Emotional Health and Kingdom Power Week 15: The Faith of Disappointment - Maturing Through Failure

Today I want to to think about a topic that I was actually really

glad to be asked to speak about because I think it's really

important. And I think we've said already

this morning about how we are a family.

And I think all families have times that people go through

things that are really difficult and where they experience

disappointment. And I think that emotionally

healthy families are able to to bring those things into

conversations and to be real about them.

So today I want to think about the faith of disappointment.

So I want us to to, I guess, consider a difficult question.

What do we do when faith doesn't work out the way that we hoped,

when the healing doesn't come, when the prayer isn't answered

the way that we expected, or maybe when heaven feels silent?

What do we do when we are left saying, I thought that God was

going to show up differently. And I guess I, I want to focus

today on maybe the idea that our faith is not just about trusting

God for the outcomes that we want, but it's also about how do

we respond when we're experiencing disappointment and

times that we just don't understand.

I want to begin by sharing something really personal for my

own life, but that was one of the first things that that came

to mind when I was preparing this.

So I want to begin by telling you about my friend David.

We were friends at Bible college when he was 20 and I was 22.

He had been experiencing lots of back pain and was saying that

nothing seemed to help. One night he was in so much pain

he was unable to sleep. And we both lived on the Bible

college campus. And I am a night owl as well.

So we went for a walk in the dark, in the rain.

And I just remember him saying just I'm lying awake in pain and

I can't understand why doesn't God make himself clearer?

Like, why doesn't he answer prayers more clearly?

And I remember saying to him, look, we could stay up all night

talking about the theology of suffering and unanswered prayer,

but actually, maybe there are some things that we're not going

to understand this side of eternity.

The next day, David flew home to Wales, where he was from, and he

collapsed in the airport. It turned out that his backache

was a cancerous tumour in his spine.

David had a brain tumour as a child, but this time the cancer

had been missed. Over the next few months, David

suffered deeply. So many of us prayed.

His family prayed, we held prayer meetings at Bible

college. David prayed and I prayed daily.

Yet in human terms, his prognosis was poor and I

remember David telling me that he was memorising Bible verses

about heaven. In one of my last conversations

with him, I shared the verse My grace is sufficient for you, and

my strength is made perfect in weakness.

I remember David saying, yeah, God's grace is sufficient even

in my current circumstances. We also discussed Proverbs C

verse 5 and 6 and what it meant to trust in God, not your own

understanding. One day the merits concluded

that they needed to put David into a temporary induced coma.

As he was about to be put into the coma, David said to his mum,

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own

understanding. I believe that he probably on

one level knew that he wasn't going to come out of that coma

and was prophetically sharing that for his mum.

David was in the coma for the next few months.

He turned 21 in the coma and then he died.

I'm sharing that as an example of a time of deep heart and

grief in my own life. But I don't think that it's just

my story. I believe that each of us in

this room today who have a meaningful faith and afraid

heartfelt prayers at some point have experienced disappointment

and hurt within our faith. Maybe whether we have named that

disappointment or not, perhaps some of us are in that place

currently, or perhaps we are still holding on to unresolved,

unresolved disappointment and hurt from when we've been in

that place previously. I really believe that there is

room within our faith to be real about this topic and one of my

favourite verses is Hope Deferred Makes the Heart Sick,

Proverbs 13 verse 12 and I think that verse is just so wrong.

Proverbs 13:12

Honest about how unfulfilled hopes can lead to heartfelt

pain. As I was preparing for today, I

was reflecting upon when the resurrected resurrected Jesus is

joined by two disciples on the way from Jerusalem to the

village of Emmaus. Jesus was their long promised

Saviour, the King of the Jews. Like many of us, these disciples

had developed a clear sense of how they thought God should show

up and use his power. They had expected Jesus to

overthrow the Roman rule they were living under, and in doing

so to save God's people, the people of Israel.

Yet despite these hopes, the unthinkable happened.

Jesus had been crucified by the very people that he was expected

to overthrow. The disciples on the way to

Emmaus in this story do not know yet that Jesus has actually

risen from the dead, and they were unaware that he just

achieved salvation through the cross.

So they don't recognise the resurrected Jesus as He joins

them. They had expected God to do

something one way. They had held out faith that He

would and it had not happened. They believed God's promises had

been left unfulfilled. And they share their story and

say the heartbreaking words. But we had hoped that He was the

one who was going to redeem Israel.

We had hoped. I wonder where are the we had

hope moments in each of our faith journeys?

When have we have? When have we felt like these

disciples did disappointed or like things were not working out

in faith as promised? Has there been a time when we

believed something in faith but felt like God was absent or

silent or not showing up as we would expect?

In this story, Jesus is in fact with the disciples, just not in

the guise that they were expecting.

And I think that we can experience this two times

struggling to see God in our story or to believe that he is

actually with us. So I want us to turn now to a

letter that was written by Paul who wrote a lot of the New

Testament. And in this passage, he's

writing to the church in Corinth.

So this is the early church that were formed shortly after Jesus

death and resurrection. And this passage I'll actually

part of the the verse I shared earlier about what I shared with

David about God's grace being sufficient for us.

So it's 2nd Corinthians 12, verse 7 to 10.

Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was

given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment

me. Three times I pleaded with the

Lord to take it away from me, but he said to me, My grace is

sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in

weakness. Therefore I will boast all the

more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest

on me. That is why for Christ's sake I

delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in

persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am

strong. So in this passage we see Paul,

a faithful and committed disciple, asking God to take

away a thorn in his flesh. And we don't actually know

exactly what that thorn is, but in some ways I think that maybe

makes it more relatable to us. It is clear that it is something

ongoing and painful that Paul wishes to have release from.

And God says no, unanswered prayer does not mean that we are

being ignored. It means God is not answering as

we had hoped. And here God says not just no,

but no. My grace is seen more clearly in

weakness. Even Jesus himself prayed for

God to take something from him that he did not.

When Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, he knew that he was

about to be crucified, and he was filled deeply with anguish

and with grief about what was to come.

He prayed, Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me,

yet not my will, but yours be done.

When Paul talks about his thorn in the flesh, he says that

through it God's power can rest more fully on him.

In God's Kingdom, the things that look like weakness, failure

or loss are often the places where faith and trust in God are

deepening, where we are being invited, invited to say, Yet not

my will, but yours be done. We often seek clarity, certainty

and answers. And sometimes, as in this

passage, God simply reminds us that in our weakness He is

strong. In those moments He asks us to

accept that He is God and we are not.

We were not designed to be self-sufficient.

We were made to be dependent upon God.

Faith is not about overcoming weakness.

It is about surrendering to God amidst our weakness and trusting

Him to carry us through. That requires trust, which can

be very difficult amid weakness and mystery.

Yet when we reach the end of ourselves, God's grace will

always be sufficient. We can rest in Him, knowing that

we are covered by His power and grace.

In Deuteronomy 33 verse 27, we read that the eternal God is our

Deuteronomy 33:27

refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms.

Weakness seen as strength looks strange through the world's

eyes, but we belong to an upside down Kingdom of God.

Jesus talks about the Kingdom that he wants us to live within

as Christians and within that Kingdom he says the the last

will be first. That we need to lose our lives

to find them in God. That we are to love our enemies

and pray for those who persecute us.

And that whoever wants to be made greatest must be a servant.

And God says in this update, upside down Kingdom weakness is

made strength through him. Through the cross and the

resurrection, Jesus established the Kingdom of God.

Yet we are still waiting for his return and his final and his

complete rule in the vineyard. We call this the now and the

not. Yet there is more to come.

And as it stands, God has not fully restored the world or

healed its brokenness. It can be important to remind

ourselves of this as we struggle with unanswered prayers, that

the disappointment that we feel may be a result of being in the

tension between the now and the not.

Yet. This spiritual reality makes

mystery an integral part of our faith, not an indication that it

has failed. And although He has not yet

removed all the brokenness and suffering, God has promised that

He will remain with us amidst this mystery and in the grief

that can stem from it. Faith can be about trusting in

the character of God even when we cannot see His hand.

In those moments, we can grow in our love of God, not just for

what He can do for us, but for who He is.

I want us to spend some time also thinking about grief and

the value of grief and vulnerability within our faith.

This passage from Paul illustrates that God not

answering prayer as we had hoped is an expected part of our faith

journey. We may wonder what we are doing

wrong or where we went wrong when we are struggling with

disappointment within faith. Yet perhaps we just need to

normalise it. God is as much our God in the

valleys of faith as he is in the mountaintops.

The Bible is clear. Valleys are expected.

Christians will walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

We usually associate grief with physical death, but it covers so

much more. Sometimes it's about death of

hopes and dreams, death of our sense of how we thought that God

would show up, or the unexpected creating a death of our sense of

security in our lives and in our faith.

And I want today just to acknowledge what a painful and

dark place that can be for us and how natural it is that grief

comes with it. But as Christians, I think

sometimes we don't take the time to process these deaths.

I question how good we are within the church at dealing

with grief at times. How often do we talk openly to

each other about struggling with seemingly unanswered prayer and

disappointment within faith? My experience in pastoral care

has taught me how often Christians feel guilty for being

disappointed, sad, or hurt in church.

We can brush away difficult circumstances at times or even

brush over them with Bible verses that don't always touch

the root of where someone is hurting.

It is true that in all things, God works for the good of those

who love him, which we reread in Romans 8 verse 28.

Romans 8:28

However, it is also true that on the cross Jesus cried out, My

God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

There is nothing unspiritual about grieving, wondering what

God is doing, or wishing that things were different.

In fact, in Ecclesiastes 3, when we're told that there is a time

for everything, that includes a time to mourn. 2/3 of the Psalms

are lament. Job wrestle with God and

wondered where he was and why this was all happening to him.

There is an entire book in the Bible called Lamentations.

Jesus himself wept at the grave of Lazarus and for the people of

Jerusalem. So why in the church today are

we often so avoidant of grief and the meant?

I truly believe that if we want to make the church a place where

we can connect authentically with God and with others, we

need to make it a place that is safe for people to grieve.

We need to embrace grieving as a holy act, as a part of faith,

not a failure of faith. But if we're honest, I think

there are times that we would rather deny our feelings or

escape them instead of wrestling with God amidst our unfulfilled

hopes, sadness, and perhaps at times, anger.

Yet the alternative to grieving is costly refusal to be real

about our grief and our pain, and therefore, Nope, not

processing it can result in US stopping being vulnerable within

ourselves and before God and others.

It can lead to bitterness and cynicism, a silent sense of

disillusionment with God or Christian life.

Or instead, it can lead to a superficiality in faith,

following a God who fits into the neat boxes that we put him

in, instead of developing trust in a God who operates outside of

the boxes that we create. Perhaps one of the most

dangerous places we can reach in faith.

He's not wrestling with God at all, but rather apathy.

Ultimately, failure to acknowledge and process hurt and

disappointment within our faith journey can result in the subtle

fear that maybe God will not show up at all.

We may have a dull prayer life because we fear deep down if we

pray faithful prayers, we will only be hurt again.

CS Lewis talks beautifully about the relationship between love

and vulnerability. He says to love at all is to be

vulnerable. Love anything and your heart

will be wrung out and possibly broken.

If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give

it to no one, not even an animal.

Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries.

Avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or

coffin of your selfishness, but in that casket, safe, dark,

motionless, airless, it will change.

It will not be broken. It will become unbreakable,

impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

Loving God and praying to Him in faith does make us emotionally

exposed and it does risk us getting hurt.

But when disappointment means that we guard ourselves from God

and others, we can also lose connectedness, ability to love

others authentically, and desire to live out our faith.

And I, I want to say that in not in, in judgement, but in

empathy, that often we do reach that place, that place of

withdrawal from God and withdraw from others.

And actually, I really believe that that in that space, God

really wants us to share that with him and, and share that

with others. Stepping out in faith,

continuing to pray, heartfelt prayers, and consistently

choosing vulnerability allows us to continue connecting with God

and others. As I've just said, our faith

grows through authenticity with God.

He wants us to be real with Him when we experience

disappointment and grief. And I really think that it's

important for us to remember that our questions, our heart,

and our cynicism are never too big for God.

He has been handling them in humans since the beginning of

time. When we wrestle with God, it

does not show that our faith is weak.

Instead, it shows that our faith matters to us enough that we

want to keep wrestling over it. And I would also, as I said,

encourage us to be real with one another about this too.

God calls us to love one another deeply, and part of that can be

coming alongside each other in our pain and disappointment and

supporting each other through those vulnerable times.

It can be difficult to sit with someone in their grief and

without easy answers. But when someone shares

vulnerable parts of their story, sometimes all we need to do is

come alongside them amidst their heart.

Sometimes I think we think of God as removed and distant from

our suffering, but he is anything but.

Jesus came and took part in our suffering by coming to the earth

and entering into the pain and the hurt and the world.

And the Bible calls him a man of sorrow, much acquainted with

grief. And sometimes in the same way,

we are called to to step into other people's suffering as well

and to draw alongside them in that in the aftermath of my

friend David's death, I found the grief overwhelming at times.

And I also want to add that actually, while I was writing

this and writing about David's story, I just had a moment where

I said out loud, why? And so even though I've had a

decade, more than a decade to process that, there's still

times where I'm like, why? And I think grief sometimes

shows up unexpectedly and in new ways and in new places.

And that's OK. That again is part of our

journey so. Yeah, in the aftermath of his

death, I I did find it really overwhelming at times.

I have no idea how many tears I cried in the year following it.

And I remember on the two year anniversary of his death, I was

still studying at Bible college, but most of the people who had

known David had left and there was a party happening on campus

on the two year anniversary of his death.

I just remember just being filled with this grief fueled

rage and thinking Dave has been forgotten, how can people forget

him and all that he went through.

And I went to the Bible college common room and I was just

crying and I poured out my heart to God and in that moment I

spotted a book that was sitting out in the common room.

I had been there countless times in the last couple years but I

had never noticed this book and I clearly felt like God was

prompting me to pick it up, so I did.

It was called The Way of the Cross or something similar, and

it was about faith amid suffering.

I opened the book and in the cover inscription it began Dear

David, and there was a note about praying for him in the

next season of his life in Bible College.

There was also a reference to Hong Kong, which is where my

friend David grew up, and I realised that it was his book, a

book that he must have been reading in the common room

before he found out that he had cancer.

And I really felt in that moment God was saying, I have not

forgotten David and I never did. God always loved David and was

with him throughout everything, even though he did not show up

in the way that I and others had hoped.

And God is who gave David the strength in his final moments

amidst his hurt and weakness to say to his mum, trust in the

Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own

understanding. I hope that today we can

remember that that's in God is with us amidst our own mystery,

questions or disappointments and doubts.

The valley of the shadow of death is part of our journey,

but the Good Shepherd is still with us even at the times when

we cannot see Him within our line of vision.

I believe God wants us to be real with Him when we experience

disappointment and grief, and through that wrestling we can

grow closer to Him and can deepen our faith and our trust.

His grace is sufficient for us, and His strength is made perfect

in weakness. I want to close with a quote I

love that talks about faith amidst darkness.

I believe in the sun even when it's not shining.

I believe in love even when I feel it not.

I believe in God even when He is silent.

It can be a radical act of faith to trust that God is good even

when our prayers are not answered as we hoped or things

on our faith journey have not turned out the way that we

anticipated.