Do You Disappoint Jesus?

The Bible is full of many godly and ungodly characters who disappointed God by disobeying Him. Have you ever thought that you were a disappointment to Jesus? I have. Well, if you have those thoughts, don't feel alone. You can bet many people have had the same distressing thoughts. Many times!

When you read of the many ungodly characters in the Bible who disobeyed and disappointed God, they should remind you that disobedience to God can bring severe judgment and death. But all is not lost. By the grace of Christendom, those who repented after disobeying God are now in heaven.

Before delving into the Bible, allow the use of myself as a flawed example. For almost one-third of my life, I more or less just refused to acknowledge both God and Jesus Christ. Well, maybe “refused” is a little too stringent, because, in a way, I was searching for Jesus.

Mom was Presbyterian. As a family, Dad, Mom, and brother Allan, and I didn't attend church services more than a dozen times. If that?

In my early teens, George, a friend of mine, took me to attend CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) meetings. Once, when the priest was conducting a lesson on why we should all call Him “Father,” and the Pope, and every other Catholic priest “Father,” as well. I knew the Bible well enough to know that Matthew 23:9 reported Jesus said, “And call no man your Father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven.” So this verse was brought into the discussion and the rebuttal the priest gave wasn't very convincing.

As a matter of fact, you could see on the faces of the other teenagers that they were not believing the weak reasoning he provided. So on that note, I didn't attend any more CYO studies because I didn't want my troublesome questions to influence the faith that these other kids apparently had.

So, as mentioned before, I pretty much ignored Jesus by not trying to attend any church, but I did delve into the Bible on rare occasions. That situation stayed pretty much the same even as I graduated high school, and joined the Marine Corps and volunteered to deploy to South Vietnam. Extra pay for combat duty was a strong incentive, but the call of adventure was even more alluring. When you're in Vietnam stationed in the northern I-Corps area in a place called Phu Bai, it can be a dicey situation. This was a Marine Corps and Army base.

It was a dangerous place because it was in close proximity to the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) boot camp. When the rockets would come pouring in day or night many troops became appreciatively closer to God than they had been. Most everyone found themselves talking to God and asking God for his protection. Well, at least that's what I was doing. I'm fairly sure many of my fellow Marines and soldiers were praying for their personal protection when the rockets and mortar rounds rained down and exploded within our perimeter. At least they prayed until the “All Clear” was sounded.

One hellish night in particular, I was posted at the most remote guard shack the Marine camp had. This bunker was very close to the far outer fence of the ARVN boot camp which was surrounded by Triple-strands of concertina wire (barbed wire) strung around the base. That particular night, the VC lobbed in more than a thousand surface-to-surface rockets and mortars to try to break the morale of the ARVN troops that were training in the boot camp to be allies fighting on our side. The missiles were falling long, and the mortar rounds were falling short and exploding around us, not on their intended target. They were exploding all around my bunker. You could hear shrapnel screaming through the air and striking the outside layers of our sandbagged walls. Then our own mortar platoon decided to kick in, and guess what, some of their rounds were also landing too close.

Not one minute lapsed without a resounding explosion. I'm here to tell you that was one scary night. A very, very scary night. Even though I often acted blasé towards God, He was always there to protect me—each and every day of my life.

After the Marine Corps, I returned to Wisconsin and as things worked out, I was soon going to become a father. We got married, of course. I say, of course, because back in the 1960s that was the responsible, expected thing to do. My attitude towards organized Church hadn't changed even though my wife was a Lutheran. We'd go to the Sussex Lutheran Church pretty much every Sunday. But when I say we'd go to church, what actually happened is she and our baby daughter would enter the church, while I would sit out in the car and read the Sunday paper.