When God Disappoints

November 12, 2023

When I was a kid, I remember having a chore to clean the bathroom sink. I remember once, I didn’t feel like doing it. My parents reminded me, but I didn’t do it. My dad got angry and insisted I do it NOW. I didn’t know what got into him! I loved my parents. But at that moment I wondered if my parents were those loving people I knew! What had happened to them?

Something like that happens to all of us, with God. You love God. You know God loves you. You pray and He answers your prayers. It’s all wonderful! UNTIL…you really are hoping and praying for something: for a loved one with a terminal diagnosis to get well, for a friend who’s mad at you to be your friend again, or for your new boss that you can’t stand to take early retirement!  But God doesn’t come through. You might feel angry and letdown. You start to doubt God and His love for you.

But so often, you keep your doubt to yourself. You don’t tell anyone else, and you don’t tell God! Nobody else talks about their doubts and disappointments with God, and you’re sure not going to! So instead, you live wounded and apart from God. That’s why today we’re going to talk about what do you do when God disappoints you?

In the gospel of Mark chapter 9, a man brings his son to Jesus for healing. The boy can’t speak, he has spells where he goes rigid. The man asks Jesus’ disciples to heal his son, but the disciples aren’t able to. Jesus tells the man, “Bring the boy to me!” When he comes near Jesus, the boy goes into a convulsion. Jesus asks the boy’s father, “How long has he been like this?” “Since childhood.” It’s a terrible situation! No parent wants their child to suffer this. The father says to Jesus, “If you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.”

Jesus notices the man said, “If you can do anything…” Jesus can tell he has some doubts. Jesus says to him, “Everything is possible for one who believes.” Jesus is basically asking, Do you believe? Do you believe God is loving and powerful and will save your son?

The father is very honest with how he feels, and says, “I do believe, help me overcome my unbelief!” He is saying, I believe and I don’t believe at the same time.  We can have doubts and faith together, they can be together in our heart.

It’s like the man is saying, I believe, I haven’t lost all hope. I do believe, but if I’m honest, I’ve seen things happen to my boy that have caused me to question the goodness of God. The gospel says the boy was tormented by demonic forces that would throw him into fire and water. This father sees his son traumatized and terrorized, and he can’t do anything to help him.

So, in his mind the father is thinking, I have seen things that I can’t make sense of. I have seen things that I know aren’t right. My wonderful boy, why is he forced to live like this?

Have you ever been there? There is something you wish with all your heart God would change. And yes, there are miracles. Some people have a terrible cancer, but they beat it! And we praise God, he is so good! But for my loved one, they didn’t make it. You know God could change it, but he didn’t.

This father is telling Jesus the honest truth. He is saying, I just can’t act like everything’s fine, like I have bulletproof faith. Because I struggle with God being all powerful, and yet He’s allowed this to happen to my boy.

Jesus rebukes the impure spirit, “I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.” The spirit comes out, but the boy looks like he is dead. Jesus takes him by the hand, lifts him to his feet, and he stands up!

What did Jesus think of the father who both believed and didn’t believe? He helped him! He healed his son! This story shows us, Jesus is ok with us believing and not believing at the same time. It’s not a sin to doubt. It’s human to feel disappointed. And it’s ok to tell Jesus, and tell God, how you feel.

Why did this guy even bother bringing his son to Jesus? Because he had some faith. Jesus said If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move mountains! God wants us to come to him. And we don’t need to be living a perfect life, in a perfectly happy frame of mind to come to him. We can come to him just as we are. The risk is that we don’t come to God at all with our pain, disappointment and unbelief. If we don’t come, we miss out on the grace, peace, and love that God offers. Even when God doesn’t answer our need right away or ever, when we come to him, even in disappointment, that relationship with God is there. God is with us.

When I was a kid, I let my parents know I wasn’t happy with their demand to clean the bathroom sink, right now. But we had a relationship, so I cleaned the sink and got over it. We got through that disappointment with each other. The best way to wrestle with disappointment with someone is with them.

The best way to wrestle with God is with God. That’s how you get through your doubts and disappointment with Him. What’s wonderful is we know, from Jesus, that we can come to Jesus with our disappointment, our doubts, our frustrations, and know that’s ok with Him. It’s not that God is only God when we need Him. He’s always God. And he loves it when we journey through life with him, bringing our difficulties to Him.

In the reading from Exodus 32, God has brought the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. He parted the Red Sea so they could walk across dry land and escape Pharoah. God has done amazing things for them! Now Moses has gone up the mountain to be with God, who will give the 10 commandments there.

In Exodus 32 the people get tired of waiting for Moses to come back down the mountain. What do you do when God takes too long? When His timing isn’t your timing? They say we don’t know what has happened to Moses. Aaron, build us a new god! As Christians, we love the stories where God shows up just in time. I needed $200 and someone came to the door and gave me $200 dollars. Or I had a tumor, and the next time I went to the doctor it was gone! But sometimes God doesn’t show up just in time. You needed the money, and it didn’t come and now your lights got turned off. Or the tumor didn’t shrink it got bigger and it spread. What do you do when God disappoints? For the people of Israel, you replace Him. They replaced him, building a golden calf to worship. They wanted a god they could push around, a God they were in charge of.

It sounds kind of crazy that they couldn’t wait a few days for Moses to come down the mountain and tell them what God said. But they were used to the gods in Egypt, where they had multiple gods. If one god didn’t help, you had many to choose from. They reached for what was familiar, instead of trusting the One true God who had saved them and was faithful! When God didn’t answer right away, they went back to what was familiar. It’s amazing how, when we’re frustrated with God, we can reach for something to replace Him. Something that’s not as good.

The Israelites were longing for God. But they reached for gold. We can be longing for rest from God but reach for alcohol. We can be longing for security that can only come from God, but reaching for the things money can buy. The best way to wrestle with God is with God.

What is doubt? It’s wrestling with God. When you’re wrestling with Him, that means you’re still in there with God. So, reach for God when you’re disappointed and frustrated with Him. Because He has always been reaching for you!

My homework for you this week is to come to God with all that you feel, with your belief and your doubt. Bring the real you. Tell God how you honestly feel. Jesus gives you permission to bring your doubt to Him.

God doesn’t always do what we want when we want. On some things, where we feel God disappoints us, we will never get an answer this side of heaven of why. God offers us, not all the answers, but Himself, a good God who loves you, reaches out to you, and is always working for good in this world. God wants more than anything for you to journey with Him and be in relationship with Him. He loves you more than you can imagine. Bring him your belief, and he will help your unbelief. Amen.