Hi, I’m Jenna Winston with Heartscaping Ministries and today I want to talk about how to deal with disappointment. More often than not, we don’t even realize that often we’re disappointed in God. Well, I’m a firm believer…now…that 100% of the time, if we are disappointed in God, it’s because we got bound to our idea of what we think it should look like. We got bound to our idea of what we thought would make us happy. We got bound to our idea of who we thought we should be with. We got bound to our idea of going, “I contended for this. I prayed for this. I did this. I did that. Lord, You showed me, I got a word”…Sometimes we get more bound to our words than we do the father’s heart.
One of the biggest accomplishments I’d like to say that I’ve accomplished in my heart is being able to be okay with not understanding and not needing to have the exact, you know, seven point bullet, whatever of exactly what He’s going to do. But in my sessions, you know, I do a lot of counseling sessions, and in those sessions, often people deal with disappointment with God because they thought the guy that they were dating was the one and then it didn’t happen and now their heart’s broken. So often we can’t see past our pain and what we wanted to happen, that we don’t realize God’s plan is always better. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows what makes us happy and has a plan for us.
What does that look like to deal with that? Asking the Lord, “Lord, am I disappointed in You or allowing yourself to admit it? Lord, I am disappointed. I’m angry. I contended for this house. I contend for this car. I contended for this job. I had a word. I had a prophetic word, all these things.” God’s never got to prove Himself. Faith is believing without seeing. So if you find that you have disappointment, I want you to say, “Jesus, why am I so disappointed in You? So-and-so didn’t make it. I believed I prayed for their healing up until the very end.” Being able to get real with God. He’s not afraid of you being real and saying, “I am disappointed in You. I am angry at You”, but then being able to say, “but God, I let go. I have to trust that You have a bigger plan and I asked for forgiveness and I repent for the fact that I held on to my idea of how it should go.
Instead of asking You what you were doing. Disappointment is a big thing because we don’t realize that when we allow ourselves to partner with disappointment, we start boxing off areas of our heart from the Lord that doesn’t even let Him come in there anymore. Then we feel abandoned by Him, although we separated ourselves, we feel like He doesn’t listen and doesn’t care. Although we’ve crosseed Him out of the ability to come in and do anything about it and now we miss him and we feel empty, but yet we’re not going to Him because we’re disappointed in Him. It’s like this big catch 22 and it’s a big game from the enemy.
So what does it look like to get real with your disappointment? God’s not afraid of you saying God, “I’m really disappointed. I really was contending for this because the end results, sometimes God might still have what you’re bound to. As the end result, it might still be for you. It might still be there. But one of the things is, when you’re positioned in that way, you’re going to be able to go, “I got this because I contended for it because I fought for it and I prayed for it and I declared it.” But then that glory goes to you. God loves glory. He loves to show up and be your hero. So I challenge you to ask the Lord what areas are you bound to your own ideas, your own belief systems that you’re not trusting Him with. I challenge you to ask for forgiveness and repent and say, “God, what are you doing? How can I posture my hope and my faith with what You’re doing instead of trying to force you down into my box.”
Let me pray with you guys today about this. This is a big one. Jesus, we’ve all been disappointed, but we ask your forgiveness. We have believed for big things and had prophetic words and had all kinds of things going on and we just knew that it was going to go like this. Then when that isn’t what happens and we get disappointed and we pull away from You, but Lord, we repent and we ask your forgiveness. We just ask Lord, “What are You doing? What’s your plan? How can we partner with what You’re doing?” But Lord, we just come before You and ask for a new reset and a clean slate on just fully letting go of disappointment and turning our hearts to trusting You in Jesus name, amen.