Life is not always easy. It’s not always fair, nor is it always kind. Life can take some twists and turns that we are simply not prepared for. And although we know that life can be cruel and disappointing, it seems that we are rarely ever prepared for things to go wrong. One of the facts of life is that things do go wrong. Not everything that comes our way in life will be good, easy, and pleasant.
Life’s journey is full of detours, delays, and downfalls. There are many disappointments along the way. And one thing that I’ve realized is that you never experience disappointment without expectation. If you were not expecting something, you would never be disappointed. So a definition of disappointment could be: A failure for conditions to meet our expectations. That’s true naturally, emotionally, financially, and even Spiritually.
We all can be, have been, and probably will be disappointed many, many times in life. Even as believers, we will face times when we find ourselves scaling the wall of disappointment, trying to get over life’s letdowns. The truth is that there are many times when things don’t go as we expect them to, or as we desire them to.
Sometimes those expectations are merely challenged, and at other times they are crushed. It’s hard for anyone to deal with disappointment, but I think there is an added struggle when disappointment comes to a believers’ life. That’s because of the enormous hope that we have in Christ.
We are taught to have great faith, to hope in God, to believe big things - to ignore the notions of impossibilities. There is nothing impossible with God. And so that becomes our faith, and our focus. And when that which we’re believing doesn’t occur, it can become our pitfall. We’re then facing disappointment head on.
And the disappointments that we face as believers are sometimes greater than those experienced by unbelievers, because our hope is so much greater. *The greater your faith, the greater your disappointment is if that thing you‘re believing for doesn‘t happen. Or if it doesn’t happen when you were expecting it to happen. That’s not to say that our faith is always disappointed. But we don’t need any help when our expectations are met, and our faith is fulfilled. We need help when conditions fail to meet our faith.
And disappointment can lead to discouragement. *The two differ in this way: Disappointment is when your expectations are not met. Discouragement is when you fail to expect anything else. Disappointment comes when conditions fail to meet your expectations. Discouragement is when your disappointments cause you to not expect anything else. We have all been disappointed. We will constantly have to deal with disappointment, because things in this life will not always go the way we want them to go.
What we must guard against, though, is that we not let that disappointment lead to discouragement, where we don’t maintain any expectation of anything else positive coming our way. Discouragement is when we lack the courage to believe again. We simply cannot let that happen.
We need to know how to deal with disappointment and discouragement. The good news is that neither of the two leaves you in an irrecoverable position. You can get over both of them. Neither one of them has to be completely debilitating. Even if disappointment leads to discouragement, and you’re having trouble believing again, the good news is that discouragement doesn’t have to stay. It does not have to become a permanent part of your existence.
I believe that you need to be encouraged, knowing that discouragement is only to be a seasonal struggle. It does not have to dominate your life. It may come into your life, but it never has to remain as a part of your life. You can recover from disappointment, and from discouragement. You may feel like you can’t, but you can believe again, you can hope again, and faith can arise from the ashes of your despair.
I want us to look, first of all, at some facts about discouragement. I believe that even taking a closer look at it, and trying to identify and comprehend its consequences, we can get a better understanding about it. And when we begin to understand it, we begin to recognize why we must deal with it. The truth is, we don’t deal with anything usually, unless we see the absolute need. That’s what we need to see with discouragement. So let’s begin.
FACT ONE: Everyone deals with discouragement.
We all have times when our faith is crushed. We’ve stretched ourselves to believe for something, and then it doesn’t happen, and we’re left with stretch marks on our soul. We’re marked, not by fulfillment of our faith, but by the disappointment of our faith. We stretched, believing something was within our grasp, within our reach, and right when we thought we had it, it was gone. We were disappointed.
The truth is that all of us face discouragement. I cannot recount to you the times that I wanted to quit, wanted to run, wanted to give up. The disappointments were so overwhelming that I didn’t want to believe again, because I convinced myself that it would do no good. When we’re discouraged, disappointment becomes our only expectation, and the hope of anything positive coming our way vanishes away. We have all been there.
FACT TWO: Discouragement is contagious.
Isn’t that true? When we’re in those times of discouragement, of utter desperation, of seeming hopelessness, it can have the same effect on those people we communicate with. There have been many things that I have strongly believed were going to happen, until I told others what I believed.
And their perspective of perpetual disappointment caused me to disbelieve, and to falter in my faith for that particular thing. Some people are only discouraged because of the people they hang around. Discouragement is contagious, and can spread out of control in unstable hearts, that are not deeply rooted in their faith.
FACT THREE: Discouragement is increasable.
By that, I mean that, sometimes we put ourselves in the wrong place or position to defeat discouragement. You know, when you’re down, you don’t want to watch “Old Yeller,” or “Titanic,” which only reinforces our depressed mentality.
Discouragement is very easily increasable. It is all too easy to become more desperate and despondent. You have to watch the atmosphere you’re in, because, you are susceptible to finding yourself in a garden of gloom, where only discouragement and despair grow.
FACT FOUR: Discouragement leads to loneliness.
This is one of the most damaging effects of discouragement. You can find yourself feeling extremely isolated, and oftentimes, even when you’re in a crowd. You find yourself lonely at church, at work, in the home. You find yourself daydreaming, which is like doing emotional callisthenics, as you try to find the strength and stamina to hope again. You feel friendless and alone, isolated and aloof from everyone in your life.
And the thing is, discouragement can cause you to create a cave of isolation and loneliness, where, you’re not really alone, but discouragement can even twist your thinking enough to where you want to think that you’re alone. Discouragement does not want you to have company. Discouragement wants to be alone.
FACT FIVE: Discouragement causes us to run from responsibility.
When you’re discouraged, you rarely want any responsibilities. You don’t want anything that will require any emotional investment, because you’re running on empty. And things that you really should be doing, don’t get done, because you tend to run from responsibility when you’re discouraged. And you justify it by looking at what you’ve been through.
But life does go on. Life stops for no one. The kids still have to eat, the house still needs to be cleaned, the project still has to be done - but discouragement has this “give up on life,” “what’s the use,” and an “all consuming effect,” that causes you to want to drop out of life.
FACT SIX: Discouragement causes us to magnify minor problems.
You may experience a major problem in life. But discouragement serves to magnify problems that aren’t major, that aren’t threatening, that are not a crisis. Discouragement affects your mental approach to life with a skepticism and anticipation of more disappointment. And when you approach life with your only expectation being the disappointing of all other expectations, then minor problems turn into major problems. Discouragement causes us to magnify minor problems or issues, and make them out to be life threatening, potentially devastating circumstances. We exaggerate problems, making detours out to seem like devastation.
FACT SEVEN: Discouragement hinders our service to God.
Serving God is all about having hope. And it’s hard to get our lives to exude hopefulness, when we’re discouraged. But it also affects the level of our motivation. I have found that one of the hardest people to motivate is the discouraged believer. They’ve been disappointed. Things didn’t turn out well. And they get so overwhelmed by the negative turn of events in their life, that they are not the ones to discuss the future with. It’s real hard to get motivated when you’re discouraged. It affects our service to God.
FACT EIGHT: Discouragement comes before God’s deliverance.
There are always two responses that we can have to disappointment. We can react God’s way, or the wrong way. God does not cause discouragement, but He does have a purpose for disappointments. A faith that arise in the face of recurring disappointments brings Him much pleasure and much praise. We’ve all been disappointed, but we have not always responded in a favorable way.
I have found that God does not desire to use disappointment to destroy your faith, but to develop your faith. God wants to use the negative situations in life to produce a positive results in our lives, in our character. When we’re disappointed, it gives us an opportunity to grow. We can develop and build up our faith in those times, or we can respond in a despairing way that does not bring glory to God, but brings His actions or inactions into question.
In this, we can learn from Abraham. The Bible says that Abraham had no reason to hope. Now, understand, that what it means is that he had no apparent, natural reason to be hopeful, to believe, or have faith. Faith does not deny reality. Real faith admits the true nature of the situation, but then chooses to believe God in spite of the outlook.
Abraham believed God, when he had no good logical reason to believe Him. And as a result, Abraham became the father of many nations. The Bible says that he did not weaken, or stagger in his faith, but he believed God.
That wouldn’t mean anything, unless you understood the many years that Abraham waited to see the promise come to pass. There were times, when God had promised progress, that Abraham actually saw the situation regress, or go backwards. We’ve been there, haven’t we? To regress means “to go back, lose headway, lose ground, retreat, revert, move back, relapse, or degenerate.” Things seemingly moved in the wrong direction.
*Now don’t misunderstand: Looking at the life of Abraham, we do see that at times he had fluctuations in his faith. It was up and down. He made some mistakes, and made some wrong decisions. But he did not lose his faith!
That’s the key. No one is saying that you have to be full of faith all the time. That would be great, but it’s not realistic. But you do have to guard against losing all hope and belief and trust. We will all have fluctuations of our faith, where sometimes we’re strong in faith, and at other times we’re weaker. But we cannot lose ALL faith.
We cannot allow ourselves to remain in a chronic state of discouragement, where we don’t want to believe, or even hear any suggestion about faith or believing. Abraham fluctuated in his faith, and he is called the father of the faith. Abraham did not lose all faith. In fact, when the Bible describes the status of his faith, the Bible says, “He became strong or strengthened in faith, not staggering at the promise, but was fully confident that what God had promised, He was also able to perform.”
In other words, Abraham knew that God’s mouth wasn’t bigger than His hand. He knew that what God said He would do, that God was able to do it. That’s what we have to do. When disappointments come, and what we were counting on happening falls through, we have to spend time “assessing the regressing.”
You have to look at the direction things are going in, admit that it doesn’t look like it’s moving in faith’s favor, and then decide to have faith anyway. This kind of faith says, “It’s regressing, it’s worsening, the situation is less likely to turn out okay - but I believe God anyway.” There may be no visible reason to believe God, but you choose to believe Him anyway. You “hope against hope,” and believe God in spite of all the negative evidence. Let me tell you the ninth fact about discouragement.
FACT NINE: Discouragement is a choice.
You may not believe that, because nobody thinks that they would choose to be discouraged. But we do. Discouragement is a choice. Faith is a choice. In fact, discouragement and faith are on opposite ends of the same choice. You can choose doubt and discouragement, or faith and encouragement. It’s our choice.
You have to determine which life you want to live. A life of discouragement, or a life of faith. It’s your choice. A life of faith is not a life where everything is perfect. A life of faith is a life where things go wrong - sometimes major wrong - and believes God anyway! That’s the choice of faith that we all can make.
And let me tell you this in closing. In v. 22, we learn that we gain God’s approval when we choose to have faith. Hebrews 11:6 also says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” If you want God to be supportive of you, and to be pleased with you, then you have to choose to believe, to have faith, and to hope against hope if you have to.
When you assess the situation and it seems to be regressing, and you seem to be losing ground, at that point you reach a crossroads. You can choose to get discouraged over it, or you can choose to have faith. I urge you to choose faith. Make the choice that will please God, and will make life a thousand times more enjoyable for you.
When you’re assessing the regressing, make the choice of faith in the face of discouragement. Abraham can tell you, you’ll be glad you did.
