When earthly hope exists, disappointments will come. When we are anticipating good things, we may encounter the opposite things. We sometimes are disappointed.
People are prone to imperfection. Situations are prone to change. Plans are subject to being modified, and sometimes these changes come quickly without much notice. Surprise and then disappointment is often the result. Raise your hand if you’ve ever been disappointed in people, places or things! (I wonder if that is why “disappointment” is a noun)
I’m not talking in this post about the “hope that does not disappoint.” (Romans 5:5). There is a hope (a confident expectation in the Lord) that cannot disappoint because it is the love of God that is put in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. I’m talking about those disappointments the enemy brings to our mind when our plans fall through, or our expectations aren’t met, or things just aren’t what we want them to be.
I’m convinced that disappointment is one of the major tools of the enemy. Although satan isn’t able to be the cause of every disappointment of every person on the planet, he is quite adept at seeing them and using them to slink into our minds like a snake on a hot rock. He brings some “if”s. If God is so good, then why? If they love you, then how? and we soon become more focused on the disappointment than we do on the good things we still have in our lives.
What’s the answer then? Disappointments come and very often, our loving Father and Savior get the blame. How do we counteract that? The first and major way to dive successfully and victoriously into the fray of our mind is Truth. God does not allow evil. God does not cause evil. God is not the god of this world. If we are His, if we are “in Christ”, then we are not of this world and our spiritual enemy is committing illegal acts against God’s children. So, let’s turn it…
I had a major first victory over disappointment recently with a new method. This method gave me great satisfaction and anticipation of a turnaround of my emotions. Are you ready? Here goes:
“Father, will You please take this disappointment and use it to bring Your glory into the lives of all who are involved?”
That simple prayer brings excitement that something good is going to come out of our disappointment and the thinking of that “good thing” removes the sting. That simple prayer spells defeat to the one who wants us to struggle with, and give in to, disappointment. Picturing that God is changing something ugly into something that will cause our enemy a defeat is greater in us than the disappointment we started with.
For His Glory 