I. Introduction
A. In Paul Harvey’s “For What It’s Worth Department” there was a story about a man named Speedy Morris. Speedy was a basketball coach for LaSalle University. He was shaving one day when his wife called out to tell him he was wanted on the phone by Sports Illustrated. Speedy Morris was so excited by the prospect of national recognition that he nicked himself with his razor and ran –with a mixture of blood and lather on his face—down the hall promptly falling down the stairs. Limping and in some physical distress he finally got to the phone and the voice on the other line said: “For just seventy five cents an issue you can get a one year trial subscription….” (from Nelson’s Complete Book of Stories, Illustrations and Quotes, 2000, pg. 222).
B. The pain of disappointment, (slight pause) a pain each of us is all too familiar with. Disappointment because a loved one has let us down, disappointment in grades, our children, employers, or in our selves. The word-disappoint sounds benign, uneventful, and insignificant. That is until it becomes personal, personal like the pain of newspaper editor from a few years ago.
1. One of his top reports had phoned in a breaking story. The story was about an empty truck that had blown a tire and then rolled down a hill and smashed into a home. The editor was unimpressed and when the reporter came into his office he told him he wasn’t going to run the story because it wasn’t big enough or important enough to bother with. “I’m glad you’re taking this so calmly,” the reporter said, “Because it was your house the truck smashed into!”
2. When disappointment comes, no matter what it entails, it doesn’t seem so small or unimportant. It’s personal and it hurts whether its being dumped by the girl or guy you like in High School, being rejected by a college or employer, being disappointed in a friend who let you down, disappointed with your salary or job, your mother or father, sister or brother. Disappointment is more than a benign word. It is an emotional upheaval that brings the daily events of life crashing down driving us into depression, worry, bouts of anxiety and frustration.
C. But we are Christians, aren’t we? I mean we have the greatest reason for hope. We aren’t supposed to be sad, depressed or disappointed. We are supposed to rely on God in our times of despair and that takes care of it, doesn’t it? (pause)
1. If it were only so easy! I think that’s why I like the Psalms. For they don’t just paint this lovely, unrealistic ideal of life in Christ. For while the author is after God’s heart, a man who is truly seeking to follow God. He is also a man who sometimes feels no matter what he does he just can’t get ahead, he just can’t get a handle on life. That his enemy, the Enemy of disappointment, despair and death is always just around the corner trying to sabotage him.
2. God understands those feelings. He knows there are times in all of our lives when life just seems to get the better of us. That’s why he has given us His Word, not to say, “get a stiff upper lip”—“grow up” “poke those lip in before you trip over them”, but to realistically guide us through pain to the comfort of his eternal peace.
II. Ecclesiastes 3:1,4 says “There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heaven: a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance” – When faced with disappointment God says first and foremost FEEL THE HURT AND CRY
A. Oh, I know Big Boys Don’t Cry. I mean it is okay for me to tell the women of the church to “Feel the hurt and cry. But, men, men are not suppose to lose control of their emotions, openly cry, worry or express overwhelming disappoint and sadness. I typed Big Boys Don’t Cry in my search engine and this story popped up
1. “Ted had been talking freely about himself and his child, and then he stopped and looked up at the ceiling. The ten other men in the room, seated in a circle along with me as the facilitator, all waited patiently and with some curiosity for him to continue. We had gathered to discuss the challenges for fathers raising children with disabilities. Before long the waiting became uneasy, so I asked if there was anything else he wanted to share. Still looking at the ceiling, he answered hesitantly, "There’s so much I want to say, but if I say any more, I’ll cry...and I don’t think I’ll be able to stop."
2. It became obvious that he was looking up in order to keep the tears in his eyes from overflowing. As he slowly lowered his head and faced the other men, a tear rolled slowly down his left cheek. What an awkward but tender expression of male emotion. The man who was sitting on Ted’s right reached over and put his arm around his comrade. This incident was the catalyst for the other men to open up, and many did so with tears in their eyes and deep feeling in their voices.
3. One man’s reluctant openness released the other men from the taboo against expressing their depth of feeling. Is it because we have held it in so long that men believe that if we cry the tears won’t stop? As we approached school age, most of us [men] were taught that "big boys don’t cry."To enforce that injunction, those who couldn’t hold back the tears had to endure the humiliation of being called a "girl" or a "sissy" or a "fairy." But where do the tears go?” (“Big Boys Don’t Cry: At Least on the Outside” By Robert Naseef, Ph.D.)
4. Tears when they are held inside intensify the pain, bring on high blood pressure, heart attacks and illness not just in men but women too.
5. Crying isn’t a sign of weakness
B. It is a natural, cleansing gift given by God
1. It isn’t an accident that we cry. We were created that way. Tears were part of God’s original plan. They didn’t just evolve years later. They are part of who and what we are. They are an expression of thought, feelings and emotion. They separate us from the animal world.
2. Jesus himself wept. John 11:33, 35 “Jesus saw her weeping, and he saw how the people with her were weeping also; his heart was touched and he was deeply moved…[and then] Jesus wept.” TEV
3. If God is omnipotent, all powerful…If God knows everything, he knows what is best for us and He says there is a time to cry and mourn a time to allow tears to cleanse us.
C. Openly facing the grief of heartbreak and disappoint begins the journey to hope – by washing away the pain of the past.
III. And then when there are no more tears of disappointment to be cried – CONCENTRATE ON THINGS THAT ARE CALMING
A. Phil 4:8 “Whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable -- if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”
B. Today’s society is caught up in noise and confusion. Its music is loud and thunderous; its entertainment is explosive, and mind boggling. TV shows aren’t meant to be clam and soothing, newspapers aren’t meant to make you feel better. The world chants disaster, murder and mayhem at us from every angle increasing our feelings of hopelessness and regret.
C. To counteract that roller coaster ride of disappointment and fear in this world we have to stand in the still in the elevator of life and listen to the music. We need to slow down and fellowship with God in the quiet of nature. To let the hills, valleys and streams bring relaxation. To listen to the soothing sounds of hymns in the church. To pray and fellowship with God while meditating on his promises.
D. To think good thoughts - I can’t help but think about the Disney movie Peter Pan. When Wendy, Michael and John want to do the impossible, fly, Peter tells them to think good thoughts. And it is their good thoughts that lifts them up as they fly off to Never Neverland.
E. “Marcus Aurelius, one of the great thinkers of antiquity,[put’s it this way, he] said, ‘A man’s life is what his thoughts make of it.’” (Norman Vincent Peale)
F. We are what we allow our mind to think. It changes the way we feel when we concentrate on things that are calming and then, and only then, in the face of disappoint we can
IV. COOPERATE WITH THE INEVITABLE CONDITIONS OF LIFE
A. Rom. 8:28 says “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.” We as Christians say we believe the Bible and yet, many Christians still suffer the stress of disappointment because they struggle with and fight against inevitable conditions. They think they have the power to change things, that if they just do this or that, if they can just come up with a way to control things, if they’re good enough, if they just pray hard enough…. We are constantly trying to fix life to be, and get what we want out of it. But, life is truly out of our control but not His.
B. Jesus conquered the stress of disappointment by not fretting about difficult situations. He simply accepted them “not my will but thine.”
C. .Sometimes we must accept situations that we are powerless to change,
1. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference.” (Serenity Prayer)
2. We can have peace in the midst of disappointment by doing our best in complex circumstances and trusting God for the rest-- by
V. RELYING ON THE PROMISE OF HIS PROVIDENTIAL POWER
A. Disappointment is the result of getting less than what we expected or wanted. This world and the people in if will always fall short of our expectations, wants and needs. But God will never will. For His power exceeds anything you or I can image.
1. Ephesians 3:20 says “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or image, according to his power that is at work within us to him be glory in the church and in Jesus Christ throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”
2. (from the Sermon “God is Able” by Dennis McCaughnahay on Sermon Central) This is a fun phrase in the original language for Paul uses a double compound word. In essence, he makes up his own word phrase. He is so caught up in the BIGNESS and AWESOMENESS of God, he creates a new word phrase to make his point…He stacks words upon each other in an attempt to say…
· God is not just Big but He is – Big-uhmundo-huge-a-riffic
· Awe-Magni-great-more-big-fully. Super-beyond-erful. Incredi-outragous-i-dible
· Beyond words – Paul is morphing all these words together to make his point…
· Paul is saying that God is -- Incredibly Incredible. Extravagantly Extravagant. Awesomely Awseome in His Awesomeness. Infinitely Infinite – all the time…
3. God is big enough and able enough to handle any situation we face And He promises in all his wisdom and power “to never to leave or forsake you” Hebrew 13:5.
B. When we rely on the promise of God and his providential omnipotent power the words of Psalm 62 become more than mere type of black and white but the arms of our loving God lifting us up, strengthening us in face of disappointment.
1. READ THE PSALM again this time beginning at 6
VI. Closing:
A. In 1874, hymn writer Frances Ridley Havergal wrote a poem for the New Years and printed it on specially designed greeting cards for friends. The stanza said:
Another year is dawning; Dear Father, let it be
In working or in waiting; Another year with Thee;
Another year of progress; Another year of praise,
Another year of proving, Thy presence all the days.
1. As it turned out she needed that prayer, because just a few days later she suffered a stunning disappointment. She was hoping to be launched in America as an author and her agent in New York had made reassuring promises and claims. Then came a letter that she thought would bear the first of many royalty checks. Instead it reported that her publisher had gone bankrupt in the New York Stock Market crash of 1873.
2. But As Frances had only recently turned all her affairs over to the Lord, she bore the crisis with peace, writing to a friend:
(a) I have just had such a blessing the shape of what would have been only two months ago a really bitter blow to me…I was expecting a letter, from America, enclosing thirty five pounds now due to me and possibly news that [my book] was going on like steam. The letter has come, and, instead of all this, my publisher has failed in the universal crash. He holds my written promise to publish only with him as the condition of his launching me, so this is not simply a little loss , but an end to all my American prospects of either cash, influence, or fame, at any rate for a long time to come.
(b) I really had not expected that He [God] would do for me so much above all that I asked, as not merely to help me to acquiesce in this, but positively not to feel it at all and only to rejoice in it as a clear test of the reality of victorious faith which I do find brightening almost daily. Two months ago this would have been a real trial to me, for I had built a good deal on my American prospects; now “thy will be done” is not a sigh but only a song. (Nelson’s Complete Book of Stories, Illustrations and Quotes, 2000, pg. 221)
B. I don’t mind telling you that this week has been a week of several personal disappointments and challenges. None worth mentioning or discussing at this point. But, preparing this sermon, living out this sermon by personally applying the points of Feeling the Hurt and Crying, Concentrating on Things that are Calming, Cooperating with the Inevitable Conditions and Relying on the promise of His Providential Power truly has given life for me to the words “not a sigh but a song.” My prayer is that he will do they will do the same for you.
Amen and Amen
