Temple Baptist Life

Those of you who attempt to grow gardens know that it takes infinite patience and infinite hope to be a gardener. It takes infinite patience because it can be a great deal of work and a lot of expense and much waiting to get any kind of results.

Incidentally, I dispute the notion that you can save money by growing your own vegetables. If you add together the cost of the seedlings and the price of the fertilizer and the investment in stakes and trellises and the money the water company wants .. if you add that all together I suspect your tomatoes cost you about $2.00 each. Not exactly competitive with Safeway or Walmart.

Well, it takes infinite patience and it takes infinite hope. Gardeners, no matter how many times defeated by the weather, the blight, and the hungry birds, will keep on gardening. As a rule, gardeners are a hopeful group of folks. But sometimes they yield to their disappointment.

I read once of a man who had tried everything. He had attempted to grow vegetables in his yard, but they had come up puny, hard, inedible things. He had gone from vegetables to fruit trees, but they had sat there season after season with nothing but a few pitiful buds to show for his efforts. He had given up on the fruit and planted grass, but the trees shaded the grass too much, and it would not grow. He even tried hardy ground cover, and even the ground cover turned yellow and died. And so in a fit of disappointment, he did the only sure thing. He called in the concrete mixer and had them pour green concrete over the whole yard!

Disappointment begins when you think that your work is not appreciated. Disappointment begins when we wake up and admit that all that we are doing, all the dreams we are dreaming, all the investments of time and energy … it will not amount to a hill of beans. It is being ignored and rejected.

After a tough and discouraging day at work, Melvin plopped himself on the couch and began wallowing in self-pity. His moaned to his wife, “Nobody cares about me. In fact, the whole world hates me.” Without even looking up from her work, Melvin’s wife replied, “That’s not true, honey. The whole world couldn’t possibly hate you, because most of them don’t even know you.”

That’s disappointment. That is a rude awakening.

Many of you know what that’s like if you are a school teacher. You work at teaching children all year long, and think you are getting somewhere. But when the summer is over and they come back to school you find they have forgotten almost everything you thought they had learned… Disappointment.

You struggle to build a financial base for yourself and your household. You try to be careful and cautious with how you use your resources. Then comes some disastrous illness, some major repair, and the whole nest egg is wiped out… Disappointment.

We know what it is to be disappointed. But is it possible that disappointment begins in our own hearts? It is not so much what other people do or do not do. It is our own expectations of ourselves. Disappointment drags us down not so much because other people do not perform as we would like them to, but because we hold out unrealistic expectations for ourselves. We set ourselves up for disappointment. We program ourselves for failure.

Friday at quitting time, Jim said, ‘Boss, have you got any extra work I can do tonight?’ Sure do but I can’t pay you overtime. That’s okay, I just don’t want to go home. Why not? Well, I’ve been in the doghouse since last night. I see…Why? What did you do to deserve that? I was minding my own business relaxing in front of the TV. My wife enters the room and asks, “What’s on the TV?” And honestly, I swear all I said was, “Dust!” She’s been mad ever since! I sure wish I had kept my mouth shut.”

Are you familiar with Murphy’s Law? The original “Murphy” was an engineer who conducted an experiment to test human acceleration tolerances. Unfortunately for him, he installed 16 motion sensors the wrong way, leading to the now famous quotation, “If anything can go wrong, it will.” I guess the corollary is also true: “If anything can’t go wrong, it will anyway.”

Here are some other laws blamed on poor Mr. Murphy:

• Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.

• Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value.

• You will never find a lost article until you replace it.

• Everything goes wrong all at once.

• If everything seems to be going well, you’ve obviously overlooked something.

It’s universal. None of us are immune to disappointment. Everyone you have ever known has been disappointed at one time or another. It’s recurring. Being disappointed once does not give you an immunity to the disease. You can be disappointed over and over again. In fact, you can even be disappointed by the fact that you are disappointed a lot. It’s highly contagious. Disappointment spreads by even casual contact. People can become disheartened because you are disappointed. You can be bummed out because other people are disappointed.

Our God has a great cure for disappointment. Simply, ask for God’s help. PRAY!!!! Then reorganize your priorities. When we’re disappointed, one of the things we can do is to reorganize our priorities. You can look at your life. You can adopt a change in approach instead of becoming so disappointed that you quit. Do you have a problem in your marriage? If so, don’t bail on your spouse! Change your approach. Adopt a new attitude. Get some help. Do you have a problem in your job? Don’t give up! Change your priorities. Do you have a problem in your walk with God? Don’t stop following Jesus! Reorganize your schedule so you can meet with Him on a regular basis. Don’t be overcome by disappointment. Do something about it!

Also, remember who your God is. I don’t know about you, but it’s easy for me to forget God when things are tough. I need to be reminded that He is always there for me. How do you remember the Lord? By remembering that He will always be there for you. We’re to remember that He is great and awesome. God is more than able to deal with your disappointment.

So, when you’re down, turn your attention from your disappointment to the One who is able to do something about it. God has been faithful to you in the past. He is faithful to you today. And He has promised to be faithful to you in the future. Remember the Lord. Remember His promises. Remember His goodness. Remember His power. Our God is great and awesome! Remember Him.

At the time it was completed in 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge was the longest suspension bridge in the world. During the first phase of the project 23 men fell to their deaths in the icy water. Murphy’s laws were in evidence! Things were going from bad to worse because there were very few safety devices. And so, when it was halfway completed, they decided to take another look and make some changes.

Do you know what they did? They reorganized and built the largest net ever made, and attached it under the area where the men were working. Was it worth the cost and the time it took to do this? Ask the ten men who fell into it without being injured! Not only did it save those ten lives, I’m told that the work was completed in three-fourths the time because the workers no longer lived in fear of falling.

Friends, God’s great net of security spans this globe. No matter where we live. No matter what we’ve done. No matter how disappointed we’ve been. He’s stretched out His everlasting arms beneath us. As a result, we can live and work freely and without fear, knowing that we are protected, safe and secure. Disappointment can be defeated as we request His help.