QRC Disappointments
That time of the year is coming again, you know when we can sit around our television sets and watch people’s hopes, dreams and aspirations crushed and ground into the dust. It was advertising guru Roy Williams who wrote “Every dream of the future is a seed. But until your dream falls into the ground and dies, it cannot burst from the ground and deliver the harvest you seek.”
If that is the case then there will be a lot of seeds falling into the ground when American Idol airs again in January. And some of those dreams will recover and others will remain shattered and dormant. Many of you know that I am a huge Harry Chapin fan and one of my favorite songs is the story of Mr. Tanner. And the song opens with these lines
Mister Tanner was a cleaner from a town in the Midwest.
And of all the cleaning shops around he'd made his the best.
But he also was a baritone who sang while hanging clothes.
He practiced scales while pressing tails and sang at local shows.
His friends and neighbors praised the voice that poured out from his throat.
They said that he should use his gift instead of cleaning coats.
And so one day Mr. Tanner took the plunge, this was long before the days of American Idol so he found an agent in New York booked a hall and poured all of his resources into his opening performance.
We’ll let Harry Pick up the story. Video Clip from Harry Chapin singing Mr. Tanner.
(He did not know how well he sang, he only heard the flaws.
But the critics were concise, it only took four lines.
But no one could accuse them of being over kind.
(spoken) Mr. Martin Tanner, Baritone, of Dayton, Ohio made his
Town Hall debut last night. He came well prepared, but unfortunately
his presentation was not up to contemporary professional standards.
His voice lacks the range of tonal color necessary to make it
consistently interesting.
(sung) Full time consideration of another endeavor might be in order.)
He came home to Dayton and was questioned by his friends.
Then he smiled and just said nothing and he never sang again,
excepting very late at night when the shop was dark and closed.
He sang softly to himself as he sorted through the clothes.
Wow, that’s gotta hurt.
Have you ever been disappointed? Have you ever had your dreams snatched away? Maybe a love scorned? A child who has chosen a path that is diametrically opposed to the way you brought them up? A career that you love, that ends in a crash or a whimper?
This is week five of our series “QR-Codes for your Life” QR-Codes or QRCs are those ever present bar codes that seem to pop up everywhere. And their purpose is to make the retrieval of information easier for those who are interested. So if you go to a Tim Horton’s and you want to comment on their service you simply scan this QR-Code with your smart phone and it takes you to this site where you can make comments on their service.
The QR-C on the back of your bulletin will take you to our Web-site where you can find all kinds of information about Cornerstone Wesleyan Church.
And when I introduced this topic back in October I commented about how great it would be to have QR-codes that would give us information from God’s word when we were facing certain issues and situations in our lives.
So three weeks ago we looked at what to do when we are tempted to do wrong, where we should look for that answer and our QRC directed us to 1 Corinthians 10:13 The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure.
The week after that we talked about failure, when we feel like we just can’t go on, that our feet have been kicked out from under us and we feel that we just can’t give anymore and we want to quit. And as a response to that we looked at Galatians 6:9 So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.
And last week I spoke about the need for forgiveness in our lives, what happens after you’ve been betrayed or hurt. When someone you love turns against you, or someone you hardly knows says or does something that hurts you? And our QR-code last week took us to Colossians 3:13 Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.
But what happens when you are disappointed with life? When it doesn’t give you what you expected or gives you what you didn’t expect?
Not the failures that I spoke about two weeks ago, but setbacks, discouragements, disappointments. If I was to offer you up a QR-Code today it would take you to
2 Corinthians 4:7-9 We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves. We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed.
We are never told that as Christians that we won’t have disappointments or discouragements. What we are told is that we have a power that is not from ourselves, what we are told is that we will not be crushed what we are told is that we will not abandoned by God and we will not be destroyed.
When Angela and I were first married, late in the last century, we owned a couple of kittens. And one day the male, Mick, discovered a balloon on the floor of our living room and he started playing with it. He would bat it and then chase it across the carpet, he was having a ball. Now I knew what was going to happen, but having a slight nasty streak decided to let things progress on their own. Well eventually Mick cornered the illusive beast and pounced with every one of those needle sharp kitten claws extended. And with a bang his prey disappeared. The bang set him back a bit but the look of disappointment on his face when his plaything disappeared was so sad.
If you have ever tried at one time or another you’ve had your balloon pop. At some time or another in your life you have had dreams come crashing down. You’ve been there you know what I’m talking about. Perhaps it was a job or promotion that didn’t materialize like you thought it would, or a dream that you’ve never seen fulfilled. Maybe it was just a delay or maybe it was a complete stop.
I am convinced the more vivid the vision the greater the disappointment should the vision fail to materialize. Author Eric Hoffer said “Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy -- the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.” Bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation, if you’ve felt it you know how apt that description is.
If the disappointment isn’t crushing then maybe there wasn’t enough passion in the dream.
We’ve all had disappointments, in our education, our careers, our marriages and our spiritual lives. But how we deal with our disappointments will determine whether they destroy us or make us stronger.
1) Disappointments Sometimes are Just Delays. Who says that every setback has to be final? This wasn’t the first piece of property that we put an offer on to build this church. And this wasn’t the church we first intended to build, and when things didn’t work out on property 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 I was disappointed. But in retrospect this was better than all of the other ones and if we had of gotten 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 we wouldn’t have had this property.
Even though you may not be able to enjoy the taste of victory today doesn’t mean you won’t taste it tomorrow. You may have to reshuffle your plans, you may have to rearrange your priorities, but disappointments don’t have to be final. The anticipation can be as much fun as the arrival. That delay may give you the extra time you need for more planning.
2) Disappointments Should be Educational Many times we can actually learn from our setbacks. I never make a mistake that I don’t try and learn something from it. And I am convinced that we never learn nearly as much from our successes as we do from our failures. Now I know that it’s a lot more fun to learn from our success, but we don’t learn as much.
As many mistakes as each one of us makes, as many disappointments as we experience in our lives it would be one of the greatest wastes of resources in the world if we failed to learn from those mistakes and disappointments that come our way. Sometimes the delays that we experience provide time for reflection and self-examination and in that it provides us with a learning opportunity.
In 1990 we uprooted our family and moved from the booming metropolis of Truro to Brisbane Australia with a population of 1.75 million people who all drove on the wrong side of the road. Now not being one to shun a challenge we immediately made plans to drive into the centre of the city, actually the plans had already been made for us but we were game to try. So armed with our trust refer-dex, which was simply a fancy name for a book of street maps we ventured into the valley, as downtown Brisbane was called. And it was there that I discovered the benefits of stop signs and red lights. Although they did slow me down they allowed me to sneak a look in the book and find out where we were. Because with traffic going in all directions I needed the opportunity to stop and get my bearings. Sometimes the disappointments in our lives are stop signs that allow us to get our bearings. And sometime they prevent us from continuing in the wrong direction.
It is only when you can’t learn or are unwilling to learn from life’s disappointments that they become failures. And when we stop we need to look at what we have experienced and ask the big question; Why? What caused this to happen? Can I correct it? If it can be corrected then do it. Maybe the reason you didn’t get that job you wanted was that you showed up in ratty clothes needing a haircut and mouthwash, you can learn from that experience and change things for a more favourable outcome. Or perhaps you wanted to play basketball in the NBA but you’re only 5’2’’ then you might want to look for a different calling, because some things you can’t change.
3) Disappointments Can be Times of Adjustment Too many times life becomes boring and routine. We are in a rut and we all know what a rut is right? Right, a rut is simply a grave with both ends kicked out.
Day after day we do the same thing. Day in and day out we are content to simply continue doing the familiar. And it’s only when disappointments come that we look at these experiences and re-evaluate the way we’ve been doing things. Some of our greatest moments happen because we are forced out of our pattern of repetition by a disappointment.
11 years ago we had a series of events that resulted in down turn in our attendance and revenue at Cornerstone, it was a disappointment for me. In order for us to continue we decided that the best option was for me to look for an outside source of income. That was a disappointment for me; I didn’t really relish the thoughts of having two jobs.
As a result of that setback I ended up writing for six different magazines, something I would never have done without that disappointment, and I was also offered a position as adjunct faculty at our Bible College in New Brunswick and now I still teach there part time which has led to me teaching in Ghana. And I discovered that not only do I enjoy teaching, but I’m not bad at it either. I’ve been looking for a place to quote Red Green and this looks like the spot. Red Green says “You are not good at something just because you enjoy it. Karaoke has proved that. To my way of thinking, you are not good at something because you enjoy it; rather you enjoy something because you are good at it.”
The disappointment that lead to those offers wasn’t fun I did not enjoy it one little bit, but the adjustments that we made as a result have been a real bonus for Denn.
At the time of a disappointment it’s always wise to examine the events surrounding the disappointment and see if you need to make adjustments. Many churches and pastors have chosen to accept disappointment as the norm, rather than changing traditional behaviour. Anytime we begin to fail in evangelism, in seeing people won to Jesus Christ, in attracting people to our church we need to stop and ask: Why? Tradition is good as long as tradition is effective. And it doesn’t have to be old to be tradition. Cornerstone has only been around for eighteen years but we already have our own traditions.
It is an unfortunate that many people through the years have gone to hell because ineffective church programs have become sacred cows. And there are times we need to discover that sacred cows make the best hamburgers.
Every program, every custom, every tradition and every facility must be examined from time to time to make sure they are still doing the primary function and objective and that has been, and should remain to be glorifying God and bringing a lost and dying world to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
And sometimes it takes a disappointment in a program before we make a change. And sometimes it takes a disappointment in your job for you to evaluate your position and your performance. And sometimes it takes a disappointment with your children to adjust your child rearing techniques.
We have to be able to recognize those disappointments and instead of whining, adjust.
4) Disappointments Can be Pace Setters. Often after a professional athlete has injured their self they return to their sport too soon only to discover that the injury still hurts. Although the pain is a disappointment it is essential to set the proper pace for the athlete’s development and complete healing.
At first they are disappointed because their fastball isn’t as fast as it used to be, their slap shot isn’t a hard as it used to be and their jump shot isn’t as high as it used to be. But it will through time and care eventually heal to pre-injury capabilities.
But sometimes there is a physical healing but not a mental healing. When I was a teenager I owned a horse, a fact of which my daughter reminded me of constantly, usually with words like “How come I can’t have a horse you used to?” To which I remind her that my horse was a free horse, at least that was the initial cost, as my father is fond of reminding me. The reason Extra Time was a free horse was because he was a standard bred race horse who had been hurt. In 1972 his best time was 2 08 for a mile but during a race he stumbled and fell and pulled his chest muscles. The vets claimed that he was completely healed but he never got his speed back.
Sometimes we get hurt emotionally or spiritually and we never get over the disappointment and we don’t ever grow any further unless we take the time to recover.
In the growth cycle of a church, they usually grow, plateau, grow, and plateau and so on. Plateaus will always be disappointing and sometimes if not corrected will become a downward trend. But the reason that churches plateau is that it’s pace setting. If a church grows too fast for too long they get out of balance and become top heavy with new Christians. But after a church takes the time to disciple and assimilate those people they are ready to grow again. What was a disappointment actually helps in their growth.
5) Disappointments Sometimes are Necessary I love good weather, I love the sun and I love the warmth. I’m not totally a Grinch when it comes to weather, I love a white Christmas, in my world it would start to snow midnight Christmas Eve and then warm up to 27 degrees Celsius on December 27th.
The year we moved to Australia we had 93 days without seeing a cloud. I thought I was in Paradise. The result of that beautiful weather? The grass got brown, the flowers died, the water supply got low, the farmers of Queensland weren’t nearly as impressed with the weather as I was. Nature cannot survive as we know it without rain.
In the 1970’s there was a song out the lyrics were “I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden, along with the sunshine there has to be a little rain sometimes.” And such is life. For total complete full development we need to have different types of experiences come our way. There is no way we can exhibit the fruit of maturity in our life without the rain of disappointment. A land without rain is called a desert.
Some of life’s greatest virtues: faith, hope, patience and perseverance only come our way through disappointment. Only then will you discover that every problem has a solution. Only when you have met with disappointment and overcome it will you develop the ingredients in your character to seek a solution instead of being perplexed by the problem.
6) Disappointments are Normal Don’t take disappointments personally. Our normal reaction is “Why?” or “How could this happen to me?”
Way back when Canadian Idol first began my Cousins’ daughter auditioned and didn’t make the cut and I’m sure that when Jackie didn’t move on to the next level of competition she wondered how it could have happened to her. Well it also happened to over 800 other people, Jackie Guptill wasn’t the only person to go away disappointed that day.
When things go wrong it doesn’t mean that God’s out to get you. That’s life, disappointments happened. But disappointments do not have a negative or a positive impact in themselves. Instead it is our reaction to those disappointments that make them either negative or positive.
2 people can have exactly the same disappointment and end up with two completely different outcomes. It is how we handle our disappointments that will determine our success. Some people are motivated by disappointments; others are destroyed by their disappointments.
How you act and react to life and it’s many disappointments usually indicates who you are and what you can become. Henry Ward Beecher stated “Ones best success comes after their greatest disappointments.” You don’t have to guess how he dealt with disappointments.
I wonder if Mario Andretti the race car driver ever had to face disappointments? I wonder if he ever lost a race? Listen to what he said “Circumstances may cause interruptions and delays, but never lose sight of your goal. Prepare yourself in every way you can by increasing your knowledge and adding to your experience, so that you can make the most of opportunity when it occurs.”
How do you view disappointments? As stepping stones or as stumbling blocks? Do they strengthen your faith or weaken your faith? Do they draw you nearer to God or push you farther away from God? The choice is yours and yours alone.
I don’t know what disappointments you are facing today but I’d like to pray for you. Because here is God’s promise for you today Psalm 30:5 Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.
Did you catch it? Weeping may remain for a night. Maybe, but for sure, rejoicing will come in the morning.
Free PowerPoint may be available for this message, contact me at denn@cornerstonewesleyan.ca
