Is it wrong to feel disappointment with God?

Believers are oft-times disappointed with themselves. Desiring to do some great work for the Lord, they find they are left to do some quiet work in a hidden corner, and are disappointed. Again they may get sadly disappointed with the local company of saints with whom they walk. They had hoped that God would convert great numbers and bring their little company into prominence as a centre of blessing with the Lord's public approval and instead they find weakness and failure, and are disappointed. Again we may be disappointed with the people of God generally. We perhaps had visions of getting the scattered fragments of God's people together to walk in unity and love, and behold we find only discord and further disintegration and we grow disappointed.

There is more than the possibility, when your prayers are long unanswered, and your expectations languish, and the dark clouds of hopeless despair begin to settle down on your soul, that you say with Jacob of old (Isa. 40:27), “My way is hid from the Lord and my judgment is passed over from my God.”

A dark mystery seems to attach to the dealings of God with you. Things are not as in days past when His candle lit up your darkness and His sun shone on your path. You then prayed and were heard. You felt that you had abundance of help and sympathy from on high. Your sky was clear and your song triumphant. But now clouds, darkness, difficulty, sorrow, helplessness surround you, and your heart is crushed. And the sore experience continues. Did it last but a night and then be followed in the morning by joy and deliverance, you could bear it; but that deliverance comes not, and the one thing that makes life, for the man of faith, worth living—the realized, conscious help and smile and favour of God—are still withheld. If His loving-kindness be better than life, the lack of it is worse than death. “True, indeed,” you say. Hence you think that your way is hid from the Lord and your judgment passed over by God!

They wondered, as we sometimes wonder, why it is that the Lord allows distressful sorrow and crushing bereavement; why He does not come in and deliver. We go to the Lord, and it seems as though He neither heeds nor hears.

Nor is the loss of loved ones our only trial. Many sorrows press upon the saints in a world where it is becoming increasingly difficult to live; what business disappointments and worries there are. We cry to the Lord, we say "We have told Him about it, surely He will deliver"; and somehow or other, it has not been His way to deliver. The blow that we feared has fallen; we wonder, and think how can it be that no deliverance has come?

Here we have the element in his sufferings which in intensity probably exceeds their physical aspect. It was the sense that God's wrath was upon him, that the dreadful virus of His indignation was consuming him, that gave a poignancy to his grief. We know this was a mistake, and that it was but another proof of the love of God that His poor servant was being thus chastened. But he did not know it, and we should not be harsh with one who felt that the Lord was dealing bitterly with him. Necessarily he could not have the full light that is now ours, and could not therefore "count it all joy" that he had fallen into such straits. But we can appeal to his own words, "Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?" What has turned him from this resting-place? Dreadful doubts as to God's love and goodness have begun to gnaw at his heart with a pain beyond his bereavements and his sores.

Dear Mr … , I should have answered your kind letter before this, had I anything to tell you that could have given you any gratification. But alas! I have been as desolate within as without. My earthly husband hid from me, my heavenly one I cannot find; and Satan hard at work tempting me to say what is this black thing I have done, which makes my Father so angry with me. But oh my dear Lord, let him not rule within: quench his fiery darts: show me that I deserve far worse, even all the wrath of an offended God. But Jesus has "borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." These trials are only blessings to fill up that which is behind of his afflictions. I am also tempted to think, that I cannot be his, for I feel none of that comfort his children always feel, and I used to find in the hour of trial … Jonah doest thou well to be angry? I will bear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned grievously against him. Oh dear Mr … , you do not know, what it is to lose one so dear, so very dear; I can only compare it to the tearing asunder all the strings of the heart. Then such a gloomy prospect here the rest of one's life. After watching him day and night with so much anxiety, anticipating the joy of being allowed again to be with him; all at once so unexpectedly to have my hopes dashed from me, was what I did not think for some days, I could have borne, because I forgot that as my day so should my strength be. In any other loss I have had, I never could pray for the bodily life of my friend, but in this to which no other loss can be compared, night and day, I could not help entreating the Lord to spare me the heavy blow. I really did think he meant to answer me, and hoped against hope, till the last breath left that dear body … But I know, O Lord, that thy judgments are right, and that in very faithfulness thou hast afflicted me — I must wait to know and see why it is, till I know as I am known. That it is unspeakable love, I have no doubt, because he who has sent it is no new friend, but a tried and precious one; and when it is good for me He will allow me to see that this God is Love. But oh I tremble when I look at my rebellion, and ingratitude, throughout it all. I have had much to show me myself this last year — to dig up the mud hid under the smooth surface. How it will astonish you — astonish angels, when the book of my sins is opened, except they are so blotted out with blood as to make them illegible.

What will be the result? Will He answer the requests? Will He remove the trial? He may see that to answer the request, or remove the trial would not be for our good. So far as the immediate trial is concerned, He will act in perfect wisdom for our good, according to His perfect love. But this God will do; He will relieve our hearts from the burden of the trial. If we pour out our hearts before Him, He will pour in His peace into our hearts — that peace of God which passes all understanding.

In prayer we can be assured that God sends the best answer He can. Paul prayed thrice for his thorn in the flesh to be removed. But better than granting the petition, God gave the answer, “My grace is sufficient for thee; for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” So that he gloried in the thing he besought might be removed.

Our prayers may not always be answered as we want to have them answered, for He alone knows what is best. We speak to Him about our cares and put them thus into His heart and He puts His own peace into our hearts.

We do not have to wait for the answer before we render thanksgiving. We may not get the answers we wish for, but we can thank God for the response of wisdom to our earnest petitions, whether the answer be affirmative or negative.

God does not always answer our prayers by granting the thing that we request. Frequently, by not granting our requests, He indicates that His answer is, No. In the history of one Old Testament character — Elijah — we have examples of prayer, both answered and unanswered, of a most striking and instructive sort.