DayBreaks for 01/20/15 – When God Lets You Down
From the DayBreaks archive, 1/20/2005:
Failure. God. Disappointment. I find it interesting that people, whether they are Christians or not, are often prompted to blame God for what has happened in their life that has led to disappointment. I guess it shouldn’t be so surprising – as long as we can blame someone, we feel better about things. Especially when that someone isn’t ourself!
We are sometimes led to believe, if not say, “God, you let me down.” What are we really saying and feeling at such times? I think we’re really expressing to God that we’re frustrated that He didn’t behave as we wished He would have in a particular situation. We are upset that He sees situations and evaluates them differently than we do, and that He then directs things in the way that He knows they should go – for our own benefit. So it is strange that we should blame Him, but we do. We feel that He’s betrayed us – even when He’s acted for our own good!
In Disappointment With God, Philip Yancey tries to help us have a different perspective on this sense of betrayal, when he wrote about a friend of his who had felt that God had “let him down”: “He felt exactly as he had when his fiancée abruptly cut him off. But the prophets, and especially Hosea, communicate one message above all others: God is the betrayed one. It was Israel, not God, who had gone a-whoring. The prophets of Israel had expressed a profound disappointment in God, accusing him of acting aloof, unconcerned, silent. But when God spoke, he poured out emotions pent up for centuries. And he, not Israel, was the truly disappointed party.
“What else can I do?”, God’s poignant question to Jeremiah points up the dilemma of an omnipotent God who has made room for freedom…human beings are like nothing else in nature. God cannot (or more properly, will not) control them as a general rule. Yet he cannot simply thrust them aside, either. He cannot get humanity out of His mind.”
It’s true – God can’t get us out of His mind, even though it is WE who have betrayed and failed Him. When you are tempted to think that God has failed you, read Hosea, read Jeremiah. Remember that every sin is nothing short of a full-fledged betrayal of the One who loves you.
Jeremiah 3:20 (NLT) – “But you have betrayed me, you people of Israel! You have been like a faithless wife who leaves her husband,” says the Lord.
PRAYER: Forgive us when we act as if You have wronged us! In Jesus’ name, Amen.
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