When God Disappoints

I wish I knew. The story of my life. I don’t really know how to overcome it at this point. Just been feeling really mad at God about it. :/

This is incredible. Thank you for setting these things down in words, something I’ve been trying to do for ages. In my case, it was my mother. She was the most godly person I ever knew, and from my earliest memories, she suffered indescribable pain, first in her back and then in a shattered arm. I couldn’t understand how God could let one of his most beautiful servants endure all that, and I nearly lost my faith because of it. She wouldn’t let me. She explained, not for the first time, that it’s not our job to know the why. Our job is to do the what and worship the who. Her all-time favorite song, which I got to sing at her funeral, says “Known only to Him are the great hidden secrets…I know not what the future holds but I know who holds the future; it’s a secret known only to Him.”

The older I get, the more comfortable I am with that answer. Why did this happen? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. The real question is, what am I going to do about it? Any more, that’s enough for me.

I have had many instances where I had unanswered prayers and started to be disappointed with God, but then I thought to myself, “Who are you to be disappointed in him? The times when you earnestly prayed for him not to take his gift of your daughter away, Twice! He answered and granted your request. And twice, you were completely undeserving.”

I have come to the realization that God has every right to be disappointed in me. I don’t follow all the rules, I don’t read my bible everyday, or even every week. I struggle with tithing. I think, my money is so tight I don’t have spare for God. I’ll give of myself instead let him use me and my time for his cause instead, but that’s not what He asked for.

My point I guess is, every time I start to allow myself to feel disappointed in God, a good hard look in the mirror erases those feelings. Yes, I said feelings because that’s exactly what it is. Thoughts are logical, analytical, and without bias. Disappointment in God is akin to a child being mad at their parents for not getting what he/she wanted.

Sorry my response was so long, for those people who are much more deserving than me, I don’t know the answer for you, just sharing the answer for me.

I’m sitting on the floor, tears coming down my face, heater on my feet. Thinking of the losses, the hurts, the disappointments. I’m so there. And I’m thankful for a Daddy who comes beside me and puts a big warm blanket over the rest of me, brings me chocolate and and a tissue and says, “It’s going to be ok, honey. It’s pretty tough. I understand. I love you. I’m not leaving.”

Thank you Brian for sharing such a personal and emotional experience. You are blessed with a gift of writing. Your writing is wonderful and helps so many people. Without God, these experiences are hard to handle, that I know. With God, we know his plans are greater. Thanks…

I have also experienced disappointment, and I apologize in advance for the length of this comment, but my experience of disappointment and grief was also quite lengthy, so I hope this (comparably shorter) version will do it justice. What perspectives have helped me in dealing with being disappointed by God? The perspective of Jesus as he prayed the night before his crucifixion. To paraphrase, “God, my Father, I know that all things are possible for you. If you wish, you can take this cup from me. Nevertheless, let it not be as I will, but as you Will.”

The themes in that verse really helped me in dealing with the disappointment I experienced after leaving my church. I left because I got to a place in my thinking where the message I was hearing at church did not line up with the things I was experiencing in my spirit. I guess I realized that I needed a sanctuary in which I could continue the process of working out my faith, with fear & trembling.. (And I had come to notice that it seemed like a majority of people at my church were more interested in, shall we say, ‘the process of assembling the heart-shaped boxes which hold the sugar cookies and warm milk we served to each of our first-time guests’….There were more than enough people working on that project, and I wanted real spiritual food, so I thought I would step out in faith and allow my curiosity to lead me to a place where I could find the answers to my more difficult questions.) So, I ended my relationship and stopped going to that church. It had simply become unbearable for me to try and merge the easy bible verse fixes I was being taught, with the incredibly real and in-my-face problems I was experiencing in my life. I needed a God that was real and powerful, not cliché and marketable. When I left, the lifestyle change alone was horrible. Then there was the feeling that I was suddenly insignificant to all of the people whom I thought I had built lifelong friendships with. But I think the hardest part was sensing that God had distanced Himself from me due to my human choice to no longer participate in something which my human heart & human mind were so opposed to. And that was the most disappointing thing.. I felt, “God, God, why have you forsaken me? Yesterday I was part of Your ‘A-Team’ and today I am a hungry dog in the street, I thought You and Me were ‘good’, ya know? I thought that following my discernment was supposed to make me feel better, not worse…” Wow, disappointed by my God, my church, my friends, self, and my overall pitiful life all at the same time.

Fast forward through a couple years of emotional and mental suffering as I worked on wading through the truth, lies, scriptures, teachings, and culture I had programmed into my brain as Law, and I heard the same thing as Andre Green mentioned hearing, “Your struggles are not for you, they are for someone else.” And in the midst of my pain, that message lit a spark in my mind. It must have come at a point in my life when I was wrestling with the options of live/die, believe/give up, because the Word’s message was more promising than any other option I had been mulling over. So I took it to heart, and I made it a sort of mission to find the center of my darkness, and to be fully, and fearfully present within my storm. And it hurt every day. A lot. And there was still no recognizable sense of God’s protection. There was no “sense” of God’s presence at all, because my whole paradigm of what that meant had been shifted.

And what I truly learned through the years of exhaustive searching that followed, was that there is no magic button, or pill, or prayer that can heal my wounds, and reconcile me to peace with Gods plan for my life. Until God builds within me the new vision, there is only the loss of the old vision, and there is only time.. And either I will sit in the pain of mourning my loss, suffering until God says it’s over.. or I will sit in the pain and suffering, absorbing & learning everything I can about the experience of loss, until God says it’s over.

So that’s what I did… since I could see no hope of an early rescue, I had to come to terms with my pain possibly being a tool for something useful in the future. “You can take this cup from me at any time, but yet I want Your plan for my life more than my own.” I made it my mantra, “If this is what You have for me, then I will share in the suffering of the cross. I will dwell richly in the deepness of this darkness. And if my God is real, that is where He shall find me.” I feel that He called me out to the wilderness, to experience the humanness of my state, to learn to wait on His timing, and in the end to discover that He had been there in the breeze whispering, watching like the stars, and healing my heart all along. Now, that’s a poetic description of an awfully painful experience, but now when disappointments come, I give them time to sink in and saturate me with their importance before I react with resistance. (If you read that through to the end, then thank you) -Dani

I know this one is a bit old but I thought I’d throw in my 2 cents from being one of those annoying people who claims to “get it.” Although I will say right now that I can’t possibly understand all of His reasoning because there is so much that goes into all of it. But I can say that over time I learn and understand some of the main reasons for why he allows me to suffer. Every time he lets me trip, drown, fall off cliffs (metaphorically I might add) He teaches me an important lesson every single time. I’m past asking why because most of the time I now already know by now what He’s doing. There is a verse somewhere in the bible where it says that God loves those he burdens the most. He burdened me with so much pain and agony that I nearly took my life 3 times but because of all of that I learned the meaning of life. I think I finally understand a little bit more of what he was asking the day that I met Him in heaven that day. It wasn’t just about my salvation; he was explaining alot more than I ever thought he would in only 3 words that were never actually spoken. All that pain and suffering was to help me understand and love the hearts of others and to see past all of the mistakes in their lives. All of that suffering was to show me how to connect them to His Love. Because of that I now understand the meaning of life whether others agree or disagree about the answer is not a matter to take up with me. Love is not only the greatest commandment but it’s also the meaning of life summed up in one word that is the most powerful feeling and action ever displayed. Once God taught me that lesson; no matter how many times I curse him out and scream at Him I always know that He’s there watching and waiting. I put all my trust in God no matter what now and I don’t question His motives, I give Him all of my life and trust Him only. I used to cry every day and wished every moment to die and now I smile every day because I love Him now and I finally see Him as just… Dad.