Navigating Disappointment

Mary Ann Froehlich

Description

Are you experiencing a season of disappointment? Have some of your plans, dreams, and goals failed to reach fulfillment? If you struggle with the challenges of disappointment, you are not alone.

Navigating Disappointment guides you on a biblical journey to discover what the scriptures teach about disappointment and explores practical ways to respond in the midst of pain and despair. The theme of disappointment can be traced throughout the Bible.

Froehlich writes books for people who trust God yet suffer. She offers a realistic approach grounded in scripture with no sugarcoating. If you found encouragement in Living with Thorns: When God Does Not Change Your Circumstances, this new follow-up book will comfort you when you wrestle with disappointment.

Sujets

• Biblical Studies
• Philosophie et théologie
• Religion

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 22 juin 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456628727
• Langue: English

Extrait

Navigating Disappointment
A Biblical Journey
 
 
By Mary Ann Froehlich

Copyright 2017 Mary Ann Froehlich
All rights reserved
Published in eBook format by Compassionate Press
Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-2872-7
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
All New Testament verses, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New International Version of the New Testament, 1973, published by Zondervan. All rights reserved.
All Old Testament verses, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Jerusalem Bible (TJB), 1966, 1967, and 1968, published by Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd., and Doubleday and Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
Words in bold or italics were added for emphasis by the author.

 
Dedicated
to the
“walking miracles”
who inspire me
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: What Is Disappointment?
Chapter 2: Is Disappointment Biblical?
Chapter 3: More Bitter Disappointment in the Old Testament
Chapter 4: Do We Set Ourselves Up for Disappointment?
Chapter 5: Two Days of Grief
Chapter 6: Did Jesus or Paul Experience Disappointment?
Chapter 7: Jesus Waiting at the Well
Chapter 8: Is Planning Biblical?
Chapter 9: When Bitter Disappointment Leads to Disobedience
Chapter 10: When Disappointment Disappears
Chapter 11: Disappointed but Not Despaired
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy—the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.
Eric Hoffer
Broken dreams, broken hearts, hopes unrealized should not be seen as emblems of shame, badges of failure. If anything, they are tokens of courage.
Harold Kushner
Chapter 1
What Is Disappointment?
“I’m just disappointed. My life didn’t turn out as I hoped.”
I’ve been hearing these words more often in recent years. They are almost whispered as if they reveal a private confession. People are careful with whom they share their disappointment, lest their trust in God be misunderstood or questioned. These mature followers of Jesus Christ do not harbor anger, bitterness, or resentment towards God. They do not blame God. They are not disappointed in God. He is the sole anchor they cling to during life’s storms, whether they be inconvenient drizzles or battering hurricanes.
These believers are simply . . . disappointed. Their hopes have been derailed. They believed they were following God in the direction He was leading them, only to reach a dead-end. Their plans were consistent with scripture and girded with prayer, so what happened?
I know many people whose careers, marriages, adult children, parent or sibling relationships, health, or financial security didn’t turn out as they hoped or planned. The death of a dream is hard to accept. Most people live with at least one major disappointment in life. If this has never been your experience, then perhaps this book is not for you—unless you want to help someone who is reeling from disappointment.
Disappointment can glean a bad reputation. It might remind you of a whining child on the verge of a tantrum who did not get his or her way. Maybe when you were struggling, someone harshly confronted you, “So you’re disappointed? Get over it. Life is hard and rarely turns out as we like. That’s reality. Stop your whining.” That boot camp pep talk only made you feel worse. “Snap out of it” is not God’s biblical remedy.
“Poor me . . . Woe is me” are the last words you want to be associated with, lest people think of you as a chronic complainer. So you keep your pain hidden in a private place. But disappointment is as much a statement of fact as an emotional response. Disappointment is defined as sadness when our expectations, hopes, dreams, or plans go unfulfilled. It has the element of an unwelcome surprise. We may feel blindsided.
Dis – appointment literally means a canceled appointment.
Proverbs 13:12 states: Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life (NIV). The Message translates “hope deferred” as “unrelenting disappointment.” A close cousin of disappointment in scripture is “disheartened.”
Who has not experienced the heartache of deferred hope? If you have not had a dream or hope squashed, or a plan that went awry, then you are a rare individual. I also question what you have risked in life because we are called to risk everything to follow Jesus.
Our culture adds to the pain by equating a failed plan with being a failure. Intellectually we realize that setbacks and disappointments chisel our character, which provide strength training to build our spiritual muscle. We recognize the difference between holy disappointment, emanating from God’s purpose, and earthly disappointment. But living in a prolonged state of unfulfilled plans seems to attract “Job’s friends” who are quick to point out that the path we’re on is obviously not working so we must be the source of the problem.
If you are experiencing a season of disappointment, perhaps even bitter disappointment, you are not alone. Disappointment may not be a popular topic for inspirational sermons, but it is a central theme throughout scripture. The Bible is a book about God meeting people in their disappointment.
Plenty of hand-holding books have been published about disappointment, especially disappointment in God. The biblical journey we are about to embark on together offers a more practical, honest approach. Only when we come to understand what God’s word teaches us about disappointment can we navigate its pitfalls. This book is filled with questions to help guide you through the process. What are the disappointments you wrestle with? What does scripture say about disappointment? Do we set ourselves up for disappointment? If life is filled with disappointments, should we bother to dream or plan? Should we expect anything from God? Does scripture offer us antidotes for disappointment?
This book builds upon the material presented in Living with Thorns: When God Does Not Change Your Circumstances , which addressed permanent types of disappointment and tragedy. Navigating Disappointment adds a twist, exploring when God does change our circumstances and well-laid plans, just not how we would choose. I’ve observed that tragic loss is more devastating than most life disappointments, but one’s community of family and friends is usually quick to offer support and comfort. In the midst of unimaginable pain, grievers are surrounded by people who love and protect them. In contrast, facing other types of disappointment can be a lonely road to travel. People don’t rally in the same way.
Be warned. Our scriptural journey in this book will not erase your past or current disappointments nor prevent future ones. But you may be surprised to learn that God knows how you feel when your ideal hopes and plans go awry. Scripture teaches that God feels passionate emotion and we were created in His image. God experiences love, joy, delight, sorrow, anger, jealousy, and disappointment, and Jesus exhibited this spectrum of emotions while on earth.
God Understands Our Disappointment
People who are disappointed in the path their adult children have chosen will be comforted to know that God understands how they feel. We need only read the opening chapters to the Bible to enter disappointment territory. In the beautiful world that God created, He “planted a garden in Eden which is in the east, and there he put the man he had fashioned.” (Genesis 2:8) By the end of Genesis chapter three, God has expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and banished them (Genesis 3:24). Other translations state that God drove them from the garden due to their disobedience and lack of trust in Him. Note that God did not gently request that they leave. Adam and Eve were driven out of the paradise God had created for His children.
Adam and Eve did not behave as God planned and hoped they would. The rest of the Bible and the core of our redemptive faith are rooted in God’s response to His disappointment.
Now mull over three more examples of divine disappointment in scripture:
1. Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth and that the thoughts in his heart fashioned nothing but wickedness all day long. Yahweh regretted having made man on the earth, and his heart grieved. Genesis 6:5-7 TJB
Some translations say that God was heartbroken over man’s wickedness.
2. The word of Yahweh came to Samuel, “I regret having made Saul king, for he has turned away from me and has not carried out my orders.” 1 Samuel 15:10 TJB
God grieved that Saul turned away from Him and did not follow God’s plans.
3. They have built the high places of Baal in the Valley of Ben-hinnom, there to make their sons and daughters pass through fire in honor of Molech—something I never ordered, for it never entered my thoughts that they would do such detestable things—and so they have led Judah into sin. Jeremiah 32:35 TJB
God’s people had turned away from Him in countless ways, but the pinnacle of evil was burning and sacrificing their children to serve idols. Their behavior had never entered His thoughts. In Ezekiel 16:43, God says that His people have done nothing but provoke Him with all their disgusting, filthy practices.
Our finite human minds may struggle to reconcile the above passages with verses such as this:
From the beginning I foretold the future, and predicted beforehand what is to be. I say: My purpose shall last; I will do whatever I choose.
Isaiah 46:10 TJB
How can God know and predict all events and “their behavior never entered his thoughts”? How can God experience regret? We can get bogged down in theological enigmas, which theologians have been arguing about for centuries, or we can trust the entirety of Scriptur