I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who settled down to watch England play France in the quarter final of the 2022 World Cup with high expectations, only to experience that familiar feeling of disappointment when the final whistle blew. As an England fan, I should be used to this, but of course, whenever a result like this happens it always has the same effect.
Disappointment is natural. It often comes because we have an unrealistic or over inflated view of ourselves or the team we support which is then given a reality check when put to the test. The same thing happens when we take an exam and don’t do as well as we’d hoped. We get disappointed when the result comes through, not only because it wasn’t what we expected but also because this is something we can’t change – in the short term at least. So how do we deal with it? And how can we stop disappointment turning into something worse, like despair?
In Romans 12:3 Paul writes, “For by the grace given to me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgement, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you”.
As we look at the world around us, we see bad examples of how different people deal with disappointment. Politicians try to put a “positive spin” on a piece of bad news – which is often a matter of denying the truth of something and trying to give an alternative version of events. In sport, athletes sometimes take performance enhancing drugs to gain an illegal advantage and make them look better than they really are or in business, a salesman may try and offer bribe to a potential customer to give himself an unfair advantage in winning an order. These are all ways of avoiding disappointment, but they are clearly not God’s way.
In the passage from Romans 12, Paul reminds us that the only way to deal with disappointments is to face up to the reality of the situation which means accepting our own limitations and shortcomings by exercising what he calls, “sober judgement”. This isn’t easy because we all have an inbuilt sense of our own importance which can become over inflated because we all like to believe our own hype!
The only way we can gain a true assessment of ourselves is by seeing ourselves from God’s perspective and, as Paul reminds us, this takes faith. On the one hand we are sinners, very prone to making mistakes, weak, imperfect and easily led. And yet, if we are believers, through Christ we are also sons and daughters, heirs of God’s kingdom and inheritors of all that God has for us in eternity. This means we should be able to accept the disappointments life throws at us because we live in the security of knowing that we belong to Him not just now but for eternity.
Romans 12 also points us to two other things that will help us to deal with disappointment. The first is that we are members of a body. This means that regardless of my performance, I am no better or worse than anyone else. My role is just as important as everyone else’s and the other members of the body help to make up for my shortcomings. My job is to make the best use of the gifts I have been given.
Secondly, what God values is not success but integrity. In verse 9, Paul writes, “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil, cling to what is good”. Regardless of how well I or my team performs, living openly and honestly before the Lord and others in the ups and downs of life is what really matters. We will be judged on this aspect of our lives far more than on our successes and failures.
– Hugh Shepheard-Walwyn