Life is full of disappointments, whether it be the loss of a job, your vehicle breaking down at the most inconvenient time, or worst of all, the people that we are closest to letting us down. However, God will never disappoint us; He will never let us down. God is the only secure, unchanging center around which we can order our lives, and the only focal point in which we can ground our peace. He is an infallible point of reference.
To say that God will never disappoint us is not to say that we will never be disappointed. There may be times where we are disappointed that God does not do as we wish. But this is not because of any objective failure of faithfulness on His part. It comes rather from a subjective failure on our part to understand God’s wisdom, His methods, and even His love. God is the only one who will always give us what we need. However, if we are not putting our focus on Him, then we will not be able to appreciate His actions.
Throughout the Bible, God is often described in terms of things that are solid and immovable. One figure is that of a rock. David, for example in Psalm 62:1-2, said, “Truly my soul silently waits for God; from Him comes my salvation. He only is my rock and my salvation; He is my defense; I shall not be greatly moved.” We also have Psalm 18:2, where David writes, “The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.”
But another interesting figure is that of an anchor. In the New Testament, Christians with a wavering faith were urged to hold on to their hope: “We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain” (Hebrews 6:19). And they were reminded that God’s promise is backed up by His oath, “So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, 18 so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us” (Hebrews 6:17-18).
Our frequent frustrations in life, more often than not, result from having an unstable center — a center that is not focused on God. Throughout our daily life, we will center our being on fragile and finite things; or we may even suppose that God is our center, but our faith reveals that our center is not in God Himself, but in certain blessings that He’s allowed us to have during our time on earth. We should take a lesson from Job and love God for who He is, even when His wisdom goes against the wishes in our life. Better yet, strive to live like Paul and be grounded in God, able to say, “Which is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me” (2 Timothy 1:12). We have all the things in life to push us through hardship, but we should never allow ourselves to view our relationship with God as shaky, distant, or disappointing.
Oren Caskey
