How God Disappoints

We saw who God disappoints: those on whom He has a great call. We saw why God disappoints: so that we will believe.

Today we get a beautiful glimpse of how our gracious, tender, loving, and wise God disappoints those He loves.

Let’s head back to John 11 and pick it up in verse 17. Remember Lazarus is sick, about to die, and Mary and Martha have called Jesus to heal their brother. Jesus deliberately waits two days, then goes to them.

“Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.”

They finally get to the house and Lazarus has already been dead and buried four days. I love this–Jesus doesn’t just miss the boat by a few minutes—but by FOUR days! He really blew it! Dead, buried, gone.  All hope is gone.  Lazarus is DEAD.  And now here’s the thing that is so remarkable about God. He doesn’t just kind of disappoint us. When He strips away something, He lets it die all the way.  It isn’t like Lazarus just breathed his last and maybe there’s hope of reviving him within the hour. When God lets something die in our lives, it’s dead. SO dead.  Dead and buried four days. It stinks.  He lets it sink in.  He lets us grieve, wail, weep.  For four days, alone, they thought all hope was lost.

Now check out Mary’s response:

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (v.32).

Ouch. Anybody else hear the edge in her voice? This is a woman in pain. Haven’t we all, at some point, said this to Jesus:

“If you would have been here, none of this would have happened.”

The finger is pointed, and it’s pointed straight at God. Thankfully, Jesus let’s it go. He can handle our pointed fingers, He knows the pain they feel, and shows compassion.

But here is the remarkable thing we see in this passage that we cannot miss. Although Jesus has deliberately disappointed them and left them to grieve, all alone, hopeless and confused, for four days, we then read:

“Jesus wept” (v.35).

This is how God disappoints us: by entering into our pain.

God grieves with us. The shortest verse in the Bible. He “groaned in His Spirit” and was troubled.  Why?  He is God, so obviously it’s not because He didn’t know that Lazarus was about to be raised from the dead. So if He’s not crying because of Lazarus, why is He crying?

Because of Mary and Martha.

Because of us.

He weeps because we weep. He chooses to feel all that we feel.  He is in us, with us, loves us so intensely that when we are crushed, He is crushed.

Jesus chooses to feel every pain, every disappointment, ever heartache with us.  The God we serve and love and worship chooses to experience every ounce of pain that we experience, with us.  When He chooses to afflict us, He is choosing to afflict Himself.  If you are hurting, God is hurting with you.  God weeps with you.

Scripture tells us to weep with those who weep:

God does the same.

God has wept with me.  He wept with them.  He weeps with you.  Whenever He strategically allows disappointment in our lives He walks in the midst of it with us. That is how He does it.

He does it with tears streaming down His face and us tucked into His arms.

I pray that today, whatever your situation, that God would translate these words into your heart. That you would know His nearness, His closeness, His tears that fall because yours fall too. I pray you’re encouraged today by His nearness. Thanks for reading.