You can’t disappoint God

You can’t disapppoint God. Read that again. Slowly.
You. Can’t. Disappoint. God.

Some of you reading that will be thinking, “well, duh! That’s obvious! I already knew that!” If that’s you, you don’t need to read the rest of this post. But some of you will be a bit like me and need to take a little while for that to sink in. Maybe because you’ve never thought about it and just assumed, or maybe because you’re fairly sure you can (and maybe even have) disappoint God.

I remember back to being at school and doing something wrong. I got called into the Deputy-Head’s office (I assume the Head was busy?) and she asked me to tell her what I’d done. And I remember very clearly what she said to me. “I’m not angry with you, just disappointed.” Words that are like an arrow piercing through to the very heart of who I am.

Not angry, just disappointed.

It’s not just teachers. It can be friends or colleagues, or even (maybe especially) family. Maybe they’ve let us know through their words, or maybe more subtly through their actions. And what we experience from the important people around us can easily (if wrongly) be projected onto God.

This came to a head for me recently. Something that had seemed so promising turned out very differently. I felt I should have done better, and in ‘failing’ (for want of a better word) I had disppointed God.

But in the time that followed as I was trying to get back up (and knocking myself down again for being a disappointment) this phrase came up. In fact, it came up three times in just over a week from three seperate people who hadn’t been talking to each other (as far as I’m aware). And when the same phrase comes up multiple times over a short space of time, I tend to sit up and take notice. Often, I find that is how God talks to me when I don’t trust myself.

“You can’t disappoint God” – three different people, three different settings, one message.

One message that at first I didn’t understand, then I struggled to believe, and so one I have wrestled with. If just on person had said it I would have dismissed it as ‘just one of those things Christians say to make you feel better’. But three? In quick succession?

So wrestle I did. I asked people, some of whom agreed and some disagreed. Some people directed me to Samson, the man who was blessed at birth but made all the wrong decisions as he grew up. Surely God was disappointed in him? Or Adam and Eve? God must have been at least a little disappointed when they gave into temptation. David? Slept with another man’s wife then had him murdered to cover it up. James and John, arguing over who would have the beset seat in heaven? Peter denying Jesus in his hour of need? Judas betraying him? For that matter, the people of Israel who turned away from God time and time again? Surely God must have been disappointed at some point?

The others directed me to passages about how God knows us intimately, how God loves us unconditionally, how God has compassion on his people, and how God is all powerful. I looked at the parable of the prodigal son and what that means for those who make questionable decisions.

Having wrestled with this, determined to work it out, I came to a conclusion. Now, you need to bear in mind this is a conclusion reached with no theological training, so you need to come to your own decision.

To disappoint someone means to fail to fulfil their hopes or expectations, or when we thwart their plans. God knows us intimately, he made us, he designed us, he is under no illusions about us – he knows when we will fall as much as he knows when we will fly. So if God knows us that well, he can’t have unrealistic or unfair expectations on us. And that means we can’t fail to live up to them.

And God’s plans cannot be thwarted by us – we’re not that powerful! Sometimes, like a master chess player, God may need to take a different route (like when Jesus couldn’t go into the villages to spread the gospel because someone he had healed told people what he hadd done), but his plans will always come to pass.

If you look in the bible, God is never disappointed. Angry, yes (although it takes a lot to make God angry). Patient, forgiving, compassionate, yes. Grieved, sometimes. But never disappointed. Does it grieve God when we make bad choices? I believe so. But more because God wants the best for us, wants to be in relationship with us, and bad choices on our part won’t give us the best and get in the way of a right relationship with God.

In the parable of the prodigal son, the father gives the younger son what he wants, but he never stops loving him. He welcomes his son back with open arms. And when the older son is offended out in the fields, the father meets with him and encourages him to make better decisions. Grieved? Yes. Disappointed? No.

God loves first. He is full of compassion. I genuinely believe God cares more about why we make those choices than the actual choices. He cares too much about the causes that led us to that place to be distracted by being disappointed in us. When people walk away, God is grieved, but he loves us too much to take away our freedom to choose. And when we turn our hearts back to him, he rejoices and ‘runs towards us with open arms’ as the parable puts it.

If we have acted with our hearts towards to God, he won’t be disappointed. If we make a bad choice because we are hurt, God won’t be disappointed. If we turn away, God won’t be disappointed.

He will be proud, compassionate, patient and yes, maybe grieved, but not disappointed.

That is the conclusion I reached after wrestling for a couple of months.

You can’t disappoint God.