How Should I Respond When I Feel Like God Has Let Me Down?

It was in the late 90’s when I first read Disappointment with God by Philip Yancey. I know, many people are now disappointed with Yancey, and rightly so. However, the truth in that book from 1988 is still truth today.

I had a friend who was not physically well, and some of her physical demands affected her emotionally and spiritually. We were challenged to pray for Tia (name changed for privacy) and to be the hands of Jesus to her and her family. I felt very compelled to take this seriously and got up in the early hours each morning to spend time in prayer for her and her family.

After several weeks of this, the only result I saw was complete exhaustion from being up in the night and teaching during the day. Instead of tweaking my prayer time and continuing in the battle, I gave up. I was discouraged that God hadn’t heard me (as well as many others) and did not miraculously show up on Tia’s behalf. This might have been the first time I would say I experienced disappointment with God.

I’ve thought of that stage of my Christian walk many times. Was that a revelation of my lack of faith? Was I being tested—and failed the test? Was that when, at the end of a plea for God to come and make Himself powerfully evident, I learned to end all prayers with, “But Your will be done.” Praying for God’s will to be done is biblical and safe; it also seems like it can be a copout.

Or I can find myself being a little fatalistic: the rain falls on the just and the unjust, and why should we expect to be spared the hard things of life? That’s true, but it’s not always consoling. And I don’t want to land there.

Disappointment with God in the Bible

The central character in Yancey’s book is Job, but the Bible has many examples of people who may have felt the same.

• Moses led the children of Israel through many challenges for years, and saw many miracles of God’s provision, yet he was not allowed to enter the Promised Land in the end.
• The disciples in the boat were incredulous that Jesus could sleep when their very lives were being threatened—He definitely was not meeting their expectations.
• Mary and Martha were crushed that Jesus didn’t show up before Lazarus died.
• John the Baptist languished in prison; his entire identity was being the forerunner of Jesus, but now he was doubting everything he staked his life on.
• Paul and Silas were imprisoned for doing something good. Paul pleaded three times for the thorn in his flesh to be removed.

We have the benefit of looking back and seeing how these situations worked out. How God came through for Job, and the disciples in the storm, Mary and Martha, and Paul and Silas. But what of Moses, and John the Baptist, and Paul? God doesn’t always “come through” the way we hope and pray. What then do we do with that disappointment?

Doubting in Faith

Yancey doesn't offer an easy resolution; he simply gives disappointment a legitimate place in our journey of faith, suggesting that those who cry out in frustration may actually be wrestling with faith more seriously than those who keep a safe theological distance from their doubts.

Years after reading Disappointment with God, I returned to it and saw many things in a different light. I find myself more disappointed with myself than anyone, including God. I have felt some disappointments too personal to name here. Still, more than those things, and definitely more than God not acting the way I thought He should, I am disappointed with myself and my reactions to them.

And though I often must come back and speak truth to my own heart and mind, I am both comforted and buoyed by the presence of God in my life and in the life of my family. . .even when I don’t see, hear, or even sense Him close by.

Saints become saints by somehow hanging on to the stubborn conviction that things are not as they appear, and that the unseen world is as solid and trustworthy as the world around them. (p. 229)

Nothing is Wasted

I haven’t reached sainthood—and probably never will this side of eternity. But through some dark days, I have embraced that, though the rain does fall on the just and the unjust (perhaps my simplistic way of viewing the vagaries of life), God does see, He is in control, and nothing is wasted in His economy.

This comforts me as I see a grieving young widow, watch a strong man brought down by a stroke, and know a young mom with aggressive cancer. Life is full of hurts, and the burdens are too heavy to carry without believing in a sovereign God, even if He doesn’t always answer our prayers the way we desire.

The question I want to keep front and center is, “Where is Darla when life, or even God, doesn’t make sense?” And the answer I want to give is, “Trusting that God is in control, and is working things out for His glory and our good, even when it is not apparent.”