Jesus disappoints everyone. These striking words are the title of an excellent article written by Moody Professor John Koessler that was recently published in Christianity Today magazine. I came upon this piece last week and was so moved by it that I wanted to share it. If the title alone isn’t enough to draw you in, let me encourage you further with my own experience:
What was so meaningful to me about Koessler’s article was that it dared to declare aloud a hurt I’d been “stuffing” for years: “Yes, I’ve been disappointed by Jesus too”. It felt blasphemous to even think it. Yet, I couldn’t deny that the residue of disappointment with God lingered from past unanswered prayers, dashed hopes, and broken experiences in my life. (Can you relate?). Sure, I knew the right Christian responses to such disappointments, but deep down, it was as if I kept a tally sheet between me and God- a record of all the times he “didn’t come through” the way I had hoped and expected- maybe even in ways that the Bible seemed to promise. Well, this article called me out on my tally-sheet.
I believe that Koessler does an excellent job of outlining how we arrive at these places of disappointment: “We are deeply disturbed, and not merely because he [God] has failed to do what we wanted or even expected him to do. We are haunted, instead, by the fact that God hasn’t done what we believe in our hearts he should have done.”
Ultimately, I was challenged and encouraged by this article not because it validated my feelings of disappointment, but because it brought to light all the problems, lies, and dysfunction of my tally-sheet approach to evaluating God’s sovereignty & goodness. Jesus does seem to disappoint sometimes- but it is an issue of my perception- not his character: “We are disappointed with Jesus because we do not see what he is really doing. It turns out that we have been laboring under a major misapprehension. Jesus came for us, but that does not mean that he came to please us. Jesus came for us, but he does not answer to us. He will not subject himself to our agenda, no matter how good that agenda might be. Instead, Jesus demands that we submit ourselves to his agenda….We can hold on to disappointment, or we can hold on to Christ. We can place our disappointment under the power of the Cross and hold on to hope.”
I hope that if you, like me, have struggled with disappointment in your life you will give this article a read. I pray that it will both humble and encourage you as we press forward in hope in Jesus.
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