Disappointment

Last Thursday, I was reminded of an old song by the Imperials. Do you remember the song, He Didn't Lift Us Up to Let Us Down? It was on the album, Heed the Call from 1979. Over the weekend, it kept coming up in my spirit. God was telling me something to prepare me, long before I knew I needed the encouragement.  

Back in the late '70's, this song was one of the great pieces the Lord used to minister to me in my youth, now He is bringing it to me again.  Pay attention when the Lord shows you pieces like this...He is so intentional and so with us.  Here are some of the words from the song:

He didn't bring us this far to leave us

He didn't teach us to swim to let us drown

He didn't build His home in us to move away

He didn't lift us up to let us down

Thursday was a difficult day for me and then Friday night, was really hard. I had a long an painful conversation with a younger man. The meeting was full of confrontation and accusation.  I listened, tried to minister, repented, and went to bed exhausted.

Saturday came and again, a totally NEW discussion with another young person and more to wade through with the Lord.  

Then Sunday came. Well, I totally wasn't ready for the amount of sadness that hit my heart but that wasn't the end because on Monday we read an email that put the cherry on top.  Day-after-day was set back, discouragement, disappointment and that didn't include the information regarding a close friend's husband's medical lab results regarding a mass in his colon and then the follow-up report on Tuesday from the surgeon and he used the word; cancer. 

Sounds like a lot, right, but that is not the end.  Late last night I read a text from a family member about a close-friends daughter who lost her fight with cancer.  She was under the age of 40 with small children still at home.  I mean, come on friends; life seems to be challenging, right?

So now today. Today I started the day with a word from the Lord.  I really had the word from Him on Sunday, but had been chewing on it for a couple of days. You see, when things happen, I don't just land in the place of what I think, or what I think I know; I really try to stop and let the Lord into the conversation.  So what was the word that was ringing in my soul? Disappointment.  

I kept pressing the Lord, asking, What are you saying, Lord? Then I kept hearing from Him, "He who has an ear, let him hear". These words are found over and over in the bible.  You find them in, Matthew 11:15, Revelation 2:29, Revelation 2:7, and several other places in Revelation.  God is trying to tell us something. John 10:27 says, His sheep hear His voice.  We need to be hearing God, and not even leaning on what others are saying.

Now, this morning I got up with the Lord and looked it up that word,

disappointment.  What does it mean. Here is what I found:

noun 1. sadness or displeasure caused by the nonfulfillment of one's hopes or expectations. 2. a person, event, or thing that causes disappointment.

I did some more research. regarding the emotion of disappointment I read, "as an emotion, researches describe disappointment as a form of sadness - a feeling of loos, an uncomfortable space (or a painful gap) between our expectations and reality. When we believed that there's something we must have to be happy and fulfilled, we can set ourselves up for disappointment."

I wasn't done though, I then found a stronger word for disappointed.  Here is that list, "saddened, upset, let down, disheartened, downhearted, cast down, downcast, depressed, dispirited, discouraged, despondent, dismayed, crestfallen, distressed, chagrined, disenchanted, disillusioned, displeased, discontented, dissatisfied, frustrated, disgruntled." Wow. Ok. There were a couple of words here that hit something deep in me when I read them.  They triggered words from the bible.  The first word was, "cast down", followed by "downcast".  

Upon looking up the word, downcast, I found, 

adjective, 1. (eyes) looking downward 2. feeling despondent.

I then had to open up the bible. The first verse that came to mind was, 2 Corinthians 10:5,

casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and brining into captivity every thought into the obedience of Christ.

You all, we need to repent for living from a place of the world, when we should be living from a place heaven.  We should not be living in mixture.

I then went to, 2 Corinthians 4:9-11, 

persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; always bearing about int he body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.

When looking for scriptures about being "downcast" I came across, Psalms 42:5. I read it from The Voice.

"Why am I so overwrought? Why am I so disturbed? Why can't I just hope in God? Despite all my emotions, I will believe and praise the One who save me and is my life."

Then I read on to verse 6, 

"My God, my soul is so traumatized; the only help is remembering You wherever I may be;"

In verse 5 it CLEARLY talks about what we will believe DESPITE all of our emotions.  Then in verse 6 the word says, because our "soul is so traumatized".  See, our pain is real, but it is in our SOUL... our mind, our will, and our emotions.  We, being born-again believers, need to choose to live from our Spirit.  That is where we live from. We choose to crucify our soul. Father, shift me.  I want to live from a place in the Spirit, not my soul, in Jesus' mighty name.  Lord, I repent of being saddened, upset, let down, disheartened, downhearted, cast down, downcast, depressed, dispirited, discouraged, despondent, dismayed, crestfallen, distressed, chagrined, disenchanted, disillusioned, displeased, discontented, dissatisfied, frustrated, disgruntled.

Y'all - when we are discouraged, disappointed, disgruntled, any of these places of being downcast, we need to FIND the Lord.  We fall through all the places we THOUGHT we believed and we land at the feet of Jesus and begin to build there, from what we KNOW we believe.  Make sense?

Here is where I land, my foundation; Father, I know that you are real. I know that you sent your son, Jesus, to die for me. Jesus, I know that you love me. I know that you care for me. I know Father, that you sent your Spirit and that you never leave me or forsake me; you are with me, even to the end of the age. I know that I can trust you, even when I can't see what you are doing. I go through what I believe.  Why do I do this? Because it matters what I believe.  It matters too what YOU believe; because forms your worldview.  We need to start with what God says.  Then we build from there.

For those of you who grew up in a denominational church, you may remember how you would recite the Apostle creeds.  That is what those believers were establishing.  They were putting into their soul, what they believed. We have gotten so far from this foundation.  We need to begin to encounter the Lord again in the places of our foundational beliefs.  There were also two other creeds at the foundation of Christianity. The other two were the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creeds. They are very similar to the Apostle's creed.  

When you are going through a trial; when you are disappointed, you need to KNOW what you believe and you need to tell yourself the truth of that belief; the truth that is found in the Word. See we have to speak to our circumstances because our mind will be telling us all kinds of things to believe when you are discouraged. See, that is why we are disappointed; because we are listening to our minds (our soul - the mind, the will, the emotions) and not listening to what the Holy Spirit is saying.  We have to land in what the Lord says, not our opinions.

Jeremiah 31:3 — I have loved you with an everlasting love; out of faithfulness, I have drawn you close.  We have to remind ourselves of the truth found in the word. 

Psalm 45:1 (Contemporary English Version) — my thoughts are filled with beautiful words for the King, and I will use my voice, as a writer would use pen and ink.  Also read it in the Christian Standard Bible. We write prophesies to the Lord, with our words and we want to land in what God says, not what we think.  This is what Jeremiah was doing.  He was reciting before the Lord.

Zephaniah 3:17 (the Voice) — the Eternal your God is standing right here among you, and He is the champion who will rescue you. He will joyfully celebrate over you; He will rest in His love for you; He will joyfully sing because of you like a new husband.  Think about how happy a new husband is over his new wife.  That is what the Lord feels like about you.  He loves you! He is for you!

II Corinthians 4:8-12 — we are hard-pressed on every side but not crushed, perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not abandoned,  struck down, but not destroyed. We are choosing to live from our spirit because we rendered that soul dead.