We all feel a void in our lives at certain times. We feel empty inside, and it can be overwhelming and very lonely. Sometimes, we convince ourselves that a relationship with a human being can feel up our empty places and that this person can be everything to us. This kind of thinking will always lead to disappointment. Within all of us, there is an inexplicable yearning. Some of us can be well into our adult years before we recognize it’s cry, but others of us sense it at a very young age. We have an acute awareness that something is missing. We are convinced that this something will make us whole. Whether it is a goal, a relationship, a person, a job, a house, more money, or car, we tell ourselves that if we can just have it, we will be fulfilled, and our worlds will be set right. This is an illusion, and when the bubble bursts, the disappointment is often devastating.
God is our Creator—our Everything. The hunger in our souls is one for Him, but we look everywhere else to find what can only be found in our Heavenly Father. We set ourselves up for disappointment in this way, and once we’ve experienced a deep disappointment, the heartbreak of it is imprinted on our consciousness as something we never want to experience again. We sometimes get stuck because we don’t know how to walk in faith in this area. First, the thoughts of what we’ve been through still stings. Secondly, we’re trying to work through that while also wrestling with the reality that God didn’t rescue us from our own feelings the first time. He allowed us to go through that pain, and we’re wondering if that will be the case yet again. How can we have confidence in our choices and decisions if we can’t figure out how to grab hold of the safety net?
Some of us have gotten to a place where we just flat out refuse to embrace joy for fear of another disappointment and heartbreak. We might look back over our lives the past ten or twelve years and find that we missed much of it because we were always ruminating and preparing for the worst. We can have good jobs, money in the bank, a roof over our heads, reasonably good health, people who love us, and food on the table, yet none of these extremely wonderful blessings resonates with joy within us. Our level of gratitude and thankfulness to God never exceeds our fear of impending disappointment or failure. We must remove the blinders and see that our doubt in God’s ability and power to help us reach a place of true joy steals from us.
All of us are sometimes shocked by the mistakes we’ve made in the past, and we’re even more so over what those mistakes have cost us. We keep thinking about them, repeatedly playing them in our heads because we can’t get over the reality that we betrayed our higher good for something or someone that simply wasn’t worth the price we paid. We were supposed to be grown-ups who do all the right things and say all the right words. The truth is that we can be as old as Methuselah, and we will still be children who make mistakes. We will always need God because our minds and emotions are more fragile than we’d like to admit. The solution isn’t to fake joy, but to take our sadness to the One who fathers us through all our pain.
In Jeremiah 29:11(NIV), God sheds light on His incomparable, unlimited and absolute sovereignty, control, and intelligence. He said, ““For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”” If you and I miss this, our fear of disappointment might continue to trick us. God is the One with the plan for our lives. Acts 17:28 tells us that He alone has appointed the times and places of our births, and His desire is that we continually seek Him in all things with full confidence that He will show us the way.
He will help and He will heal
God tells us in Philippians 4:6-7(NLT), “6 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. 7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” He’s giving us a strategy here to deal with any anxiety, disappointment, struggle, or sadness we encounter in life. God is the ultimate authority on everything. He is sovereign and can never hold a position of second place. So, we can’t place our emotions and feelings above our obedience and faith in His Word. Adam and Eve did that, and things didn’t go well. Our responsibility is to take everything that burdens us to God and have faith that He will help and heal us in a way that no other can.
In Proverbs 3:5-6(NLT), He commands us to, “5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. 6 Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.” Our hearts are the places of our hurt. They are also the places where we can worship God in spirit and truth and be filled with His glory. The heart is the place where God is commanding us to put Him—His power, love, joy, peace, and goodness—above our pain, above the sting of disappointment. We might think to ourselves, “Well, how do I do that?” Trusting God is spiritual, this means that it must be done spiritually. When we attempt to do anything spiritual in Christ, it must be done through God’s Holy Spirit who lives within us. We cannot do anything towards, for, by, with, or through God’s Kingdom without His Holy Spirit.
Jesus Christ said in John 14:26(ESV), “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” The Holy Spirit is our Helper, Teacher, and Guide. He is within us, and rest assured, within us is where we desperately need the Spirit’s help. Our souls are entangled, fragmented, and spiritually malnourished because we have not allowed them to adequately feast on the truth of God’s Word, but the Spirit knows exactly what we need. He knows what we need to hear, see, and experience so that we are strengthened in God’s wisdom, and will not make the same mistakes repeatedly.
Jesus Christ tells us in Matthew 6:33(ESV), “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” As born-again believers that have accepted Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior, we have everything we need to do as he commands. We must have a desire and an intention to make pleasing God by obeying His Word our highest priority. This must be felt in our hearts, and when it is, we will have given the Holy Spirit permission to work within us.
Philippians 2:13(NLT) says, “For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.” He accomplishes this through His Spirit. Through the Spirit, God will work in us, and He will give us the desire and the power to do what pleases Him, but He will not overstep our free-will in order to make this happen. God doesn’t force His goodness and blessings on us. We must come into agreement with Him by having faith that He will do what He says.
Ephesians 1:3(NLT) wonderfully proclaims, “All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ.” We need joy in our lives and God has supplied it through Jesus Christ! Colossians 2:9-10(NLT) says, “9 For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body. 10 So you also are complete through your union with Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority.” Again, everything that we need to live in total joy is within us. You may not know the path to all the treasures within that Christ has given you, but the Spirit does. By ourselves, we can’t get there, but with the power of the Holy Spirit, we can have confidence that we can release our fear of disappointment, turn our sadness to joy, and live with the power and authority of Jesus Christ.■
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV) is adapted from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. All rights reserved.
THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by Permission of Biblica, Inc.® All rights reserved worldwide.
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“The Fear of Disappointment”, written for Springfield Fellowship © 2023. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.