Disillusionment: With God And Everyone Else!

Disillusionment: With God and Everyone Else! By Capt. Kelly Durant 9-27-15

“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? “I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.” Jeremiah 17:9-10

2. Ever see a toddler in a store fall on the floor and scream when the mom puts the toy back on the shelf? Toddler is angry thinking, “How could mama let me down!” How many of you have ever been disappointed in someone? Most of you right now are probably disappointed with someone in your life! It might be with a relative or friend, with a parent, with a son or daughter, and some of you may even be disappointed with God! But it is not human nature to confess that! You might also be disillusioned with yourself as you have not been able to fulfill your dreams of having your idea of a perfect life! Disillusionment, bitterness, and anger is killing many people today! As Christians we must conquer disappointments!

Disillusionments are a reality in the life of everyone! Some are your fault, and some are other people’s fault. We can either face them, or deny them. Today I want you to identify which disillusionments bother you most in life. Why do we as people experience them? Do all of us suffer from unrealistic expectations?

According to the dictionary disillusionment is “A feeling of disappointment, akin to depression, arising from the realization that something is not what it was expected or believed to be, possibly accompanied by philosophical angst from having one's beliefs challenged.” People often become competitive and proud trying to conquer their feelings of disillusion by deceiving their heart that they are better than others. This why we must weigh our deeds because as humans we exaggerate, placing ourselves either too high or too low. We need God’s strength, or we lose the battle in our own hearts and minds!

3. The heart, as the Bible describes it, is the seat of emotions, the source from where all feelings come. Why is it as humans we never learn how to dominate our feelings, which include pride, ambitions, expectations, and disillusionments, and we seem to always be deceiving ourselves with our own personal dreams and expectations in life?

The verse today in Jeremiah confirms that we as people are beyond comprehension, we often don’t even understand our own feelings within us, nor do we understand others as people seem to always “let you down”, sooner or later. After a certain amount of inflicted disappointments, the average person becomes bitter, angry, or disconnected, and puts the blame on others. Many people try to deal with their intimidating feelings of disillusionment but without depending on God, even trying to deny that these disappointments exist in life but this is dishonesty with God and one’s self.

You and I are motivated by our thoughts and feelings, which become our passions and expressions. This transfers into good or evil, depending on the person’s relationship with Jesus. Jesus can motivate you and me with an amazing love beyond description, but few people practice the true love of Christ to its fullest! Imagine even loving your enemies! Sadly, the vast majority of humanity are motived by negative stimuli, by what they hate! And why do they hate? Did something tragic happen sometime in the past? Or is a person’s hate infused into them by the influence of other haters? 1 John 3:15 Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. Nazis, Communists, politicians, and certain false religions are experts at imputing hate into minds and hearts, and murder is the result!

4. A reaction to some disillusionment might cause a person to become an “activist” type, connected and involved in the community to make a difference fighting for better conditions and a better world. There is a place for righteous anger. God, however, will weigh our deeds. How have you dealt with your personal issues in the end? We will get the “deeds we deserve” as in Jer. 17:10.

What I observe that is most deceitful about the heart is that most people are setting their selves up for failure with passions and feelings that are from the false expectations of the world and not from God. (repeat) In the materialistic competitive climate of our society, how many people do we know who dream, not to live to please and serve God with all their heart, but rather dream to become rich and important.

People set their selves up for failure when they dream to make millions, when they struggle for the wrong things, and when life hits them with disillusionments, the loss of a job, the death of someone, a divorce, they often change becoming cold, abusive, and insulting to others. James 4:1 From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? 2 Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.3 Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.4 Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.