Disappointing God

I slowly turned the door knob trying to be as quiet as possible hoping I could sneak in and no one would hear me.

But when I pushed the door open, I saw a light on in the kitchen and my mother with a look of both rage and relief on her face. I was a teenager out with the wrong crowd until the early hours of the morning. The next day, I was to start a new job, but, somehow, it didn't seem to matter that evening. I only thought about the fun I was having in the moment. These were the days before cell phones, and my poor mother was frantic when I didn't return home at a reasonable hour. When I finally slinked in, she shared in no uncertain terms how angry she was with me. I knew I deserved her harsh words, but it was her disappointment in me that hit me the hardest. I loved my mom and didn't ever want to disappoint her, and yet my unwise choices that night did exactly that.

Recently, I viewed a video clip of Beth Moore, an author and Bible teacher, describing disappointment. She asked her viewers to think about the ramifications of being a disappointment to someone who loves us.

I immediately thought of that look on my mom's face. 

I got a couple hours of sleep that night and then dragged my way through the  first day of a new job. When I returned home, I tried to engage my mom in conversation, but I knew she was still angry. Because I felt like a deep disappointment to her, I steered clear of her for a few days. I withdrew from our relationship.

Because that's what we do when we feel like a disappointment. 

We withdraw so we won't feel the condemnation.

What about when we feel like a disappointment to God?  Jesus' death on the cross has covered our sin, but don't we disappoint God when we continue to sin? We know better. We resolve to never do that thing  again, but somehow the same sin keeps coming up over and over. Let's face it. We aren't perfect. We'll fail Him now and we'll fail Him in the future. And that's disappointing.

We may struggle with the guilt and condemnation we feel, distancing ourselves from God and maybe thinking we need to pay Him back somehow for what we did wrong. Or we may give up altogether because we know we can never be good enough and don't want to feel that condemnation.

Beth Moore continued.

In her research on this subject, she did a word search of the word "disappointment" to see under which conditions God would be disappointed in us. Depending on which version of the Bible is used, the word "disappointment" or "disappointed" shows up from zero to five times, however none of those reference God's disappointment.

Romans 5:5a is the one place the word "disappoint" is used in the HCSB version. It says:

And this hope will not disappoint us  . . .

Wow! Take a look at that again!

The one time the word "disappoint" comes up is when God says that He will not disappoint us!

NOWHERE in the Bible does it say that we are a disappointment to God!

But understand it is not anything we've done that earns that kind of favor. We are all sinners who fall short of God's high standard of holiness. 

And God knows it. 

Ps. 103:14 says, 

For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.

God knows us intimately and also knows our shortcomings but because of His unstoppable grace, He loves us with an unconditional love. Because of Jesus, He looks past our sin and sees the righteousness of Christ.

It's true that we grieve the Holy Spirit when we sin, and because He loves us, He will convict us to bring us back into right relationship with God. We may also have to live with the consequences of unwise choices, but know this:

Guilt and condemnation do not come from God.

It's the enemy who wants nothing more than to keep us paralyzed by our shame. He is the accuser who continually points out our failures in our past, present and future. He delights to entangle us in those feelings which leaves us useless for the work to which God has called us.

After a few days of feeling distant from my mom, I asked her forgiveness which, of course, she gave me along with some softer words of wisdom. Our relationship was restored.

In the same way, when we fail God, we need to confess our sin and acknowledge the forgiveness He so freely gives and then move on. We can stand on the truth of 1 John 1:9 that says if we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Our sin no longer defines us; our identity is in Christ. 

Rejoice in this today: because of Jesus, we are never a disappointment to God.