the time of our freedom.” He was the quintessential hedonist, yet he confessed that “desire at the end was a malady, madness, or both.” He said that he had become numb to feeling; he’d lost the capacity to feel pleasure. At the end of his life, he sent for a minister and admitted that only Christ was big enough to forgive his sin. This was the definitive man on sensuality. Thus, the question is far more complex philosophically and experientially.

FINDING BALANCE

So where do we find some answers? By way of introduction, let me suggest that WE MUST PUT OUR OWN DISAPPOINTMENTS IN BALANCE. I have seen so much as I travel, and I think we, particularly in the West, are spoiled. That is, we take up issue with God about a cold. Now I understand that colds can be horrible, but while people are being martyred in the Middle East for the sake of the Gospel, we need to put our problems a little more in perspective. I’m not saying not to be disturbed by such troubles; I’m just saying don’t lose your faith over them.

When I was finishing writing my book, I went to the kitchen early in the morning to make myself a cup of coffee. All of a sudden I heard some crunching. My daughter was visiting us and she brought her puppy. The previous night, in front of the kids, I presented my wife, Margie, with a necklace I bought overseas of semiprecious and precious stones and zircons. The colors were so beautiful that everyone I showed it to wished I were giving it to them. Yet there was that necklace on the floor, and the puppy was having a ball. I started crying. I said, “What do I tell this dog? YOU’VE JUST RUINED A BEAUTIFUL NECKLACE.” And of course, the puppy just looked at me. When Margie came down, she was horrified and said she would see if she could find a jeweler to fix it. I was thinking more of somebody that could take care of the dog!

But sometime later it dawned on me as I was mourning this loss that the previous night Margie had talked with one of her very close friends from childhood. They’d grown up together, and within eighteen months she had lost her father, her husband, and her son. She commented, “It has put all of life in perspective.” Yes, I mourned the loss of that necklace — it was something I really wanted to give. But one can always replace a necklace. So we ought to put our disappointments in balance.

THE FIRST STEP

How do we do this? Every journey requires deliberate steps. I believe there are three distinct steps before the pattern becomes visible and the work of God is displayed. The first step is A COMMITMENT OF THE HEART. Your commitment to God is first and foremost a thing of the heart. To “trust in the Lord with all your heart and to lean not on your own understanding and in all of your ways acknowledge him” (Proverbs 3:5-6a). Nobody understood this better than the man who wrote those words, Solomon. If you look at the book of Proverbs you’ll find the word “heart” again and again. Solomon talked about the heart because he lost his heart to many women. But he reminds us, “My son, give me your heart” (Proverbs 23:26). This is because your entire spiritual journey and the threads that God wants to pull together will be determined by who owns your heart.

Now I’m an apologist; we deal with the things of the intellect. Some of my closest friends are apologists and we work together. William Lane Craig, probably the finest Christian philosopher around today, was a classmate at graduate school. Norman Geisler was my professor and I know him well now. I remember once being at a conference with them and two other apologists. We were having lunch together when a man nearby joked, “I hope a bomb doesn’t fall in this place; apologetics is finished for a few years.” But you know what? Every one of them will tell you it gets tiresome. After some time, it gets tiresome to just give intellectual answers to people because life has to find a bridge from the mind to the heart. It was a famed archbishop of Canterbury who said that the longest journey in life is from the head to the heart. The problem with these hatetheists is that for many it has never gone into their hearts. It is all a cerebral thing.

However, the work of God is not displayed in abstract terms. It is concrete. Here is my point. At the end of your life, one of three things will happen to your heart: it will be hardened, broken, or made tender. These terms are not clichés; they are real. Nobody escapes. Your heart will become coarse and desensitized, be crushed under the weight of disappointment, or be made tender by that which makes the heart of God tender as well. God’s heart is a caring heart. As the writer of the letter to the Hebrews reminds us, He is deeply touched by our infirmities (see Hebrews 2:14-18; 4:14--5:3).

Writer Calvin Miller says in his book SPIRIT, WORD, AND STORY,

“The sermon and the Spirit always work in combination to produce

liberation. Sometimes the Spirit and sermon do supply direct answers to

human need, but most often they answer indirectly.... The sermon, no

matter how sincere, cannot solve these unsolvable problems. So if the

sermon is not a problem solver, where shall we go for the solutions?

Together with the Spirit, the sermon exists to point out that having

answers is not essential to living. What is essential is the sense of

God’s presence during dark seasons of questioning.... Our need for

specific answers is dissolved in the greater issue of the lordship of

Christ over all questions — those that have answers and those that

don’t.”

It is your heart in close communion with God that helps carry you through the pain, beyond the power of mere words. We went through a very tough time as a family over the last two years, and one of my daughters said to my wife and me, “Sometimes I wonder if God’s plan is a little bit like these GPS systems in our cars. You get off route and a voice tells you you’re on the wrong road — make a U-turn or make a left — and somehow it prompts you to get you back onto the main route. You might take the long way there but your destination is the same, and like the GPS, God calculates the way back.” I think it’s a brilliant analogy.

The children of Israel wandered around for forty years. It should have taken six weeks. God said, “Wrong route — get back here. Wrong route — get back here.” Our stiff-necked belief tells us we have it all together and so we don’t hear God’s direction. But in God’s grace He leads us back. My purpose here is simply to note the appointments God makes with each of us individually in the disappointments of our lives — both the threads that He brings in and the ones that He leaves out. That is where we will find the distinctive shape and imprint of the Grand Weaver.

I was talking to the chief of intelligence of a Middle Eastern country recently who said, “I give this part of the world no more than five years. And maybe the whole world no more than five years if nothing changes.” We have all these minds working on solutions but we don’t have any answers because our hearts are not in tune with the mercy and the grace and the love of God. We want to solve it all our way. And so problems of five thousand years old, we are settling on the battlefield. One man we met who lives on his country’s border takes his ten-year-old son to the top of the hill every day and tells his boy, “Your whole goal in life should be to kill as many of them on the other side as you can.” When he’s sixteen and has these bombs strapped on him, he doesn’t know any better because that’s all that’s been pummeled into his brain. We don’t have the brains to solve everything we see.

My question to you today is WHO OWNS YOUR HEART? TO WHOM DOES YOUR HEART BELONG? How will you know the answer to the question? It is what Solomon said: “In ALL YOUR WAYS acknowledge him.” It is the path that you choose, the decisions that you make, the way that you live. If you do not acknowledge God, then your heart belongs to something or someone other than to Him. So the first step is a commitment of the heart.

FAITH IS A MINDSET

Second, it is A DISCIPLINE OF THE MIND. When you have faith in God, it is not credulity; it is not foolishness. Neither do you emerge into some kind of a cerebral individual. In fact, I have known some highly cerebral, driven individuals who spent most of their lives defending the Christian faith and then ended up with some very deep questions of the soul. Such a life is unlivable. Yes, faith is a thing of the mind. But the mind is more than the brain. What the brain is to the body, the mind is to the soul. Faith is the way you view things. If you do not believe that God is in control and has formed you for a purpose, you will flounder on the high seas of purposelessness, drowning in the currents and drifting further into nothingness.

Let me give you a simple illustration of this. One of the things I love about the Christian faith is that we have some wonderful questions that we’ll have time to interact with and see brilliantly unfold for us in eternity. Think of the ones walking on the Emmaus road with all of these questions. They look at this stranger and ask, “Are you the only one in Israel who doesn’t know what’s happened?” when the irony was Jesus was the only one in Israel who did know what had happened! And then after explaining everything, he broke a piece of bread and their eyes were opened. Then he was gone. They wanted to ask a few more questions, but instead they had to trust what they had received from him already.

Noah’s another fascinating character. Read his story again. Genesis 6 describes every detail of the ark: how high, how wide, what kind of wood, the whole blueprint. Take your family: your wife, your children, and their spouses. So Noah gets in, locks the door, and the flood is on. Notice that everything is described except for two vital details: there is no sail and no rudder. Imagine preparing to be on water for that many days with nothing to control the direction of the ship! The very two things he needed to have some control are missing. Just when you think you’ve got everything in control, you’ll find out you don’t.

It’s like the comical story I read about a very nervous elderly flier. It was her first flight and the aircraft was bouncing its way through “moderate” turbulence, which is a euphemism for the last rites and you wonder if even the pilot is still in his seat. The woman was panicking and began to scream. After they cleared the turbulence, the pilot stepped out of the cockpit and knelt beside her. He asked her, “Madam, do you see that light on the end of the right wingtip?”

“Yes,” she stammered.

“Now look out of the other window at the left wingtip. Do you see the light on the left wingtip?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“You know what, Ma’am,” the pilot continued, “as long as we stay between those two lights you have no reason to worry.”

In other words, the lights are a guide but they a self-referencing beacon. Such self-referencing guides are supposed to make us feel better, and we think that if only we were in control everything would be fine. The sail and the rudder. We want to control it all. I know a friend who is terrified of flying because he says he cannot handle anything in which he has no control. I did not want to offend him by saying, “Welcome to life.”

God says to us, “No, I am in control.” Remember the chapter on faith in Hebrews 11? Here’s what it says at the end: “These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect” (verses 39-40). Even these great people of faith did not see the end of the story. But there was a mindset they had, and it is this: God has made it imperative in the design of life that we become willing to trust beyond ourselves. Walking by faith means to follow Someone else who knows more than we do, Someone who is also good. If you do not have the mind of faith you will be in peril repeatedly and the one who will get the blame will be God. This discipline of the mind is the necessary second step when we wrestle with our disappointments.

ULTIMATE PURPOSE

The third step is RECOGNITION OF YOUR ULTIMATE PURPOSE. You have to define what your ultimate purpose is. Pascal said in his famed Wager that you have to define life backwards and then live it forwards. He wrote, “For it is not to be doubted that the duration of this life is but a moment; that the state of death is eternal ... [and] that it is impossible to take one step with sense and judgment, unless we regulate our course by the truth of that point which ought to be our ultimate end.” Where are you going, and what is your goal and destiny? On the basis of your answer, then, you plan the route accordingly.

I was asked to speak at the United Nations for their prayer breakfast for a second time, and they gave me a tougher subject than the first one. I was to speak on “Navigating with Absolutes in a Relativistic World” — at 6:30 in the morning! I was asked to do this in twenty-five minutes and given one other requirement: don’t talk much about religion because people from all faiths will be there. I said, “I’ll do it, but on one condition. Eighteen minutes, your talk; seven minutes, why my belief in God answers these questions.” I spoke on the search for absolutes in four areas: evil, justice, love, and forgiveness.

“We all want to define what evil is,” I said. “We have people here calling other nations evil. We all want to know what evil is. You’re a society that’s supposedly looking for justice. You’ve left your families, and you miss them because you love them. And some of you are going to blow it big time with ethics; you hope the rest of your peers are willing to forgive you, and you want to know on what basis. Evil, justice, love and forgiveness.”

They’re all nodding. I said, “I want you to think for a moment. Is there any event in history where these four converged in one place? It happened on a hill called Calvary, where evil, justice, love, and forgiveness converged.”

There was pin drop silence. With five minutes left, I spoke on the cross of Christ and how the cross shows the heart of man, how the cross came because of the justice of God, how the cross demonstrates to us the very love of God, and how we find at the end of the day that without his forgiveness we would never make it. At the end one ambassador confessed, “My country’s atheistic. I don’t even know why I came here. Today I have my answer. I came here to find God.” That is the power of the cross.

The hill of Calvary is at the very center point of the Gospel. All the suffering of the world converged there in that single act of sacrifice when the One who was without sin took the penalty of sin and accepted the ultimate in suffering — separation from his Father — so that we might be brought to Him. It was the lowest point of the incarnate Christ; he was separated from the Father while still in the center of the Father’s will. There the threads converged in a pattern that seemed so disparate from the world’s point of view, yet they were the crimson threads of our restoration to God. This was Jesus’ ULTIMATE PURPOSE: “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

THROUGH THE EYES OF JESUS

There’s an incredible story told from Scotland. My wife and I were visiting there with our colleague Stuart McAllister. Stuart is from Scotland and I often joke with him about needing an interpreter when he speaks English because he has a rich Scottish accent. I asked Stuart to take us to Glencoe. In 1692 the Campbell clan was sent there by the king to eradicate the MacDonalds completely. The Campbells came to Glencoe posing as friends and then slaughtered the MacDonalds in the middle of the night. The story is immortalized by a song titled “The Massacre of Glencoe.”

Oh cruel is the snow that sweeps Glencoe,

and covers the graves o’Donald.

Oh cruel was the foe that raped Glencoe,

and murdered the house of MacDonald.

They came in a blizzard, we offered them heat,

a roof o’er their heads, dry shoes for their feet.

We wined them and dined them, they ate of our meat

and they slept in the house o’ MacDonald.

They came from Fort William with murder in mind.

The Campbells had orders, King William had signed.

“Put all to the sword,” these words underlined,

and leave none alive called MacDonald.

They came in the night while our men were asleep,

this band of Argyles, through snow soft and deep.

Like murdering foxes among helpless sheep,

they slaughtered the house o’ MacDonald.

Some died in their beds at the hand of the foe.

Some fled in the night and were lost in the snow.

Some lived to accuse him who struck the first blow,

but gone was the house o’ MacDonald.

What is fascinating about this historic incident is that three hundred years later it is still remembered in Scotland as if it were yesterday. As you arrive in Glencoe, a lone bagpiper slowly paces back and forth playing the haunting melody. The story is tragic and the song always leaves me heavy-hearted. But what is more, when Stuart spoke of the massacre, his Scottish accent and the mournful sounds of that distinctively Scottish instrument amid the ruins of the setting where it all occurred almost made me feel that I HAD BEEN THERE WHEN IT HAPPENED.

It was three hundred years ago, but hear the bagpiper and the story unfolded with a Scottish voice, and the reality of the tragedy becomes even deeper for a stranger. If an accent, the location, and music can put the reality within reach even though we are separated by three centuries, how much more can we understand suffering when we see it through the eyes of the One who defines good and evil, justice and forgiveness, and who went to the cross to deal with it? Is that not the only way we can understand and cope with our own suffering? When you see the Son of God and he explains Calvary to you, you will understand it like you’ve never understood it before. You’ll hear it in his voice; you’ll see it in his body. He is the One who cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Yet again, at the very moment Jesus uttered that prayer, he was at the center of his Father’s will.

We must see our world of pain through the eyes of Jesus, who best understands it not merely as pain but as brokenness and separation. In the solitude of reflection, the heart and the mind come together to think of the cross. The hymnwriter said it well:

I sometimes think about the cross

And shut my eyes and try to see

The cruel nails and crown of thorns

And Jesus crucified for me.

But even could I see him die,

I could but see a little part

Of that great love, which, like a fire,

Is always burning in his heart.

I want you to understand that we have a Shepherd who leads us through, who takes care of us, and your disappointments do matter. How many times I’ve thanked God that I was not wired to kill. But you see, He wired me differently because he had something else in mind for me. Have there been some deep, deep valleys? You bet. But have I always sensed that He’s been with me and never doubted it.

You may have heard this commentary on Psalm 23:

“The Lord is my shepherd”: that’s RELATIONSHIP.

“I shall not want”: that’s SUPPLY.

“He makes me to lie down in green pastures”: that’s REST.

“He leads me beside still waters”: that’s REFRESHMENT.

“He restores my soul”: that’s HEALING.

“He guides me in the paths of righteousness”: that’s GUIDANCE.

“For his name’s sake”: that’s PURPOSE.

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death”: that’s TESTING.

“I will fear no evil”: that’s PROTECTION.

“For you are with me”: that’s FAITHFULNESS.

“Your rod and your staff, they comfort me”: that’s DISCIPLINE.

“You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies”: that’s HOPE.

“You anoint my head with oil”: that’s CONSECRATION.

“My cup overflows”: that’s ABUNDANCE.

“Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life”: that’s BLESSING.

“And I will dwell in the house of the Lord”: that’s SECURITY.

“Forever”: that’s ETERNITY.

Your disappointments do matter because the Shepherd of your soul will put it all together for you and has an eternity for you to revel in the marvel of what God has done. Our Father holds the threads of the design, and I’m so immensely grateful that He is the Grand Weaver.

________

Adapted from a message by Ravi Zacharias based in part upon a chapter from his book, THE GRAND WEAVER: HOW GOD SHAPES US THROUGH THE EVENTS OF OUR LIVES (ZONDERVAN: 2007).

© 2007 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. All Rights Reserved.

Why being disappointed by your church may actually be a good thing.

The other day, one of my pastoral students came to me after class. “A few of us have been talking, and we have a question for you. Are you trying to discourage us?” It is not the first time I’ve heard this question. Discouragement is not my intention. I am aiming for disillusionment. I want to shatter my students’ romanticized notion of church life and replace it with one that is more realistic.

In his book Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer warns of the damage caused by unrealistic expectations of life in the church. “Certainly, serious Christians who are put in a community for the first time will often bring with them a very definite image of what Christian communal life should be, and they will be anxious to realize it,” Bonhoeffer explains. “But God’s grace quickly frustrates all such dreams. A great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and if we are fortunate, with ourselves is bound to overwhelm us, as surely as God desires to lead us to an understanding of Christian community.”

This gift of disillusionment is not an easy one to accept. We tend to be idealists when it comes to the church. We would rather hold on to our dreams. But instead of an ideal community, what we get is the church as it really is. Not our delicate airbrushed fantasy of those who always act in love and speak kindly to one another, but a loutish, clumsy-tongued, rabble with dirty feet. God allows this, not to make us cynical, but for our own good. Disillusionment with the church and even with ourselves is a gift. Bonhoeffer cautions, “Only that community which enters into the experience of this great disillusionment with all its unpleasant and evil appearances begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it.”

The Art of Missing the Point

We are not the first to have trouble accepting this gift. According to John 13:12, at the Last Supper after Jesus had finished washing the disciples’ feet and put on his clothes, he returned to his place and asked, “Do you understand what I have done for you?” There is really only one honest answer to this question: We don’t. Not really. Oh, we get the point generally. How could we not, when Jesus answers his own question? The lesson is that Jesus sets the example. He washed the disciples’ feet, so we should wash one another’s feet. The servant is no greater than the master. It’s obvious when put that way, and it’s hard not to feel a little impatient with Peter. How could he be so dull? Who doesn’t get the point?

Yet every time I read the Gospel account of this event, I can’t help feeling like a dull student who watches as the teacher solves a complex math problem on the board, blinking in confusion but trying to look aware. It’s so obvious when the teacher does it. Simple. Elegant. Beautiful even. When the teacher is done, I say to myself: “That was so obvious!” Even I could have done that. I should have done that. But somehow, when I when I try to follow the steps by myself, something seems to break down.

What seemed so obvious in the awkward silence of the Upper Room is no longer so clear to me in the noisy tumult of regular life. It completely slips my mind as I stand on the train platform, ready to elbow the woman standing next to me so that I will win the commuters’ lottery and be the one who is standing directly in front of the train car door when it slides open.

A Misplaced Center of Gravity

“Do you understand what I have done for you?” Jesus asks. It turns out he knew the answer before he asked the question. Jesus warned Peter in advance that he would not understand what was about to take place. To our ears, Peter’s refusal to allow Jesus to wash his feet sounds like an improvement in the conversation. It seems admirable. Humble even. Only moments ago the disciples had been arguing about which of them was the greatest. But there is an edge to Jesus’ reply. Why does he rebuke Peter instead of praising him? You would think that he would have been happy to see that Peter recognized that there was someone at the table who was greater than them all. Peter was not putting on airs. He was entirely sincere. But he was also arrogant. The arrogant are always sincere. It is this sincerity which makes it so easy to be arrogant. We are convinced — unshakably convinced. And yet we are wrong.

Peter’s problem is not that he can’t see Jesus clearly. His problem is that he can’t see himself. He is too humble to let himself be washed, but too proud to do the washing. He hasn’t washed his own feet. He won’t wash the other disciples’ feet. And despite his conviction that Jesus is greater, he doesn’t even offer to wash Jesus’ feet. Peter’s objection looks like humility. It sounds like devotion. But it is really just narcissism and pride attempting to disguise itself in the rags of false humility. It may be pride in a different form, but it is still pride and just as deadly.

“The devilish strategy of pride,” Dorothy Sayers writes, “is that it attacks us not on our weak points, but on our strong. It is preeminently the sin of the noble mind.” That is the way of pride. Pride is just as willing to encourage self-depreciation as it is self-congratulation. Pride will occupy a small space just as happily as a large one. In fact, pride is more than pleased to see us content ourselves with a small space, just so long as it can convince us that we are the center of that space. Pride is willing to keep company with any of the Christian virtues, if it can persuade us that we are the cause of those virtues. “Pride,” Sayers explains, “places man instead of God at the center of gravity.”

Living with Divine Disequilibrium

Disturbing the center of gravity is exactly what Jesus has in mind. Both for Peter and for us. He is creating disequilibrium. Putting everyone off balance. He has been doing it throughout the Last Supper and he’s not finished yet: “‘Then, Lord,’ Simon Peter replied, ‘not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!’ Jesus answered, ‘A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you’” (John 13:9-10).

Peter tries so hard to say the right thing, yet somehow he keeps getting it wrong. It is hard not to feel sorry for him. Maybe that’s because we identify so easily with Peter’s experience. How many times have we rushed in, firmly convinced that we knew what Jesus was doing, only to come away mystified when we discovered that we had missed the point? We think we know what God is up to and try to help him along. Yet somewhere along the way the wheels come off our little plan. But not God’s plan. God is still acting. But from our point of view, he’s behaving strangely. Like Peter, we just can’t figure out what he’s up to.

The things God does and the things he allows to take place in the church seem wrong. God seems to answer wrong prayers all the time. Or else he seems to answer our prayers in the wrong way (Ps. 10:1; 44:24; 73:3). How many times have we found ourselves as astonished as Peter and saying along with him: “Lord, what are you thinking?” The truth is, when it comes to figuring out what God is doing in our lives, we are almost always wrong. We are wrong at least when it comes to the fine details of God’s plan. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” Jesus asks. No, Jesus. We confess that we don’t. Not really. We are just going to have to trust you and wait to see what you’re up to.

A Fellowship of the Unwashed

Still, why doesn’t Peter get the point? It is easy for us to see what Jesus is doing in his case, so what’s Peter’s problem? This is often the way: When it comes to someone else’s life or lesson, I know exactly what God is doing. I can tell them in a minute. It’s my life I’m confused about, not theirs. Peter misses the point because Jesus has layered in multiple levels of interpretation into his metaphor. Jesus had two ideas embedded in this particular lesson. The first was about being washed. The second was about washing. Those who want to have a part in Jesus must first be washed clean by Jesus. But those who have been washed are also called to wash one another.

This is not an appeal to guilt, it is a statement of permission. It is a kind of liberation. Minutes earlier these disciples had been dreaming of glory. Reclining with unwashed feet and waiting to be served by someone else, they argued with one another about which of them was the greatest. By his actions, Jesus pointed them to a different path. Not to the high road of recognition, where each of us feels we must elbow the other out of the way if we are to make our mark, but to the low road of ordinary service. Few acts were more common in Jesus’ day than to wash the dust from someone’s sandaled foot. If Jesus can stoop, we too can stoop. By serving in such an ordinary manner, Jesus elevates every common act of service.

But if we follow the metaphor, we will find that Jesus is talking about more than the bare fact that we must serve one another. Jesus’ example calls us to a particular kind of service. It is a call to bear with one another. In so doing, Jesus reveals an important fact about life in the community of believers this side of heaven. Jesus reminds us that we who are the washed are also the unwashed. We are a community that has been cleansed by Christ’s word, but we are also a fellowship with dirty feet, and he invites us to be patient with one another’s failures and put up with each other’s shortcomings. In short, Jesus is calling us to forgive.

The Church as It Really Is

Jesus’ command to wash each other’s dirty feet shatters our idealized expectation of the church. Ours is not an inspired vision of the church as it might be. It is a fantasy of the church as it never was. This notion of the church that is free of mess, stain, and sin is as unrealistic as any airbrushed image of a supermodel. It is a view which confuses sanctification with perfectionism. Sanctification is the long process by which the Holy Spirit uses our real circumstances and the collateral damage caused by living in a sin-shattered world to shape us into the image of Christ. Perfection is sanctification’s ultimate goal, but it is one which will only be fully achieved in eternity.

Perfectionism is the opposite. The perfectionist’s version of the Christian life is an unrealistic expectation which hopes to avoid the fits and starts that come with the sanctification process. Perfectionism is an attempt to escape the long obedience of sanctification and smooth out the rough edges of our Christian experience. Perfectionism minimizes the damage that sin has wreaked upon us. The result is a Disneyfied vision of church life which has more in common with the Magic Kingdom than it does with the kingdom of God.

Reality is not a curse. When it is applied under the gracious hand of God, it is a remedy. Doing community in the real church helps cure us of our idealized notions of church, of our self-righteousness, and our judgmentalism. This is a judgmentalism that we often exercise not only toward the community at large but against ourselves. By forcing us to live in real, messy community, God graciously frustrates our attempt to build elegant ministry structures which need neither his grace nor his power. This fellowship among those with unwashed feet is a constant reminder that we are not a people who live by our wits, much less by our accomplishments. We are a people who live by grace and by promise. We are the church.

________

John Koessler serves on the faculty of Moody Bible Institute.

How could this Vincent van Gogh's untold history actually have something to do with Jesus Christ? We were always taught in school that van Gogh was a crazed, drunken, painter who eventually committed suicide. But there is a beautiful story interwoven in van Gogh’s life, that we were never told about...so read on and be surprised (by the way, his name is pronounced “van Goth”, not “van Go”...yeah, they even taught us how to pronounce his name wrong in school...)

Vincent Willem van Gogh was born March 30, 1853 in the Netherlands (he was Dutch) to a Dutch Reformed Pastor by the name of Theodorus van Gogh. To understand the story of van Gogh, and his struggles, the basis must be set that he grew up in a predominately Catholic area, and that though his father was a Dutch Reformed minister (good right?), wrong, the Dutch Reformed Church was mainly a government church, controlled by many laws, with an approach to God through legalism, and not Grace. On a side note, the Dutch Reformed Church ceased to exist in the year 2004, when it merged with the Lutheran churches. Again, one must keep in mind the Catholic influence in the area, and a legalistic pastor for a father, while reading the rest of van Gogh’s history, to truly understand his struggles.

From an early age, van Gogh wanted to be a pastor, not like his father, but one that preached the true Gospel of Grace of Jesus Christ. Van Gogh truly had a burning within his soul to share the Word of the Lord. Don’t believe me? Read the letters to his brother (link below). Van Gogh was largely influenced by the preachings of the famous pastor, Charles Spurgeon.

First, van Gogh was forced to attended a Catholic school for his education...it is to be noted that van Gogh stayed true to his beliefs even after this, but it must have started a struggle within his soul, over what he was taught was true, and what he believed to be true, especially at such a young age. He was later pressured by his father to go to Theological College and become a pastor as his father, but van Gogh rejected this based on his Biblical beliefs and the conflicting teachings of Theology.

At age 20, van Gogh worked as an art dealer, quite successful, and making an above average living for the time. He fell in love with his land lady’s daughter, and proposed to her...which she promptly rejected, telling van Gogh she had a secret lover she had never told him about. Quite possibly the first notch in van Gogh’s soul that would come back to haunt him. For the time, van Gogh would have been considered a “good catch”...both historians and family alike recount that this was possibly the happiest, most successful time for van Gogh.

Although van Gogh was a successful art dealer, he soon gave that up (and his lucrative paycheck), to go and teach at a boys school for Rev. William Stokes. Van Gogh still felt his calling to be a pastor. Being able to share the gospel with the young boys, van Gogh then joined with another pastor, Rev. T. Slade Jones at another boys school. Van Gogh spent his time between the two boys schools, teaching and sharing the gospel. Once again it was said that this was the happiest time in van Gogh’s life.

Historians note that van Gogh would spend hours and hours a day, reading and rereading the Bible. Van Gogh could not get enough of the Word. Again, we are never taught this in school, but van Gogh is noted with translating the Bible into other languages of the time, so the Gospel could be read by others (most people are not aware of this).

Van Gogh approached Rev. Jones one day and requested to be able to preach. Jones agreed to let van Gogh preach before their prayer meetings, of which his teachings must have been blessed, because Jones soon let van Gogh have the pulpit and begin preaching Sunday sermons in his church. Van Gogh would go on to preach at up to four churches a day, regardless of the denomination - van Gogh was one of the first “non-denominational pastors”, but he never watered down his words, regardless of where he was preaching.

(Here is van Gogh’s very first sermon, delivered in his early 20s: http://www.vggallery.com/misc/archives/sermon.htm)

Yeah, too bad there aren’t pastors like van Gogh today - he was noted to truly care for the people and to meet their needs as a pastor. His sermons were Christ-centered, and he quote much Scripture.

Van Gogh’s passion for the people, as Christ had compassion upon the multitudes, grew to where he felt a calling to be a missionary. He twice applied for missionary school and failed. One must understand missionaries of the time - for support, you had to pass the “missionary exam” of a Theological college. Although it is never noted why van Gogh failed, it could possibly have been because he answered the questions according to the Gospels, and not according to man’s teachings.

Undeterred, and with the burning of the Gospel in his heart, van Gogh voluntarily went (with no support), as a self-proclaimed missionary to the coal mining town of Borinage, Belguim. This was stated by historians to be “the most inhospitable, improvised” location in all of Western Europe. Van Gogh preached to the miners, and saw to every need they had as he possible could. He felt so desperate their plight that he gave away his own money, food and clothes to them, and slept in straw behind a Baker’s hut, because he did find himself above them, and as Christ shared in our sufferings, van Gogh felt the same calling. The Baker’s wife stated that every night she would hear van Gogh sobbing behind their house, calling out to God, interceding for the plight of the miners.

This raised the ire of the formal, government church...van Gogh was making them look bad. The formal church did little (if anything) to help the miners (let’s face it, they were considered trash by the organized church), and a pastor was to live in a home (not in straw) and receive a salary (not give it away). Jealous of van Gogh, the Church, yes “the church”, forbade him to return to the miners. The church leaders of the time are actually quoted as saying “[he] is undermining the dignity of the Priesthood.” It was also during this time that van Gogh’s own father (“the Dutch Reformed Pastor”) sought to have his own son committed to a lunatic asylum because of his beliefs in Jesus.

Now, I have to pause here for a moment and ask...does van Gogh’s story in any way resemble Jesus’ walk here on earth? Didn’t they call him “mad”, and the church of the time seek to shut him up?

Van Gogh was forced by the church to move away, and from a distance began sketching the miners, trying to raise concern to others for their plight and horrid living conditions. Rejected by the church, unable to continue in the mining villages as a missionary, van Gogh stated...”...if I cannot preach, I will paint, and every painting that I do will be for the glory to God.” Van Gogh’s aspiration, facing such rejection, was to be an “artist in the service of God.”

I will not dwell so deeply on van Gogh’s years as an artist, as there is much more history surrounding this, than is time as a pastor. However, I do need to use it to bring a conclusion to van Gogh’s story.

While studying to be an artist, he once again fell in love, and proposed marriage, but again refused (this time because he was now a pauper himself, having given all he had to the miners). This was of course the third notch on his soul.

It is somewhere at this point in his life that van Gogh lost sight of his calling. History does not state what happened, because history does not understand the calling of a pastor, and how if unfulfilled, will eat constantly at your soul.

Van Gogh fell in love a third time, with a prostitute named Sien who had a 5-year-old daughter. It is hypothesized that this began because van Gogh had compassion on them and their plight. Having been rejected twice in marriage proposals, van Gogh did not propose this third time, as he could not face rejection again. Van Gogh had a son with Sien, and they named him Willem after van Gogh.

With van Gogh unable to make a living as a painter, Sien turned back to prostitution to feed the family (unbeknownst to van Gogh). Upon the birth of their son, van Gogh did propose marriage, so that his son would have a father and not be considered illegitimate. Sien refused, probably not because of van Gogh, but because of her secret life of prostitution. Unable to live with herself of this decision, Sien took her life by drowning herself in the River Scheldt.

Sien’s daughter was then given to her mother, and Willem (van Gogh’s son), to Sien’s brother. It is believed that the children were not given to van Gogh because he could neither support himself, and was still considered a lunatic by many, based on his earlier years of preaching. Although I’ve not touched on it here, van Gogh dearly loved children, as Christ said, “...forbid them not to come to him...”.

Childless, rejected by the church, unable to be a missionary, thrice rejected in marriage, and unable to sell a painting, by this time in ill health, van Gogh turned to drinking. Van Gogh’s ill health came shortly after he left the mining town - although never fully known, it is assumed that it came from breathing the coal dust, and later aggravated by the fumes of the oil paints - which combined to cause him to have epileptic like seizures. Due to the ignorance of the time, this furthered the belief that he was “lunatic”.

Three years later, in 1886, van Gogh again fell in love a fourth time with a woman named Margot, and again proposed marriage (for the fourth time). Margot accepted, but neither parents gave approval, so the marriage could not happen. Unable to accept this, Margot attempted suicide by strychnine, but was saved when van Gogh rushed her to the hospital. Upon recovery, with no chance for marriage, the two parted ways. Van Gogh’s father, who had strongly opposed the marriage (actually all of his marriage proposals were never supported by his father), died one year later. This deeply impacted van Gogh, who, because of their difference in religious beliefs, had always been rejected by his father.

In van Gogh’s early years, he painted those in poverty, because he had compassion for them, and wanted to bring awareness to their conditions. Later in life, van Gogh’s favorite paintings were wheat fields and harvests. His final painting, “Wheat Field with Crows”, is often associated with Vincent’s first sermon, and that his sojourning upon earth was almost over, and the field was ready for harvest: The “road” was uphill, and the journey long. (Van Gogh loved to paint wheat fields because it oft reminded him of the Harvest in the Bible: http://bobbyriesterer.com/gogh/themeimages/f_0779.jpg)

No one knows why, but can only assume that his loneliness and rejection (he was ridiculed as a painter), and his rejection by the church, as well as his bouts of seizures, led to this moment - on July 27, 1890, van Gogh took his paints and his easel to the wheat field, and there shot himself in the chest. Van Gogh was only 37 years old.

The story does not end here though - there is hope - the self-inflicted gun shot was not immediately mortal...in fact, van Gogh was able to walk back to his room, where a doctor found him and contacted his brother Theo. The bullet had deflected off a rib and lodged against his spine, but no organs had been touched. Removable however was impossible due to the close proximity to the spine. For the next 29 hours, van Gogh was held in the arms of his brother Theo as they talked - van Gogh, during his life, had tried to win his brother to Christ. It is unknown what was spoken of in these final hours, however, I can only hope that van Gogh recalled his once true passion and relationship with Christ, and as he felt his life waning, came back Jesus. Why else would God have spared his life another 29 hours? It was also noted by Theo and the two physicians on hand, and van Gogh himself, that he was in little to no pain during these 29 hours.

And that my folks is the life story of van Gogh that schools will never teach. In his lifetime, only a few of his paintings made any money, and not much at that. At the time of his death, an art dealer had taken a liking to van Gogh and his paintings, having just sold several of them for quite a substantial sum...however, word of this sale would arrive after his death.

A van Gogh painting today...well, the most anyone has ever paid was $140 million dollars, and the least (that I could find) $35 million. Van Gogh would paint some 2100 paintings in his lifetime. And in his own words, “...if I cannot preach, I will paint, and every painting that I do will be for the glory to God.”

Still persecuted by the church for his Biblical preaching (can the church not forgive?), he was barred from burial in a church cemetery - which prevented him from being buried with his family. However, a smaller, more forgiving church in the adjoining town, permitted his burial. Six months later, grieving over the brother who had tried to win him for Christ, Theo died of a broken heart. Theo and Vincent had wished to be buried together, but because of the church, could not. In 1914, Theo’s still living wife, had Theo moved and buried beside his brother Vincent.

What happens when an entire generation grows up believing that they’re so special they deserve nothing but the best in life? Well, disappointment. And worse.

So, what causes someone to pick up a gun, walk on to a school campus, and start shooting people? Well, that’s not a question I sit around thinking about very often. But a recent online article in Aeon magazine has some insights that I think are worth sharing.

The article, entitled “Running Amok,” was written by Joseph Pierre, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA. In it, he surveys the clinical literature on the perpetrators of mass killings at places like Columbine High School and the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Pierre notes that in the aftermath of these killings, we try to identify some “offending agent,” such as “mental illness, guns, video games, [and] the media,” and then we “set up a kind of quarantine so that it can be banished from society and no longer threaten” us.

The problem is that none of these “offending agents” alone adequately explains these shootings. Pierre cited a paper published in the sadly-named journal “Homicide Studies” that examined these mass murders in depth.

The researchers concluded that “violent entertainment doesn’t seem to be a significant cause of mass murder.” They also concluded that neither “tighter gun control nor arming our schools are likely to reduce mass shootings.”

As for the psychological component, Pierre found that the risk factors associated with mass murder was “not necessarily the domain of mental illness, but rather the ‘psychiatry of everyday life’” — that is, the way we cope with life’s inevitable setbacks and obstacles.

And this is where culture comes in. One researcher has argued that “modern society, with its emphasis on individualism and the pursuit of material happiness, fosters narcissism.” And, in the suburban settings where nearly all the shootings have taken place, “self-worth is defined by the likes of socioeconomic status, achievements in competitive academics and athletics, and fashion.”

In this culture of narcissism, “affronts to self-esteem can be equated with threats to our very survival and ... the typical response to such narcissistic injuries is a desire for revenge.”

Sadly, in suburban American parenting, the automatic response to an “affront to self-esteem” is more self-esteem. But Pierre and others suspect that the “promotion of unconditional self‑esteem of children in more affluent family structures instills a kind of” — here’s that word again — ”entitlement.”

Instead of self-esteem being a reward for “good achievement or behavior,” feeling good about ourselves comes to be seen as something that the world and our peers owe us. In more extreme cases, “When the happiness and social status that one feels is deserved is not forthcoming, feelings of peer rejection, resentment and blame can become all-consuming.”

In the most extreme, and thankfully, extremely rare instances, it can turn violent.

Pierre asks parents to consider “re-assessing some of our cultural values and teach our children ... how to resolve conflicts, and cope with loss.”

Agreed. But we also need to shape their expectations and get them past a sense of entitlement. They need to know that life is filled with pain, sickness, insults, and failures. And overcoming them is often difficult. Anyone who promises them otherwise is lying. Harsh words, but true.

Second, they need to know they’re not special — at least they are no more special than any other man, woman, or child made in the image of God. But they are loved. And that love — the source of true self-worth and happiness — is found at the foot of the cross.

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Copyright (c) 2015 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

How the story of Jesus’ triumphal entry — and my chronic pain diagnosis — helped me trade in false hopes for a truer picture of God.

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The December sky was low and gray on the morning I woke up and could not feel my hands. I wrung out my arms, hoping the sensation would return. I shook them violently to no avail. Rushing to the bathroom, I held them under hot water. Then frigid water. Neither helped.

Within days, prickly tingles crept up my arm and spread to my shoulders. The numbness turned into pain that burned, ached, and stabbed. Even my fingernails throbbed. A neurologist performed tests using electrified needles inserted into my muscles and shock pads placed on the skin. Nothing appeared abnormal.

Next came a series of scans and a litany of tests for minor problems like vitamin deficiencies, major illnesses like Lupus, and life-threatening conditions like multiple myeloma. Each brought excruciating waiting and worry. I was, after all, a writer whose livelihood depended on having control of his hands. All returned negative.

My symptom list grew with each passing month. First came nerve twitches in my legs, arms, back, and face. Then a paradox of sapping fatigue and insomnia. Severe panic attacks struck without warning, and I broke out in excruciating shingles from the overwhelming stress. The slightest stressor — a large crowd or a long line, common in New York City, where I live — left me bedridden.

The revolving door of physicians left me without a diagnosis and drowning in an ocean of medications: anti-inflammatory drugs, muscle relaxants, nerve pills, pain killers, antiepileptic drugs, sleeping pills, and a healthy dose of Lexapro and Xanax to keep me from a full-on mental break. I grasped for anyone who would help, scheduling appointments with cardiologists and chiropractors, naturopaths and nutritionists, holistic doctors and Hasidic Jewish healers.

My life blurred. My ability to work was reduced to a meager three hours a day. My social life disintegrated, leaving me in depths of loneliness I’d never known before. Everything familiar looked strange. Pain tormented me at every moment. I awoke to pain, worked with pain, dined with pain, and fought for sleep despite pain’s presence.

I was helpless like Job, brought low before God out of sheer desperation. When he was faced with his own pain, he could only bow before the Divine and listen to the wind. The difference between us is that once Job submitted, God restored him. I had no such luck. I was incarcerated in the prison of my own body.

And just like that, I joined the more than 25 million Americans who struggle with chronic pain disorders, many of them idiopathic in nature. As a Christian, I believed that God was sovereign, which made my chronic pain journey also a voyage of divine disappointment.

Come on, God. You know my story. You were there when my neighbor abused me as a child. You know how awkward and alienated I felt throughout adolescence. You know how I’ve struggled with anxiety and depression my entire adult life. I’m starting to see sunlight, to get a little relief, and then this happens? Really?

This is the edited version, actually. I spoke words to God that the MPAA would bar from a PG-13 movie.

The Dopamine Roller Coaster

On November 9, 2016, New York magazine published an article on the science of disappointment. The article opened by stating the obvious, which is that “the feeling of being let down is actually one of life’s toughest emotional experiences.”

Of course, most people don’t need a magazine article to know that this is true, that disappointment hurts. A spouse or partner, that person who made butterflies dance inside you, cheated on you, and then hid it. Your colleague smeared you in a meeting to steal the promotion you earned. The child you prayed over since birth stormed out of the house, swearing to never return. A forgotten birthday, a withheld apology, a bucketful of lies from someone you’d die for.

Disappointment is an unavoidable part of being human, but as the New York magazine article noted, the experience is physiological, not just emotional. The feeling of disappointment is linked to your levels of dopamine: the brain’s “pleasure” chemical, released during positive life experiences. The dopamine systems in your brain don’t just react to what you experience; they attempt to predict what you want or need.

Here’s how it works: Your brain generates expectations about the future. Often these expectations are based on what you want. Something you perceive as good has happened in the past, so you begin to expect it will happen in the future. Before it even happens, your dopamine levels begin to rise in the rush of anticipation. Then, when that good thing actually occurs, you get a double shot of dopamine.

Here’s the rub: Life doesn’t always give us what we expect. People fail us. People hurt us. People lay us on the altars of their own selfishness. When you don’t get the desired result — researchers call this a “reward-prediction error” — not only do your dopamine levels fall; they plummet from the heightened level generated by your expectations.

Now, instead of receiving a double shot of dopamine, you receive none. You crash doubly hard: “Not only do you not get what you wanted,” the article states, “but you also feel the displeasure of having been wrong.” The point? “Losing hurts even worse ... when it’s not what you were expecting.”

Rising Expectations

In the valley of my disappointment, I discovered a gospel story that’s a portrait of what it looks like when an entire community suffers a reward-prediction error. It’s known as the “triumphal entry,” and it is usually told on Palm Sunday in most churches.

Dust was swirling across the scorching desert as a rebel-Rabbi and his band of co-conspirators climbed up to Jerusalem. Rather than slip into the city unannounced, Jesus did something strange. He told a couple of his disciples to go to a particular place and retrieve a donkey for him to ride into the city.

Jesus turned his face toward a city that kills prophets, stones truth-tellers, and executes troublemakers. With a deep sigh, he steeled himself, mounted the humble beast, and clip-clopped toward the Kidron Valley. When the Jerusalemites saw Jesus approaching, they erupted in excitement. They began stripping off their cloaks and spreading them across the road. The crowd whacked branches off trees and laid them across Jesus’ path. As if this weren’t enough pomp and ceremony, the crowd broke into a Passover song.

All four Gospel writers include this narrative, each with their own twist. Matthew’s version says that the procession turns the whole city into “turmoil” (21:10, NRSV). The Greek word for turmoil is the root for the English word seismic. The city trembles as Jesus approaches.

The story begins with great expectations, which are easy to miss. Jesus has just been in Bethany, close to Jerusalem, where he resurrected his friend Lazarus from the dead. Lazarus’s eyes have barely adjusted to the sunlight, and his story has spread throughout the region. Hearing this story, the crowds react, their brains bathed in dopamine. They begin to predict how God will act in their lives based on the way that God acted before: He will intervene again. He will work a miracle. He will expel the occupiers and resurrect God’s people in God’s city.

The palm branches signaled the crowd’s high expectations, a symbol largely lost on those of us who are separated from the culture and chronology of the story. Jewish history told of a man named Judas Maccabeus, a freedom fighter who entered Jerusalem 200 years prior to Jesus. As he approached, people waved palm branches and sang hymns. When Judas finally arrived, he defeated the Syrian king, recaptured the Temple, expelled the pagans, and reigned for a century before the Romans took back the city.

God had saved his people from an occupier once before when an uncommon man trotted into town. With a new sheriff seemingly on the horizon, their dopamine systems kicked in, and they began predicting another takeover. Their song declared, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Matt. 21:9).

This is a song that Jews sang at the beginning of Passover. It’s taken from Psalm 118, the most quoted psalm in the New Testament. It tells of an enemy swarming like bees, driving the psalmist to the brink of destruction. Then God sweeps in with a mighty hand and wipes out the enemy. The word Hosanna means “Lord, save now.” They are asking Jesus to drive out the enemy army and restore order.

Even the donkey plays a role in elevating expectations, as it harkens back to an image from Zechariah 9:9, a prophetic passage that many of these Jerusalemites would have heard before. “See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey.”

That night, around dinner tables across Jerusalem, the Jews likely discussed the day in hushed voices. “Could this be the king we’ve been waiting for? He was riding a donkey after all.” By the time Jesus mounted that donkey and descended into town, their dopamine systems would have been in overdrive.

‘Resentments Under Construction’

The crowds that day aren’t much different from us. I’ve spent my whole life in churches — evangelical and mainline, small and mega, liturgical congregations and those with ear-splitting rock bands. I can’t think of one that hasn’t projected expectations onto God.

Maybe you picture God as a heavenly bellhop whose job is to satisfy your deepest desires. Or perhaps God is a holy matchmaker who will secure you a spouse. Maybe God is a cosmic bodyguard who protects you from harm. Or the world’s best nanny, making sure your children turn out right. Or a divine doctor, healing your every physical and mental ailment. Or a wonder-working accountant, solving all your financial problems — provided you drop off a portion in the church coffers, of course.

People tend to assume that God is the deity they want. All you have to do is snatch up a couple of verses that seem to support your preferred version. Then you spend a few years listening to a pastor reinforce them through selective storytelling. Before you know it, the cement of those assumptions dries, and you begin expecting God to work in particular ways in your life. Not unlike the people of Jerusalem.

This works pretty well, as long as God seems to do what we want him to do. But the moment he doesn’t conform to our expectations, our whole world rattles. A baby is born with a disability. A person you love abandons you for another. A friend dies before her time. The expectations you placed on God ferment into distrust, into disappointment. As author Anne Lamott says, “Expectations are resentments under construction.”

In September 2015, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz wrote an article in the New York Times Sunday Review titled “Googling for God.” He wanted to show how Google search data can tell us a lot about the psychology of the modern age. When it comes to God, many people won’t share their struggles with their faith leaders or friends. Instead, they type them into Google, where they can ask with both impunity and anonymity.

Stephens-Davidowitz sifted through a decade worth of Google searches and found that the most Googled questions about God included these questions: Why does God allow suffering? Why does God need so much praise? Why does God hate me? Why did God make me ugly? Why did God make me gay? Why did God make me black?

A blind man can see the thread binding each of these questions together: disappointment with God.

Many of us — perhaps tens of millions — have a common experience when it comes to spirituality. We expect God to be something and then discover that he is not at all like that. Or we expect God to do something, only to realize that he seems to have his own priorities. In these moments, a tsunami of disappointment comes crashing down.

From Disappointment to Disillusionment

The Palm Sunday story displays the transition from expectation to disappointment in Technicolor. The triumph becomes a trial, and the trial becomes an execution. Jesus entered the city on a donkey, but we know he will leave in a body bag. This is not just a fun parade; Jesus is walking down death row.

Here we have a picture of what happens to a group of very religious people when they feel disappointed by God. At the start, the crowds embrace Jesus with dopamine levels soaring and shouts of “Save us now!” As soon as Jesus turns out to be something other than the savior they expect, their Hosannas morph into “Crucify him!”

Jesus is a king, but not the kind they wanted. He will serve rather than be served. He will die and not be killed. He enters unarmed, waging peace. This makes a larger point that God does not intend to meet our expectations. Instead, he meets our needs.

This type of God makes me uncomfortable. I don’t want vegetables when I’m craving candy. I want a God that satisfies my desires, whether or not those align with my needs. And so it is with all of us. We welcome God into our lives with anticipation, with expectation. We’re laying down cloaks and waving palm branches with all we’ve got. But when God turns out to be someone we don’t recognize, we scatter like smoke in the wind.

One of the most interesting features of this story is how much preparation Jesus does. He lines up everything, making sure to trigger the crowd’s expectations. It’s like Jesus has hired a PR agency, indicating that he knows exactly what he is stirring up.

But why? Is he trying to disappoint them? No. I think he is trying to disillusion them.

The word disillusion has gotten a bad rap in recent times, but it’s a gift God gives with abundance. Disillusionment is, well, the loss of an illusion. It is what happens when you take a lie — about the world, about yourself, about those you love, about God — and replace it with the truth. Disillusionment occurs when God shatters our fantasies, tears down our idols, and dismantles our cardboard cutouts. It occurs when we discover that God does not conform to our expectations but rather exists as a mystery beyond those expectations.

The definition offered by Episcopal preacher Barbara Brown Taylor in her book God in Pain may be the best I’ve seen. She describes disillusionment as the sacred experiences that cut us down to size and remind us of our smallness in this expansive universe. These experiences are often painful but never bad, because they make us shed the lies we’ve mistaken for truth: “Disillusioned,” she writes, “we find out what is not true and we are set free to seek what is — if we dare — to turn away from the God who was supposed to be in order to seek the God who is.”

Ultimately, the triumphal entry is not about donkeys and palm branches at all. It’s a reminder that placing expectations on God based on our wants is a recipe for resentment. But nurturing openness to divine mystery is a framework for faith.

Shedding Illusions

I’ve learned to manage my pain disorder, but it has persisted despite my best efforts. Yet I refuse to let disappointment sever my relationship with God. And over time, I’ve begun to uncover and shed illusions. I’m dismantling mirages I’ve constructed around productivity, identity, and self-worth. No longer can I work 12-to-14-hour days. Or pretend that who I am is enhanced by how much I produce. Or ground my sense of worth in accomplishments and accolades. Or pretend that God will keep me healthy or heal my every ache and pain.

I have traded these lies for a truth: that in times of difficulty, God offers us his presence, not a parachute. This exchange has transformed my disappointment into disillusionment. And disillusion turned out to be a horrible, wonderful gift.

What we experience as disappointment is an invitation to give up holding tight to what we hope is true. To stop trying to cast God in our image. To let God be who God is, not who we wish God would be.

The choice is ours. And who knows? If we decide to step off the dopamine roller coaster, maybe we’ll find ourselves at the foot of a cross, giving up all we have for the One who gave up everything for us.

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Adapted from Learning to Speak God from Scratch: Why Sacred Words Are Vanishing — and How We Can Revive Them Copyright © 2018 by Jonathan Merritt. Published by Convergent Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.