From early childhood to old age, disappointments are an inescapable part of life. We usually process the little ones just fine, but the big ones which involve tragedy, permanent loss, irreparable damage, and lasting pain, they can be the disappointments which grind our lives to a stop. When pain is relentless, when human support changes nothing for the better, and people mock our faith in a God who would allow, or even orchestrate suffering in our lives, how can we experience God in that? Make no mistake Christian, your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8), and he’s happy to devour you or I through personal disappointments. He rejoices in our pains and celebrates every opportunity to feed suffering into our hearts.
As we saw with Moses, the start line for rising above disappointment is to acknowledge God’s loving faithfulness as LORD. This confession is not a magic formula that instantly changes everything for the better. No, but it is a good place to start a healthy discussion with ourselves about the relationship between God and our circumstances. Our circumstances do not change God’s character.
So, from this start line, we need to stack up God’s building blocks of truth so that His truths become the material for a lasting and ruling faith. As we speak to ourselves the incremental confessions of faith, truth upon truth, they increasingly become our enduring thinking in both the good and bad times of life.
Here’s just a few building blocks of truth that the enemy wants us to forget:
- We have access to, and acceptance with God, through faith in Jesus Christ (Rom 5:2).
- He is LORD overall, and He listens to our prayers, even when we think He’s not (Psa 66:19-20).
- He is our only Saviour from the eternal punishment of our sin (Rom 3:23-24).
- Through Christ, God views the redeemed as perfect for all time (Heb 10:14).
- We have a Saviour who experienced temptation and suffering just as we do, yet He was without sin. He is approachable and merciful in our struggles (Heb 4:15-16).
- Both the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ are interceding on our behalf with God the Father (Rom 8:26-27, 34).
- God continues to provide the essentials of our daily lives (Mat 6:31-33).
- The Holy Spirit is never going to break His guarantee of security over our lives (2Co 1:22).
- It is God’s intention to complete His work in our lives, right through to Christ’s return (Php 1:6).
- According to his (God’s) great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time (1 Peter 1:3-5).
- After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you (1 Peter 5:10).
God does all this during our time on earth. But there will be a final day when He will liberate us from our very last earthly pain to our eternal rest of heaven. There, we will never experience pain or disappointment again. Therefore, blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him (James 1:12).
To be continued…