God’s Sovereign Will in Disappointment

By Eric Czirr, Resonate Moscow

What will you do with your disappointment? For me at least, this is not a question that I am asking in the hypothetical. Job transition. Marriage. Season of life. Health. Finances. A pandemic-torn world. There is no shortage of opportunity for disappointment, but the question remains. 

Be Honest 

Psalm 42 ends in verse eleven saying, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” The Psalmist, in this case David, is cuttingly honest about the state of affairs in his own life. David asks his own soul “why are you cast down?” The Hebrew word שׁיח (šyḥ) translated here as ‘cast down’ can also be translated as humbled, bowed low, or melted away. Another way, I believe, to say this is, why am I so deeply disappointed, despairing, or hopeless at this moment? Why am I not stronger? Why does life feel like a tsunami is about to crush me and drag my lifeless body out to sea in the riptide of my disappointments? 

This cuts against the grain of American everything-is-great-here-look-at-my-perfect-instagram Evangelicalism where there can be a significant draw to put up a facade of with-it-ness. Or perhaps one might go the other direction and use self-deprecating humor to elicit sympathy. David has no time for either of these shallow notions, and instead wrote a worship song where he three times says “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” It is hard to imagine a contemporary worship song in which there would be three separate verses that repeat the line “I am deeply depressed and cannot see evidence of God at work in my current circumstances.” 

Remember Who God Is and What He Has Accomplished

David does not only give vent to his current state, but he remembers the times God has kept his promises. Twice, in verse four and again in verse five, David remembers moments in which he was deeply blessed by God. David recognizes that his current emotions, and the current state of his life are just that. Though our feelings are real, they are not a reflection of God’s character. 

The circumstances of your life may make you feel like God is punishing you, mad at you, or just plain vindictive. Though life may seem unbearable, those things are not true. If you are unable to remember what God has done in your own life, then look to scripture to see all God has done for us. If nothing else, look to Golgotha. On that hill you will see a man, who in the height of obedience to God the Father, took a crown of thorns and was nailed to a cross, crucified and pierced for our wrongdoing. Dire circumstances, and a beautiful picture of God’s love for those who have eyes to see it. 

Hope in a Restored Future

There is a tension in the emotional experience and lived reality of David in the moment he is writing this and the truth that he desires to believe. David not only is honest with his emotion in asking his soul, why it is so depleted, but also commands his soul to hope in God by looking ahead to the future promise in hope for a time in which he will again trust in God. While David’s inspired words are beautiful on their own, I believe they point to a deeper truth. 

It is not surprising that there are not many notable, if any, Christian billionaires. If they are out there, I am not aware of them. The reason, I believe, that Mark Cuban is on Shark Tank, and not seeking to leverage his wealth for the glory of God, is because Mark Cuban has enough wealth to be satisfied in anything and everything but the Lord. God is Sovereign over our deepest, hardest, make-me-want-to-crawl-out-of-my-skin into a hole, or a bottle, or a stranger's bed, or any other instant, empty “comfort” I can find, kind of disappointments. It is when God has stripped away all comfort, all pride, all American ability to pull myself up by my own bootstraps, that we are able (or perhaps left with no other choice than) to seek satisfaction in Him. When there is nowhere else to hide, we can hide ourselves in the shadow of the almighty, and in losing ourselves in him we can truly find ourselves. For many of us, it might be that God has to strip away every empty calorie before we can turn to taste the nourishment of the bread of life. It may take the baking desert heat before we are willing to drink from the well of living water. 

So what then shall we do with our disappointments? Psalm 42 gives us an answer. Sit with them until they turn in our hearts to worship because they are the means of God’s grace. I praise God for difficulties in marriage, for my surgery-recovering limp-step, for my current vocational disappointment, for an emotionally difficult childhood, for a pandemic-torn world, and for the profoundly felt lack of agency I am now experiencing in my daily life in this season. These for me are the means of God’s grace in my life, and without these disappointments I may have been so self-satisfied that I could have missed God completely. “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?”

I do not know where this text will find you today, but if it finds you in the emotional shadow of the gallows’ tree, then may you count yourself blessed, remember who He is and what He has done, and hope in God until your downcast soul can again praise him.