NEW CHRISTIANS-Discipleship Basics-Disappointments-by David Nelson

Posted: 2007-01-04 19:50:36

Dealing with disappointments—Don’t give up!

Scripture verses referenced in this study:

II Cor. 12:9-10
Phil. 2:13
1 Cor. 29-31
Job 1: 1, 8
Job 2: 2, 3, 10
Job 38: 2
Job 42: 7,8

Satan wants you to give up and stop being a Christian. He is called the accuser of the brethren.  He not only accuses others in your ears but he will accuse you, too. He does this by telling you that you are too sinful or that you fail too much, and that God really cannot use someone like you. He makes you feel that you’re not going to make it as a Christian, it’s too hard of a road, no matter how hard you try you’re not getting anywhere; you might as well hang it up and just live for the world. Satan wants you to quit. He wants you to say, “I’m too weak, I can’t make it.”

We can be disappointed in our circumstances because things often happen that we didn’t expect and didn’t want. We will always be disappointed in others because people fail us, and they don’t always match up to our expectations.  And we will always be disappointed in ourselves because we try to match up with what the Lord wants and we try to please him, but then we fall short of what we had hoped to do. We must recognize that we are weak.  I don’t mean for us to use that as a shallow excuse but it is still true. The apostle Paul recognized that he was weak, he said, “I am weak, but I will rejoice in my weaknesses, because I am not looking to myself or my own abilities, but I am looking to God.” (II Cor.12:9-10).  My confidence is in God; God is the one at work in me who will create the good in me.  Phil. 2:13 says that “God is at work in us, both to desire and to do his good pleasure.”  Many times in my life this verse and the truth of this verse has given me strength. When look at myself and say, “Dave, look at how you are failing, you might as well give up and go whole hog back into the world, you are not worthy of God or worthy to be called his servant, look at the areas you are failing in.”  It’s at these moments that Satan will zero in on a few areas of our life and make us feel a lot of guilt. Yes, we should feel guilty about sin in our lives but not to the point where we stop being a Christian over it. That’s why Phil. 2:13 has been such a comfort to me, it says, “God is at work in us, both to desire and to do his good pleasure.”  God will put the desire in us to do what is right (Has he not given us a new nature that longs and desires to do what is right?), and God will also make sure that we actually do that which we desire, for he will give us the strength to defeat sin in our lives.  God is at work in us both for the desire (we must want to do right), and he knows how to do the accomplishing through us also. God is the one, he is our righteousness. Another verse that should give us confidence in the Lord is I Cor. 1:29, where it says, ‘No human being will be able to boast in the presence Of the Lord.”  No human being will be able to stand in the presence of the Lord and say, “Wasn’t I strong for you, didn’t I go out and try to win the lost, didn’t I serve you, didn’t I do this and that for you” because it was God at work in us to desire and to do his good pleasure. God gave us the desire to pray, and then he moved in our hearts to actually go and do it. That’s why, when you look at yourself and your own failures, you are going to be disappointed, but when you look at God you should say, no one will be able to boast in his presence; he is the source of our life in Christ Jesus( I Cor. 1:30), he is the source of our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification, our redemption; “therefore as it is written, ‘Let him who boasts, boast of the Lord.’” (I Cor. 1:31)  If we look at ourselves too much, we have missed the point concerning who is the source of our righteousness.

The whole book of Job is based on the fact that Satan wanted to prove that Job was more sinful than he actually was (or at least he wanted God’s creation (Job) to fail and God’s name to be tarnished). Yes, Satan may say absolutely true things to us or about us, but he may also add untrue conclusions, like, “You’ll never be able to overcome that sin.”  But God says, “I am at work in you, both to desire and to do my good pleasure” and there is no sin in your life that I (God) cannot defeat, in time. The three or four men who came to talk to Job while he was sick, and after all his calamities, thought that his troubles were caused by sin in his life that he was not owning up to. These men were trying to tell Job why they thought he was being punished by God for something he had done wrong. They were trying to tell him he was sinful, but God said at the beginning of the book of Job that Job was righteous and blameless, and God said at the end of the book that these men spoke what was wrong concerning Job, and that Job spoke what was right (Job kept saying to them that he had done nothing to deserve what he was getting, and God said Job was right). Do you see how Satan accuses us, and tries to get us going in the wrong direction, and how Satan can even use other people to accuse us? These men were very eloquent and their words sounded kind, considerate, and reasonable, they were not mean, shaking their fists in the air, they sounded plausible But isn’t that just how Satan works, not obvious, not strong enough to scare you away, very subtle.  Satan says, “Job, why do you think this has come upon you, do you think there might be something wrong with how you have been doing things, could it be a little pride that is causing you to think that you do not deserve this?” Satan wanted to get Job’s eyes on himself, so that he would feel defeated. But Job was not defeated, he came through all his trials with God’s approval, at the beginning of the book and at the end of the book. Job 1:1, 1:8, 2:2, 2:10.  Job 38:2 (God said concerning Elihu).  Job 42:7, 8 (God said to Eliphaz).  God said that all these people who told you that you must have sin in your life for God to allow this to happen to you, they were wrong. God said. “I did not do this to correct you or punish you, but my final answer as to why I allowed all this to happen I have chosen not to reveal to you at this time. So, do not let Satan’s reasonings sidetrack you from God’s Word or God’s steadfast love for you. God is the author and finisher of our faith. He started us on the path, he knows how to keep us on track, and he knows how to finish the pottery he is working on till it is just the way he wants it. But you might say, “Can’t we willfully walk away from God, can’t we be uncooperative and ruin some of God’s plans for us?”  Yes, we can walk away from God, but we must not fall into Satan’s trap and walk away from God because we are disappointed in our own performance before God. God said that he would help us overcome sin in our lives in his time, as long as we don’t try to hide sin from God or hide from God ourselves, but we confess our sin, walk in the light (not hiding from God), then he will stand by us and forgive our sins in the blood of Jesus, and he will work in us both to desire and to do that same good that we desire. Can we slow down or ruin some of God’s plans for us? I believe that it is possible that we can choose some detours that lead to dead ends, but who is to say what purposes God might have in our experiences that God might use them to perfect us, and how God can work all things together for good in the end.

The final word is that God is at work in us, and that we should not let Satan fool us into leaving this God who is on our side, and who wants us to trust him to produce his righteousness in us. Let us not look at ourselves and our failures too much, but let us long for his purity, let us look unto the Lord. Remember that the opposite of faith is being troubled? Well, if you are troubled about your own spiritual progress, or troubled about your own ability to overcome sin, is that not a lack of faith in God? Did he not say that he was at work in us to overcome sin? The only question is when is he going to do it. The Word says that he is at work in us.  Have you not seen some changes in your life that shows that God’s hand is with you? Yes, there have been some reversals and some downfalls that you thought you would never come out of, but is this not exactly what Job went through? Was not Satan at work to destroy him, and did not Job have to fight the battle with the shield of faith? He had to believe that God was for him even when it seemed that God was coming against him for no cause (God was allowing Satan to come against him for no cause (Job 2:3)). Can we believe God, too, even when the righteousness we long for is slow in coming, or the trials we suffer don’t seem to go away, or seem to have no rhyme or reason? God is our source; we shall look to him, and believe him.