Ah, January!
Such an interesting month. To me, there is always something inherently depressing about the beginning of a new year. After all of the Christmas excitement has died down, January comes as sort of an adrenaline let-down. It is cold and dark. It is a time to reflect on what didn’t go well last year. I don’t know about you, but when I am faced with a new January, I don’t immediately jump to excitement over what COULD be in the new year, but rather, regret over what did NOT happen the year before, and a scrambling to “fix” what I am not happy with in my circumstances.
In the book of Ezra, we read about an exciting time happening to the Jews. Cyrus the Persian king had decided to rebuild the temple in Jersualem, fifty years after the Babylonians had carted off the finest goods, and people, from the city. He ordered that the vessels seized from the house of the Lord be returned to Jerusalem also. Seven months after their arrival an altar was built, and they began to offer burnt offerings to the Lord and keep the feasts. King Cyrus had granted them cedar trees from Lebanon, as King Hiram had to Solomon so many years before, for the building of the temple.
In the second year they began to rebuild. It says in Ezra 3:10-11:
And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, they set the priests in their apparel with trumpets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph with cymbals, to praise the Lord, after the ordinance of David king of Israel. And they sang together by course in praising and giving thanks unto the Lord; because he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever toward Israel. And all the people shouted with a great shout, when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid.
What a wonderful time of rejoicing! Can you even imagine, after all that time, how overcome with joy you would be?
Ah, but not so fast. Read the next two verses:
But many of the priests and Levites and chief of the fathers, who were ancient men, that had seen the first house, when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice; and many shouted aloud for joy: so that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people: for the people shouted with a loud shout, and the noise was heard afar off. (v. 12-13)
The first source of disappointment
One of our biggest sources of disappointment is unmet expectations. Oh my goodness, what a trap this can be!
Some of these disappointments can be kind of petty: my hair cut isn’t what I thought it would be, I don’t really like this paint color, I sure was hoping that it wasn’t going to rain on the picnic, etc.
But some of these are much deeper: I thought we would have more money. I didn’t know I would still be childless. This isn’t what I thought my marriage would be. My kids aren’t turning out like I wanted. I thought I would be past dealing with my grief by now. I didn’t expect to deal with chronic illness.
And some are downright devastating, with the word “disappointment” being quite frankly an insulting definition: I didn’t think I would be a widow. I didn’t expect to lose my child, who had so much life ahead. I didn’t expect a terminal diagnosis and that my life would be ebbing away so soon.
Our expectations, and God’s expectations of our life, can vary widely. I could not begin to count the number of times my expectations did not align with His, or when my will and His did not align. Sometimes I think the outcome will look a certain way because that is how God wants it, and when I get to the end it has a very unexpected ending—and that IS how He wanted it.
Before we go on to how to deal with these matters, let us move on to another common source of disappointment:
Regret over our past behavior
Let’s fast-forward to a time when Ezra was an old man.
Nehemiah, the cup-bearer of Artaxerxes, was forlorn. His heart was burdened because the Jews in Jerusalem were under great distress; the wall of the city was essentially destroyed. Seeing his countenance so fallen, the king was disturbed and he asked Nehemiah what was wrong. When Nehemiah disclosed his concerns, the Lord moved upon Artaxerxes’ heart to not only allow Nehemiah to return to build the wall, but to largely finance the endeavor.
Nehemiah was a natural-born project leader. He assembled the supplies and the men for the job with wisdom and boldness. Because of attacks from enemies they needed to build the wall with a weapon in one hand and a tool in the other. In spite of all of these and many other obstacles they finished the construction in only 53 days!
At the end of that time the priests and the singers were assembled for a time of worship. It is at this time that Ezra, now an old man, began to read from the law of Moses to the assembly. Many other men helped the crowd to not just hear, but to clearly understand the reading. The people worshipped with bowed heads and their faces to the ground.
We read in Nehemiah 8:9,
And Nehemiah, which is the Tirshatha, and Ezra the priest the scribe, and the Levites that taught the people, said unto all the people, This day is holy unto the Lord your God; mourn not, nor weep. For all the people wept, when they heard the words of the law.
Oh, the bitterness of regret!
I once talked to someone close to me, who was approaching 90 and asked the question, “You have lived a long life. Do you have any regrets?”, to which this person paused, and said, “No.”
I was flabbergasted.
I have no short of a million regrets. Regrets about what I have said and what I did not say. Regrets over things I ate and what I did not eat. Regrets about wasting my time, and choosing trivial things over people I love. Regrets over my laziness in different seasons of homeschooling my kids, or choosing the “wrong” curriculum, and spending my husband’s hard-earned money for it. Regrets over not teaching important things sufficiently. Regrets over my teenage immaturity. Regrets in my failure as a wife.
But most painfully, I have regret about how my sins have affected my precious Savior, and my witness in the world.
Sometimes our regrets can be things we don’t feel that we can safely share with another human being, like infidelity or abortion or abuse. And yet. . .
The anecdote to disappointment
Look at the beautiful words that Nehemiah spoke to those weeping in repentance over their regretful sin:
Then he said unto them, Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared: for this day is holy unto our Lord: neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the Lord is your strength. (8:10)
The JOY of the LORD
How do we get this joy?
We have to acknowledge that this joy comes from God. It is His. It is the fruit of His Spirit, and therefore it is not something we can manufacture through a simple attempt at an attitude change, or a “faking it ‘til we make it” scenario. (I have tried, and it is unsatisfying and generally leaves me more disappointed than I was before.) Our interactions with God will affect the mind, but the interaction originates in the soul. Because this joy is His, we must go to Him to receive it.
We must begin by praying with a whole heart and confessing our disappointment. If it is unmet expectations that have stolen our joy, we must be willing in prayer, to surrender our present and future to the Lord.
If it is regret, we must repent of those things that the Lord has brought to our attention, and make an earnest effort to learn of Him through prayer and study, so that we might begin to live in more accordance to His will.
For the born-again child of God, these actions can bring us back into a close fellowship with our Savior. The joy may not come automatically, but the joy WILL come, if we continue to abide in Him. In John 15:10-11 Jesus states,
If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love. These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.
Experiencing His joy
I am going to go ahead and apologize for the insufficiency of my words to do justice in describing His joy.
We know that so many people experienced joy in the Lord in the scriptures, but I will focus on David for a moment.
David the mighty man of valor, the slayer of Goliath, the enemy of Saul on the run, the adulterer with Bathsheba, the devastated father of Absalom—in all of these disappointments, David still experienced joy. If you read the early psalms in particular, you will see a pattern: a brutally honest David pours His heart out to the Lord, and is heard. He knows he is heard by God not just by faith, but by an experience in the soul. And no matter how troubled he is, that is always enough that, by the end of the psalm, David is restored to praising and loving His Savior. This is the joy that fueled David to do great things.
When I have experienced the greatest joy personally, is when my nights have been the darkest: . . . weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning (Psalms 30:5). There have been times that the only solution to my problem is a touch from the Lord. When that happens and God shows up with joy in my soul, there is only one thing I know: there is no experience so dark that the Light of the World cannot overcome. When He is there, no darkness can remain. When I receive this gift from His Spirit I am generally unable to contain my joy. My cup runneth over, so to speak. I usually bubble over with emotion, weeping and laughing nearly simultaneously, amazed that God would ever bother with a sinner like me.
It doesn’t last forever, and the darkness can return. But when I experience true joy in the Lord, I feel like anything is possible. Because it is.
The Webster’s 1828 dictionary’s description of joy says, among other things that it is “a glorious and triumphant state.” It is glorious and triumphant because the One who saved my undeserving soul IS glorious and triumphant—and in that moment of joy I am experiencing Jesus. It is a little glimmer of what heaven will be like for me, getting to experience Him in every single moment.
Rather than living with the pain of regret or the disappointment of unmet expectations, why not lay those at the foot of the cross in exchange for His joy? It is the best fuel for a Christian to keep walking forward in service to Him.
May we always choose to pursue Jesus with reckless abandon, and experience the fullness of His joy.
Love,
Sandra
