Disregarded Series : God, You've Disappointed Me

Your relationship with God is intimate, full of excitement and the display of His faithfulness in your life is more than evident. You’re growing in faith day by day as each prayer is unravelled before your eyes. Your zeal for such a great God cannot seem to be contained.

Time passes and a situation, person, expectation or event, spirals you into the uncomfortable feeling of disappointed in God. Your heart is confused at your unmet expectation. You’re even more frustrated at this unshakable feeling of disappointment in the perfect God you believed to be good.

Being disappointed in God is one of the most common and yet unspoken emotions that the believer experiences as they journey with God. What do we do in the midst of our belief, trust and hope being shattered?

            Let’s start with this truth.

Your failure to perceive the way God is operating on your behalf does not equate to the failure of God.

There are three things we must consider when dealing with these moments of discouragement in our walk with God. All three require enough vulnerability to examine our hearts with the help of the Holy Spirit.

(1)  We must not limit our prayers to our finite understanding of how it should be answered.

In Ephesians 3:20-21, Paul exalts God by saying ‘now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.’ We see clearly in the scripture that God is one who exceeds our expectations because of HIS divine ability and sovereignty. How foolish is it of us to put a cap on the God who has already exposed Himself to be able to do beyond what we could ever fathom? We must hold to the fact that God is not subject to our prayers, but our prayers are subject to God. In the midst of your prayers, you must remember that God is not limited to the words that come off of your tongue. But rather, He is attentively listening and aligning your pleas with His perfect will for your life. Many times, this sovereign alignment leaves believers in a place of disappointment, confusion and frustration with God. Our deep desire for our petitions to come to pass can sometimes allow for Pauls exhortation of God to slip our minds.

God is answering prayers in many ways, forms and methods. That is not for you to decide. It’s not your place to dictate how He answers or when He answers. It is your role to ensure that your heart stays in position as you wait upon God to do exceedingly and abundantly above your own perception. Submit your honest expectation of your answered prayer and ask God to help you to pray with a fresh revelation of His infinite power and understanding.

(2)  Examine who’s will you really want to prevail.

In Psalm 139: 23-24 David cries out ‘search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!’ We, like David, need to ask the Lord to expose the true motive of our heart when we are in our prayer closet. It is easy to say the four words ‘thy will be done’ with our lips, whilst our heart is saying ‘as long as it matches up with what I’m praying for.’

In the garden of Gethsemane before the hour of His arrest, Jesus finds Himself on His face before the Father asking that if possible, His cup of suffering (His coming death) would be taken from Him. The end of the Saviour’s prayer is startling to most as He concludes by saying ‘nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.’ None could even imagine how Jesus must have felt knowing that He was about to be crucified despite His perfection. If Jesus managed to pray the sincere prayer for the Father’s will to come to pass in relation to an undeserved death, how much more should we be able to pray this with sincerity about less extreme circumstances? By following the example of our Lord, we are not only praying from a heart of humility but we are ensuring that our hope is in Gods sovereignty. By genuinely praying for Gods will to be done, you break the limitation of your prayer to just what you can verbally express, so that the perfect power of God can be manifested in your life.

(3)  Do not let it drive you away from the secret place!

Discouragement is such a subtle tool of the enemy, especially when it stems from a place of offence towards God. John 10:10 reminds us of the agenda of the enemy to ‘steal and kill and destroy.’ Many periods of disappointment arise because of a spiritual attack (Ephesians 6:12) – in an attempt to steal our hope, kill our confidence in God and destroy our relationship with Him.

Maybe you have experienced that feeling of your faith being belittled because of previous disappointment. No matter how much you try, you can’t bring yourself to really pray for what you want because in your mind ‘God didn’t come through last time.’ We must stand FIRM in these discouraging moments. The easiest way for the enemy to get you off track is to pull you away from the secret place - the place where you can be vulnerable with the Father about your emotions, desires and plans. If He can rob your confidence in Gods ability to hear your and answer your prayer, He can naturally prevent you even drawing near to God in the first place.

We must remain encouraged to fight back with the word of God (Ephesians 6:17) and trust in the consistency of our God. Psalm 34:17 tells us that ‘when the righteous cry out for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.’ He is not a God who is oblivious to the cries of the heart, but most definitely answers in accordance to what He knows His children need. Refuse to lose hope. Choose to pray with boldness and the authority that you have as a disciple of Christ. Pray with assurance that no matter what the previous season entailed, no matter how things panned out last year, God is listening and ready to move on your behalf. Maintain your confidence in the place of prayer, by meditating upon who God says He is through His trusted word. As you pore over the passages of scripture explaining His faithfulness, sovereignty and love for you, I pray that your faith increases in such a way that you can go back to praying from a heart of full expectancy.