DISAPPOINTED BY GOD?
JOB 36-40
"You have to be present to win," was a sign at a raffle at a retirement center in Florida. I like that sign because that is how life is, right? We have to be present if anything is going to happen. We have to show up. So many people sit on the sidelines. They drift through life. They hang back, checking in sometimes, putting in time; but, if we are going to win, we have to be present.
If we are going to be present to win the raffle, there is also the option that if we are present to win, we might be present to lose. Only one person can win a raffle usually; not everybody wins. We don't always win at life. Sometimes things don't work out for us like we want them to.
Sometimes circumstances or choices or issues affect our lives in negative ways. We end up feeling like we are not winning at all. But life requires a very basic thing...that you show up every day.
God is interested in our lives, what we do, the choices we make, and how we respond to him. Where do we put our focus? Is it on him or on other stuff that surrounds us, things that are going on in our lives?
Today we are going to look at what about when God does disappoint us, at least from our perspective. How do we manage that? How do we deal with that? How do we own up to the reality of our disappointment with God?
I want to spend some time today honestly looking at an issue that often times we ignore. What about when we are disappointed with God? When things don't go like we want them to? When somehow God is not necessarily meeting our expectations? When things aren't happening like we prayed for
or hoped to? Things aren't always looking good to us. Disappointment that sometimes comes from our perspective with God I think happens in three different ways.
First of all when God doesn't meet our expectations, sometimes there is disappointment for us. Very simply when God doesn't do what we think he should do. I would venture to say that if you have been a Christian for very long there have been times you have prayed and prayed sincerely, not even for yourself but for somebody else, and it didn't work out like you had prayed it should. Your picture is that God didn't do his part somehow.
Maybe it is a grander scheme of things. We look around the world and see all the trouble. Famines, droughts, floods, wars. Children who suffer. A couple of weeks ago in the news I read about a three-year old girl who was abducted and sexually assaulted by an eight-year old boy and a nine-year old boy. What a tragedy!
How come those things happen? Certainly we catch ourselves at times saying, "If we were in charge of the universe, this kind of stuff wouldn't go on!" For example, if you were in charge would you let all the hurricanes happen this past summer? We look at some of those things that happen and we wonder how come, God? How come it is going like that? How come you’re not involved like we think you should be? How come you are not connecting in? Certainly since we are following you these things shouldn't be going on? Sometimes I catch myself wanting to quote Mother Teresa who said one time, "God, if this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you don't have very many." Aren't there days we feel that way? God doesn't do what we think he should do.
In John, chapter 11, one of Jesus' best friends has died and he goes up to Bethany, Lazarus's hometown. The two sisters, Mary and Martha, come at different times with the same statement, with the same response to Jesus. They say to him, "If you would have been here, our brother wouldn't have died." Do you know what they were saying? You didn't do what we thought you should do. You didn't help like we thought you would help. If you were really God, we wouldn't be preparing for a funeral.
Aren't there moments in our lives when we wonder why God doesn't do what we think he should do? If we are honest, those can be disappointing times.
The second way I think we are disappointed with God at times is when we are in the wilderness, when God seems a long ways off to us. When the night gets dark and the storm clouds roll in and the fog prevents us from seeing very far. We think our prayers are unanswered, at least they
don't seem to be answered. God is a speck, way off in the distance if he is there at all. Sometimes we are lonely and afraid.
We benefit in some ways during those wilderness times. I can look back and thank God, not during them, but afterwards. I grew closer to him. My faith was stretched. But in the middle of the wilderness, when everything seems uphill, I want to cry out like the psalmist, "God, how
long will you turn your ears from me? How long will you let me weep? How long will the darkness last?" God, you are not doing what I think you ought to be doing.
Elizabeth Elliott, wife of martyred missionary Jim Elliott, said this. "That is where faith begins...in the wilderness when you are all alone and afraid. When things don't make any sense." Her point is very simple. It is then that maybe we try to trust God when we cannot always trace his
hand. When we don't understand the situation, we attempt to keep our faith focused on him.
Over the summer I really enjoyed fishing in Lake Phelps with Mike, Jason, and Steve Furlough. I would go over to Mike and Connie’s, and Mike and I would wade all over the lake in the evening. We’d catch bunches of fish. When my folks were down in July, dad and I went fishing and we decided to wade further than usual. We were catching a lot of fish wanted to catch a few more. Besides dad needed the exercise. When we were coming back to the pier, it got very dark. I t was a cloudy night with no moon or stars. We couldn't see anything.
On the way back, we were talking about all the fish we had caught. Then I accidentally brought up the 3 snakes I had seen while fishing. Now my dad is about as scared of a snake as I am of an angry wife. And we were both thinking the same thing, about what a snake might do if we stumbled upon one in the dark. We walked a little further, and by this time the pace had picked up and the conversation had pretty much died out. Well, dad thought he saw something move. He yelled at it. I just knew that one of those cotton head rattle mocosins had him. Well I don’t have to tell you, but I walked on water. I mean I love my dad, but in the face of danger, he’s grown and on his own. Well in my haste my legs couldn’t keep up with the rest of me, and I ended up almost drowning myself. The snake ended up being a figment of my dad’s scardy cat imagination. I discovered a very important thing that night. It is not a good thing to run in waist deep water in the dark. You can get hurt doing that. But I have done that a lot of times in my life. Storms blow in and it gets dark. I run because I don't know what else to do.
Well we figured out something that night. When we looked up ahead of us instead of straight down at the water we could see the pier. Mike’s pier has one light on the end of it. It was a long way down, but that light kind of guided us down the shore line. There have been moments in my life when God has seemed a long ways off. Yet, there has always been at least a pinpoint of light that I keep moving towards.
Somebody said that if our lives were only sunshine, we would only have desert. But when we are in the middle of the dark storms, sometimes we get disappointed with God.
The third way I believe we are disappointed with God is when old issues still affect our lives. Some of you have already accepted God. You have already accepted his grace, his forgiveness, and his freedom. You know the peace that comes with that. Yet, some of the issues from your past still reach up and grab you. Some of the scars, hurts, and pains can be troublesome at moments. Your life has been scarred or marked, sometimes by your own choices; sometimes by the choices of others. We get this impression that, when we become a Christian, everything is going to be healthy, wealthy, and happy. That we aren't going to ever deal with difficult circumstances. All the old issues are going to go away, but that doesn't necessarily happen.
You know, the Lord’s Supper is an awesome event that we practice each Lord’s day. It is a time when we celebrate the fact that Christ was able to redeem us through the cross and the resurrection. But I’ve noticed something that maybe I haven't paid much attention to before. When Jesus came out of the grave, rose from the dead, there was new life. But he carried with him the imprints of the nails in his hands and his feet and the spear thrust into his side. There was new life, but old wounds. Sometimes those old wounds, those scars can be painful to us. We have a new life in Christ. We have hope in him. But some of the things that have marked our lives along the way can bring painful reminders.
When I was 7 years old, I was mad at my brother for locking me out of the club house that we had. He was in there teasing me because I couldn’t get in, so I rared back and smashed the glass on the door with my hand. The glass cut my hand and I have a scar right here. Every time I look at that scar I am reminded instantly of the glass, of the pain, of the blood, of the hurt. I will carry that scar my whole life. It marks me.
Now I have moved past it. I have healed. It doesn't hurt anymore. But I still have the scar. In Christ there is new life, but sometimes there are old wounds. It isn't always easy to get past those. In fact
there is value in those wounds that Jesus brought out of the grave because it was Thomas who said he wasn't going to buy any of it if he couldn't put his hands in Jesus' side and his finger in the holes in Jesus' hands. So it’s because of those old wounds that Thomas came to faith. There will be
some of your friends who will watch you move beyond some past issues and will come to trust God because they have seen you move forward in spite of old wounds.
The reality is if we are honest with ourselves when God does not do what we think he should do, we question and complain about the unfairness of life. Scott Peck was right in his book, “The Road Less Traveled”, when he opens it with these words. "Life is difficult." Somehow we expect life to
be easy, to always work out our way. If God were really God, then life would just be marvelous all the time. There would be no issues for us.
Now, we can view the unfairness of life in a couple of ways. First of all, we can view it this way, there really is no God. He doesn't exist. If there was a God, some of the things we experience wouldn't happen. So therefore God must not be out there and we are going to have hurricanes, earthquakes, and children are going to die. People are going to get disease and financial ruin is going to come to some. God doesn't exist; that is one view.
The second view we can have about the unfairness of life is that God does exist but he is impotent. He has no power. He cannot do anything about it.
Another view is that life is really fair. We deny the existence of unfairness at all. There are even some Christians who hold that view. If we had enough faith, if we believed in God enough we would always have things work out in our lives. That is not a biblical view and that is not what we see many people in the Bible dealing with. Somehow we deny that life is unfair.
There is another view that says, justice will work itself out. The Hindu doctrine of karma says that if you are reincarnated 6,800,000 times, you will reach perfection. Some of you are very early in that chain.
Then there is the view that says life isn't fair. It just isn't fair. That is the biblical view. The Bible tells us that life isn't always going to be fair to us. There will be circumstances that go beyond our control. There will be choices others make that hurt us. There will be our own choices we make that create disappointment. We live in a broken, fallen-down world that isn't fair. We cannot equate the unfairness of life with God.
God is interested in our lives and wants to work in our lives. He hasn't promised us anywhere in scripture that we would be exempt from some of the disappointments in life.
There was a Broadway musical a few years ago that I really liked the title of. The title was Your arms are too short to box with God. I have to be reminded of that. God is God and I am not. Do you ever have to be reminded of that? There are two things I know. One, there is a God and, two, we are not him.
There are times I want to be God. In fact, new agers tell me that I can be like God. Shirley McLain, the guru for new agers, every now and then will channel and hum some spirit in. She will draw in the sand with her toe, "I am God. I am God." Sure you are and I’m Tiger Woods. How do we get to the point where somehow we think we can be God? Or that we even have a right to argue with God? He doesn't always have to explain himself to me.
Job, an individual we find in history, experienced great misfortune in his life. He experienced financial ruin. He lost all of his livestock. In today's dollars, between six and eight million dollars worth of livestock. Then, on a personal issue, his seven sons and three daughters were killed when partying in a house. The house collapsed on them. Then his health was lost. In fact he was so disfigured that his friends didn't recognize him. While Job was going through all that, his friends were gathered round him and said there was no God. They asked him why he was trusting in God. Others said there was a God, but he was powerless to help Job. Others said it was because Job didn't have enough faith, he wouldn't be punished if he would have enough faith. His wife said to him, "You ought to just curse God and die."
But Job didn't. We do get to an instance in Job 37 when he begins to question God. In Job 38, 39, and 40, God responds. He starts this way. In Job 36:1-8 we read, "Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm. 'Who is this who darkens my counsel with words without knowledge, brace yourself like a man. I will question you and you will answer me. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know. Who stretched a measuring line across it or what were its footings set on or who laid its cornerstone?" God responds to Job in those three chapters and says to him, "I don't have to explain myself to you."
Where were you when all this started? An interesting thing happens in the life of Job. At the end of God's challenge to him Job basically says, "Before I had only heard about you, but through this storm I have seen you." I believe there are times that through the storms in our lives, we can see God. Maybe that’s why Solomon said, "Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not to your own understanding. But in all of your ways, acknowledge him."
That is not always easy for me to do. I want to know why some things are happening the way they are happening. I want things to be done in what I believe is some fairness. I want to be able to give people answers to their difficult situations. The Bible speaks of a God who is there and is interested in our lives. He has met our greatest need...to give us hope, a way to reconnect to him. Paul said it this way, "You see at just the right time when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
God gives us hope in the person of Jesus. He is interested in a relationship with us. Not some gray-haired figure that has “God” on a name-plate on his desk. You know, Master of the Universe. If I just follow the rules and regulations, if I do well, then I will get promoted. If I don't do so well, maybe I will be demoted along the way. That was my view of Christianity for a while. But I have come to discover, through the scripture and my own relationship with Christ, that what God is interested in is a friendship with us. He desires to be our friend and connect with us. He does that in the person of Jesus. There we find hope in the cross.
I wish I could give you some easy answer to the disappointment we have on occasion. Maybe even with God. It has been an issue I have struggled with for a long time personally. There have been times when God hasn't done what I thought he should do. Right now I’m in the wilderness. And there have been times when some of the past issues of my life reach up and grab me. But I have discovered and am continuing to discover this, in life I can either have disappointment with God or I can have disappointment without God. Either way life is bound to dish up some disappointment.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were three men who tried to follow God. The king where they were living set a decree that said if you didn't bow down and worship a statue at a certain time of the day, you would be thrown into a fiery furnace. These were three of his leading men. Daniel
3 tells us about this. They refused to bow down. They were brought before the king and he gave them another chance. He said, "Hey, if you will just give up your God and follow the one I have, then I will save your lives." This was their response. "Oh Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us. He will rescue us from your hand, O King, but even if he does not we want you to know that we will not serve your gods."
Do you know what they were saying? Our God can save us. He is able to. He has the power to do that. But even if he doesn't, we are still going to follow him. We are still going to believe him. We are still going to trust him.
I wish we had time this morning to talk about some of the issues related to our free will and how God does give us the freedom to choose. Our choices have created so much pain throughout history. God could change our circumstances. Sometimes he does. But I am learning to trust that
even when he doesn't, I am still going to follow him. I can have disappointment with God or I can have disappointment without God.
Our whole world shouts that you need more to be satisfied, to be content. You don't have enough to be happy. Watch the TV ads or read the newspaper. All the time we are being challenged with just get this or just have this we will then be content in life. We will experience peace in life. We will have happiness in life. We will manage our way through some of the disappointments we have in life. Our whole world is shouting that to us. In the middle of that shouting, God is whispering, "I am sufficient for you. I am enough. I can complete you. I can fill that empty spot in your life. I can make you whole. I am all you really need."
Paul experienced some tremendous pressure. In 2nd Corinthians 7 he says, "But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard-pressed on every side." We have issues going on. Challenges facing us. Things that are beyond our ability to manage. He says, "But we are not crushed. We are perplexed." We have questions. We wonder why it is working like this. We would like to know why it is not going better, but we are not in despair. We have been persecuted, but we have not been abandoned. We have been struck down, but we are not destroyed. He can say those words because he ends that chapter by saying, "Therefore we don't lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes on what is unseen, not what is seen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." Paul knew the answer.
When he looked at life in the circumstances and issues, there were times it was perplexing. There were times it was disappointing. There were times when he wanted to say to God, "How come you aren't fixing this for me?" But when he looked beyond that to what is unseen, to that which will last forever, when he focused on God he knew he could make it through some of the disappointments.
Somebody penned these words. "As children bring their broken toys with tears for us to mend, I brought my broken dreams to God because he was my friend. But then instead of leaving him in peace to work alone, I hung around and tried to help with ways that were my own. At last, I snatched them back and cried, 'How can you be so slow?' 'My child,' he said, 'what could I do? You never did let go." We can have disappointment with God or disappointment without God.
I wish this were an easy issue. It isn't. But God has never promised us an exemption card, a free pass. Life isn't working that way and the Bible never promised that it will. The Bible promises that there is a God who goes with us.
