Victory over the Disappointments of Life
By Charles Dailey
Edited by Dave Redick
[Editor's note: Brother Dailey, now in his 70's, writes from the perspective of a lifetime of productive service amid many trials and disappointments. Besides the normal ups and downs of a successful ministry of full-time evangelistic work and consistent training of men for service, he and his wife lost a sixteen year-old son in a sudden, unexpected illness and have both experienced cancer later in life. Their attitude in all of these struggles has been admirable. I only hope I can be half as gracious and forward looking in the remainder of my own course.
Novelist James Payn wrote:
I never had a piece of toast
Particularly long and wide
But fell upon the sanded floor,
And always on the buttered side.
We are talking about disappointments.
Many of our disappointments in life come because of things that we loose.
 | Health issues, including illnesses, injuries, and chronic diseases. |
| Relationship issues such as divorce, sibling and family estrangement, unhappy marriages, problems with children, grandchildren, coworkers, friends. |
| Work issues including loss of a job, downsizing, changing jobs, businesses failures. |
| Home issues like moving from familiar surroundings, losing possessions to fire or natural disaster. |
| Losses to death |
| Losses in pregn.ancy including miscarriage and infertility. |
| Losses from violence such as rape and sexual assault. |
| Loss of a dream or a vision. |
| Loss of independence and self-esteem. |
Jesus knew a thing or two about life not working out ideally.
| He came to preach good news to the spiritually poor, but He was vilified by the religious leaders of His day. |
| He taught and lived with twelve special friends, but one took money to betray Him to the Secret Police. |
| A friend that Jesus commissioned to lead out in the church denied that he had known Him. |
| The crowd that had cheered Jesus into Jerusalem, within a few days, turned into a mob demanding His execution. |
But Jesus didn't give up: He went right on to the end. And this is how Jesus encouraged the apostle Paul, who had plenty of setbacks himself:
"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." (2 Corinthians 12:9a)
Jesus' words to Paul encourage me. There are workarounds for most disappointments.
Disappointments can also be grouped by age or seasons of life.
The young years contain such disappointments as:
| Death of pets. Most families have had pet funerals and the tears that come with encountering the finality of death. |
| Divorce of parents. Children often feel they are at fault. |
The teen years have their share of disappointments like:
| Two-faced friends who say one thing to your face and another thing among a different crowd. |
| Breakup with a special. This seems more than disappointing, it can be devastating. |
| Missing the mate we wanted. He or she married someone else. |
| Missing the job we wanted. |
The family years contain disappointments like:
| Theft and personal losses. My son-in-law just had his car stolen. What a mess! |
| A hard drive crash. Long time friend and Bible translator, Fred Miller, lost a whole year or work in such a crash. (Back up your computer!) |
| Fires, auto accidents, injury and property loss. |
| Sometimes converts turn away. We have invested so much of ourselves in them and they leave us hurting. |
| Sometimes a mate is attracted to someone else. It hurts our self-esteem and our dreams erode. Divorce, even when allowed by God, is often a lose/lose situation. |
| Children act contrary to their upbringing. They come home with tattoos, drugs, strange language. Some have learned that their children have become homosexuals. |
| Children die sometimes and our family dreams are crushed. |
The senior years can also contain many disappointments like:
| Long term friends turn their back on the Lord. |
| Loss of beauty with age. Loss of manliness with age. I bought a video camera to make some 1-minutes clips for my web sites. When I saw the clips it was such an ego blow! I though, "I don't look like that!" |
| Illness. The leading health problems are heart disease and cancer. It can be so disappointing! |
| Then there are injuries like breaking a hip that can leave us permanently damaged. |
| Slow loss of vision and hearing. |
| Churches where we have served for many years can divide over insignificant matters. Currently the big divider is music words and styles. |
| Loss of driver's license due to age or illness. A couple of days after my doctor said I had high blood pressure the State of Washington revoked my driver's license. |
Not one of us is exempt from disappointments in life - not even believers. The real issue is how we allow those disappointments to impact our lives. We must decide whether we will allow those disappointments to destroy us or allow them to develop us.
God is amazing in His ability to take our disappointments of life and use them to grow us and develop more of His character in us. Every believer will need to face various disappointments through the course of life, and God desires to utilize those times as opportunities for our growth. This is not to say that He creates disappointing circumstances in our lives, but rather that He wants to take advantage of those occasions when they occur.
How we respond to disappointments (and ultimately how we behave) is an effective measure of our maturity level. Disappointments are never pleasant experiences, but they can be very advantageous in the process of spiritual growth that God desires to develop in each one of us.
Most of us can recall times of significant disappointment that God somehow used to create good as a result. He does it all the time.
Romans 8:28 says, "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose."
In Enterprise, Alabama, you will see one of the most unusual monuments ever built. It is a monument to honor the boll weevil, the little insect that nearly destroyed the cotton that financed the town's economy. Why a monument to so destructive an insect? Because before the boll weevil, every family depended on cotton for its livelihood. When the boll weevil struck, they diversified and began to plant peanuts with great success. The inscription reads: "In profound appreciation of the boll weevil and of what it has done as the herald of prosperity, this monument is erected by the citizens of Enterprise, Coffee County, Alabama."
God doesn't delight in our disappointments. He does, however, delight in the opportunities for growth that those times provide. So trust Him even in the midst of your greatest disappointments. Our disappointments are God's appointments.
Joseph, in the famous story in Genesis said in Genesis 50:20:
"As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive."
Until recently researchers have not been able to establish from secular history that Israel was in Egypt. The only evidence was in the Scriptures. However, younger Egyptologists are now challenging the dating system that has been used for years and have written at least two books showing the coordination of secular Egyptian history and the books of Genesis and Exodus. Even a 200-mile long canal has been identified as the Joseph Canal. (See my hand-out for details.)
The story of Joseph is a classic example of how God used disappointments in a young believer's life to accomplish His own good purposes. Joseph recognized that the disappointments which he had experienced (even evil at the hands of his own family) were miraculously woven together by God to preserve many lives from starvation in the ancient world.
What super faith Joseph exhibited when he stated, "God meant it for good..." Can we say the same? Is our faith strong enough to recognize that God permits disappointments to come our way?
The first big disappointment in Joseph's life came when he was 17 years old. His brothers sold him as a slave to some Bedouin traders who were on their way to Egypt. A number of things led to this disappointment in Joseph's life.
We read that Jacob, Joseph's father, had played favorites with his sons. He gave Joseph a beautiful and expensive robe. Jacob should have known that this display of favoritism might cause friction in the family. Parents run the same risk today when they play favorites with their children.
Then Joseph dreamed of family leadership. The sun, moon and stars bowed down to him. This led him to be imprisoned in a pit and sold to traders going to Egypt.
The most amazing and wonderful lesson for us in this part of the Joseph narrative is that God takes our disappointments and works them into His overall good purposes for us and others.
Another important lesson for us from the life of Joseph concerns faithfulness. Joseph had his disappointments but we never once read of him falling from faith or speaking out against God. Our reaction in similar circumstances would probably be, "Why me, God? How could you allow my own family to treat me like this?" Joseph's faithfulness through disappointments puts many of us to shame.
The next big disappointment in Joseph's life came when he was in Egypt. In Genesis 39 we learn that Joseph was falsely accused and thrown into prison. What led up to this disappointment? Joseph had become the slave of an Egyptian official named Potiphar. He had served well and had been elevated to the position of head servant. Genesis 39:1-5 leaves no doubt that God sovereignly worked behind the scenes. Things seemed to be going reasonably well, but then came a critical test in the life of Joseph.
Joseph was a good-looking and well-built guy. Potiphar's wife tried to seduce him. What a temptation for Joseph! He was away from home and the restraining eye of his family. In pagan Egypt, "everyone did it." He was bursting with all the sexual energy of a healthy young man; seemingly forsaken by God and in desperate need of some "companionship". Why not? Who would know?
But the young Joseph refused and remained faithful to the Lord. He recognized that this act would be sin against his master Potiphar and his wife - and against God.
The fact that Joseph had unfairly been made a slave did not make it any less a sin. And the possibility that Potiphar's wife might have been lonely and "needing love" did not make it any less a sin either. No situation ethics for Joseph! If the Bible espoused situation ethics, this would be the ideal place for God to teach it - but He doesn't!
The test of Joseph's faith was not a one-shot temptation. It came day after day as Mrs. Potiphar tried to wear down his resolve. Would we have remained faithful? Perhaps some of us would even have jumped to the false conclusion that such a prolonged "open door" was actually God's way of meeting our needs in a difficult situation. No! God never leads us or meets our needs in ways that are contrary to His Word.
Before leaving Joseph's test of faith let us look at two other lessons.
First, notice that the test revolved around Joseph's own God-given looks. Potiphar's wife just would not have been interested in a fat ugly Joseph! How often the tests of our faith center around the good things God has given us--even the wonderful spiritual gifts that God graciously gives. Notice, too, the method of victory over this type of temptation. Run! Joseph didn't stand around to see how long he could resist the propositions of a beautiful woman. He got away from the situation as quickly as possible. This is the Scriptural method of victory over the lusts of the flesh. Don't hang around such tempting situations to show your faith. Get away immediately from these situations to prove your faith.
As a result of his faithfulness, Joseph was falsely accused and convicted of being a rapist. How could God allow such a horrible disappointment? Listen, God allowed the body piercing of the cross in order to save us from our sins.
We can be sure that if God allows a "horrible" disappointment to come into our lives, He has appointed us to this disappointment for some good reason. We may not understand the "why" until eternity.
Joseph's vindication finally came, but not before another major disappointment. While in jail, Joseph came in contact with two officials of Pharaoh. Note again how the sovereignty of God was at work to bring them to the same place where Joseph was imprisoned. The two officials had dreams which Joseph correctly interpreted. Joseph asked Pharaoh's cupbearer to remember him when the cupbearer was released from prison and restored to office. The official forgot all about Joseph when he went back to the court of Pharaoh.
Did anyone ever "milk" you of your generous help and then drop you as if you didn't exist anymore? We can imagine the disappointment for Joseph. Expectations were dashed. Why not give up? Surely God must have forgotten about him wasting away prime years in that miserable Egyptian prison - if there even was a God! At least two years went by with no change! Have you ever been in that miserable, disappointing, no-change rut? From our perspective there seems to be no action, only wasted time. From God's perspective it may be an appointment in which to learn patience and humility--and there may be other reasons too.
In Genesis 41 we have the story of Joseph's exaltation. The cupbearer was finally forced to remember Joseph when God gave Pharaoh a couple of dreams. Joseph was released from prison and brought before the king of Egypt to interpret his dreams. But Joseph's first words before Pharaoh were about God. The Scripture leaves no doubt that Joseph had remained faithful to God throughout his entire incarceration and fully intended to remain faithful before this pagan ruler.
Would we be as faithful, or would we decide somewhere along the line to change allegiance? God honored Joseph for his faithfulness. He was elevated to second in command over all Egypt. Such a position for a Hebrew young man necessitated all the experience of Egyptian life and government that Joseph had "picked up" during those years of disappointment. God knew what He was doing all along. He still does! Let us not disappoint heaven by going our own way, loosing our own battles and then going to the hell that Jesus came to save us from.
Our disappointments are God's appointments!
Copyright © 1996-2004 by The Preacher's Study. Permission is granted to subscribers to use this document in total or in sermon preparation in the context of the local congregation only. Publishing it in a book, on the Internet, or anyplace beyond the local congregation is prohibited.
All Scripture quotations and references are from the New American Standard Version unless otherwise stated.