Dealing With Disappointment

Hello everyone and thank you so much for joining me today. My name is Roderick caesar the third on the lead pastor of Bethel Gospel Tabernacle in Jamaica queens, new york and I’m so excited that you decided to join me for the full gospel hour right here on Global seven, my prayers, that you will be blessed, you’ll be encouraged and inspired by this message. Thank you so much for joining and God bless. I wanted to talk about love today and wanted to talk about, you know what, just the, the heart and how God loves us so much and God so loved the world, you know, on a day like valentine’s day, this is that day to talk about love. Uh, and if you remember last week, we talked about uh, preparation and preparing your heart, preparing your mind, preparing, uh, your body, preparing your finances. And so I wanted to, you know, start off talking about the heart and preparation, but I believe that I was redirected to speak instead of on just the heart a matter of the heart. Uh, and how we deal with something called disappointment, How we deal with disappointment. Um, many of us may be eager to celebrate or maybe cuddle up with a loved one, but let’s not forget that there are those, uh, this year for the first time that are grieving without their loved ones for the first time on this day, That is a disappointment. Let’s not act like 2020 was a breeze. And now we’re like, thank God we made it through that, we’re in a new year and all the issues of 2020 or now behind us. No, we’re still having to adjust every day to a new reality. And that is a disappointment. So I believe to help us get through and work through all of the disappointments that life can throw at us. We need to hear this message again. So if you’re by your computer, your phone, whatever, send it to a friend, send it to someone that you think may be encouraged by this and would need some encouragement that may be going through uh dealing with disappointment. That’s what we’re talking about today, dealing with disappointment. Hear me, Saints of God. If you do not deal with your disappointment, then your disappointment will deal with you. If you do not deal with your disappointment, then your disappointment will deal with you. And it won’t be pretty, it won’t be kind, it won’t be delicate, but it will deal with you. You have to deal with your disappointment. We talked at the top of the year when we were speaking about Elijah with Gps versus Cps, right? God’s positioning system versus your own emotional positioning system, your feelings can lead you and sometimes they can lead you places that’s far away from where God would want you to be, turns out, whoever is next to you and and whoever is with you in the house or wherever you’re watching, turn to them and say deal with it or speak to yourself and say, hey, deal with it, deal with it. Today’s text comes from the book of 1st Samuel, Chapter 16. I’m going to be reading the first verse. You can follow along with me on your screens. Text says that the Lord said to Samuel, how long will you grieve over Saul? Since I have rejected him from being king over, Israel fill your horn with oil and go, I will send you to jesse the Bethlehem It for I have provided for myself a king among his sons. I have provided for myself, a king among his sons. Let’s pray, Dear God, I thank you so much for this time. I thank you for this word. I thank you for this season. Lord. This has been a difficult time for many of us, father. And I pray Lord that as we navigate through these troubled waters and navigate through this difficult season, Lord, that you would be glorified. You would get all the praise, all the honor, all the Glory. Father. That we would learn to discipline our disappointments and give you glory in the midst of it. That we would know that in the midst of our feelings of disappointment, that you’re not going to leave us, you’re not going to forsake us. We thank you. We praise you. We give you glory. We ask these things in Jesus name. Amen and Amen dealing with disappointment. Um, I don’t know about you, but I believe that 2020 has 2020 has taught me some things he taught me some lessons. I believe that if we were paying attention, 2020 should have taught all of us some lessons. one of the things that I believe that last year has shown us and this is maybe something that we’ve known, but last year kind of cemented and solidified. Uh, life is going to happen to you. You cannot control what life throws your way, but you are in control of your response, you are in control of your response. You can’t control what happens to you, but you can control what happens through you. You can control uh, your response and life throws difficult situations are a way that disappoint us, whether it’s a breakup or divorce, a death of a loved one, financial difficulties, health troubles, family struggles, 2020 and everything that 2020 brought us, all of the above. There is no shortage of ways to be disappointed or hurt in this life. What matters is our response. There’s a quote that says, what we call failure is not getting down, but it’s staying down, failure isn’t the getting down or I had a bad day. I had a rough time. I’m in a rough season. It’s not the getting down, but it’s the staying down in scripture. We see proverbs. Chapter 24 16. The righteous fall seven times, but they rise again. The wicked continue to stumble repeatedly stumble again and again and again and don’t get up in times of calamity. So one of the guarantees that we have about this life is that no matter who we are, life will serve us difficulty, Life can serve us disappointments. And one of the questions that we should ask ourselves isn’t when or when is this going to happen? Or you know, what am I gonna be doing when tragedy strikes? What am I gonna be doing when disappointment comes looming? But when this difficulty takes place, how will I respond? What will my response be? Will I be able to bounce back from heartbreak? Will I be able to bounce back from unmet expectations? Will I be able to bounce back from disappointment, or will I stay stuck, stay disappointed, stay depressed, stay despondent. You know, the Super Bowl just just ended and we, in our culture, we love to glorify athletes and and uh really love the physical feats of excellence that we see happen in the sports world. And you know, I believe it’s amazing to see the ability of athletes and what it is that they can do because they disciplined their bodies and I think it’s amazing when we see an athlete uh come back from an injury. Uh sometimes you, you’ll see a terrible injury happened on the field happened on the court wherever, but over time you begin to see that this, this athlete is sidelined for a bit, but then they work on themselves, they take the time to rebuild and they take the time to come back and sometimes they’re a shell of who they used to be. They’re never quite the same, depending on the injury, They don’t have that same pep in their step, but other times they come back and they can accomplish great things after their injury. They can rehabilitate themselves and get the injury to heal and and they can come back and still perform at an elite level, still perform and deliver at a high level, still win a championship or two after an injury, we often celebrate them and we cheer and applaud as as we should, but I believe that it’s also just as important, if not more important to look at how we heal from the wounds that happen on the inside, how we heal from the injuries that take place on the inside, how we heal from the disappointments that creep up and take hold of us on the inside. What about when we experience some disappointments that we sometimes can’t quite get over because moving on from loss is difficult. Bouncing back from defeat is something that seems daunting or seems impossible at times moving forward when you’re all in, when you give your all to something and it doesn’t meet your expectations. Moving on from that is nearly impossible. Sometimes if you look in in scripture and see Samuel’s life, we can see that the fall of Saul the king Saul, The fall of Saul is a low point for Samuel Seoul was the man that Samuel was charged with anointing the man that he became a mentor to, the man that he was a spiritual advisor to the king. He placed a high level of hope and expectation in the king who won great victories for Israel. This king, his life was marked by the hand of God and suddenly we realized he falls so far from his intended purpose. And in an instant, the hopes that Samuel placed on Saul, the hopes of Samuel were just dashed and cast aside due to the disobedience of Israel’s King Saul. And a lot of disappointment in life centers around the idea or the reality of expectation versus reality. You have an expectation and then you have a reality that that just does not line up ideally. We’d like reality. We like uh reality to our expectation. Excuse me to line up with reality and it lines up and everything’s going well, everything is going fine. Okay? Yes, my expectation is my expectation, my reality and my reality and then boom, Everything clicks. Everything falls into place just how we pictured it. But you live a little bit and you begin to realize that sometimes that is not what happens. You have an expectation and the reality just doesn’t quite measure up, doesn’t quite meet. The standard, doesn’t quite line up to the things that you’ve been hoping to. The things that you want. Your hopes and dreams are not reached when your expectation does not line up with your reality, you can be ah discouraged. You can be disappointed. It doesn’t mean that you’re always disappointed. When expectations don’t line up with your reality. There are many different emotions you can have when your expectations don’t line up with your reality. But when you are discouraged and all of that, the dictionary defines disappointed is to be depressed or discouraged by the failure of one’s hopes or expectations. So disappointment comes upon you when you are, you begin to be disappointed when you fail or your hopes are not met and your expectations are not met. And as a result of that you become depressed or you become discouraged. There are many different reactions that we can have to our expectations not being met. But when we become depressed when we become discouraged, when we become sad and as a result of that, that is a disappointment. And so we realized that Samuel is disappointed. He’s disappointed. Let’s let’s understand why he’s so disappointed. Let’s take a trip back. What we realize here is that Samuel was a man of God. He was someone who grew up in the house of God. He was a boy that was born through the power of prayer. His mother truly desperately deeply wanted a son. She was barren in her room. God opened her room, gave her a son and answered her prayer and she said, okay, Lord, because you have answered this prayer, I’m going to give this son back to you. So when he became of a specific age, she took him to the temple. The same temple that she prayed at dropped him off and he became uh a steward uh someone that was learning at the seat of the priest in the house of God and one of the first words that the Lord gave him as he continued to serve faithfully indigenous diligently was a word of rebuke to his father figure. Eli was the father figure of Samuel. And we see in the text that God gave a word of rebuke to Eli, but he gave it to Eli through Samuel. And so Samuel then grows up becoming comfortable with delivering uncomfortable words, uncomfortable news. And so the text says that he grows up, grows with stature and grows grows uh in prominence and none of his words fall to the ground, which means he’s a profit that can be counted on. He’s a profit that can be relied upon. And he’s leading Israel and hearing from God and telling, Israel to turn to God and hearing from God and keeping Israel on track. But then we realized that Israel gets to a point where they say, hey, we don’t want God to lead us anymore. Just God, we want it to be a king. We want what the other nations have. We want someone, we can see someone, we can touch someone, we can go to someone, we can uh, see with our own natural eyes, we want to be led by a king. Samuel. This is the first disappointment. Samuel is disappointed. Samuel is grieved. Samuel goes to the Lord and says God, what’s going on here? And God says they haven’t rejected you, They’re, they’re rejecting me. It’s okay. Give them what they want. Israel wanted a king. Samuel was reluctant. God said, give them what they want. But what we realize is that God allowed, Israel to do what they want and go down a road that wasn’t necessarily his best for them, but he would still use it for his glory instead of a nation led solely by God. They wanted a nation that was led by a king. And what this shows us is that sometimes God will take his hands off and let you live with what you’ve prayed for. Let you live with what you asked for that. You live with what you want. We only grow to the level of our surrender. We only grow to the level of our surrender. So Samuel is not happy with this request of a new king. And God says, look, let them have what they want. He says, in fact, I’m going to send this king your way, it’s gonna be your job to a 19 him and I’m going to send him your way. Samuel ends up meeting Saul Saul is uh, looking for something his father lost. And uh Samuel bumps into him and God tells Samuel look this is the man that’s supposed to be king. Now, Saul looks the part, the text says he is taller than all of the men in Israel. The text says that he is the most handsome man. The text says he is uh oh so reading these two things, we think that he is the logical choice when it comes down to crowning him king. Say, okay, this guy, he’s got it, he’s got the looks, he’s got the stature like it looks like he’s all about it and he’s the one to go to. But when it’s time to anoint him king and crown him king, he is hiding behind the baggage instead of standing up and being saying okay, it’s me, I’m the guy, let’s go anoint this, let’s make it happen. He’s hiding, there’s some baggage and they’re like wait a minute where where Soul Samuel was ready with the oil, ready to anoint, ready to say, okay, this is the new king and everyone’s looking for him and he’s hiding behind the baggage, he’s crouching, doesn’t want to be seen maybe because you know, he he knocked something over with his elbow and the bags go falling down and they say oh they’re sol that drag him up proclaim him king and that sets the tone, it says something very important because until you see what God sees in you and until you see yourself how God sees you, you will often get in your own way when it was time to become king and time to rise up to the task Saul was hiding. So all was nowhere to be found. Why? Because he didn’t see himself. That’s what God saw him. God said your king, He said, nah no, I’m not, no, Not the wrong one. Until you see what God sees in you, Until you realize what God has put in you. Until you see yourself how he sees you. You will oftentimes get in your own way. You know, you say can’t nobody hold me down, right? I know you you can hold yourself down, you can hold yourself down, you can hold yourself back and the hindrance to our progress will oftentimes be us. And we see throughout Saul’s kingship that he has really great highs and wonderful times of leadership, wonderful times of victories. But he never saw himself, how God saw him. He never saw what God saw in him and why he was appointed king. So his lows are tragic. His highs are high but his lows are are abysmal and the last straw happens when he deliberately disobeys a direct order from the Lord, the Lord says to wipe out this group of people and soul does not do this. Samuel shows up and realizes, hey, like the people God told you to take care of the people that God told you to to annihilate they’re still here. It’s always like yeah, you know I was I was just waiting. I I feared the people and that’s why I didn’t make this thing happen. And what we realize is that Samuel comes to a point where he’s very upset at salt and he says look you you feared the people you wanted to to do what they said to do. But because of your disobedience, God has rejected you from being king, is what Samuel has to say to Saul and now souls response to Samuel is look I have sinned, I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord. I haven’t done what he said to do. I’ve transgressed your words as well because I feared the people and obeyed their voice. But yet he’s the one on the throne, he’s the one that’s the king, he’s the one that’s tasked with leading but he’s fearing the people and does what they want him to do because he does not see what God saw in him. So he sees what he thinks the people want to see. I fear the people, I obeyed their voice. Now please pardon my sin and return with me that I may bow before the Lord and Samuel said to Saul, I will not return with you for you have rejected the word of the Lord and the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel and the Samuel turns to leave after declaring this after saying this, Samuel turns to leave from Saul and saw seizes the bottom of his robe and it tore and they hear the sound of Samuel’s robe hearing as he’s leaving. And as he hears this, Samuel gets a word of the Lord and says, just as this robe has been torn, the Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this day and he has given it to a neighbor of yours who is better than you. He had to speak a difficult word again to someone that he was close to someone that he put his expectations on. Mhm And he had to reject and realized that God was rejecting soul. Now it does not mean that soul could not be forgiven. So all could be forgiven, but Saul would not be king. There are consequences to you not following the voice of the Lord, you can be forgiven yes, but sometimes you still have to pay the price of the consequences that come with disobedience. And so what we see here is it was difficult news to deliver as the prophet, as the man who anointed soul who walked with Soul. It hurts Samuel to say. It was difficult news to say, Mhm. He probably wanted to come and to just say yes, all you know, let’s let’s do this. But he had he had to obey the voice of the Lord obey what the Lord was telling him because Samuel, Saul didn’t take care of what God told him to. Samuel had to take care of it. Samuel had to kill the person that saw. Was not willing to kill. Samuel had to destroy the thing that Saul was not willing to destroy. Because if you don’t do what God’s called you to do because word is not gonna return void, he’s gonna get the job done and wants to use you to do it. Just use someone else to do it. And so Samuel, the text says, went to Rima and Saul went up to his house in Gebbia of Saul. And Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death until he died. But Samuel grieved oversaw and the Lord regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel. It’s a difficult verse. It’s a difficult verse. We realized is that Samuel from this moment went home and grieved went home and was probably in a deep state of sorrow. The text doesn’t say, oh, he was sad about it. You know, he had a bad day today. I don’t know. The text says he grieved, which means he wept, which means he groaned and brought his complaints and brought his uh sorrows to the Lord. He grieved oversaw. The person that he invested in the person that he deposited in the person that he walked with the person that he anointed, the person that he trusted to be, the one that God uh would use to bring Israel to higher heights now? It was disobedient? And it is? And everything came tumbling down. Everything came crashing down. No doubt. He probably had moments of God. This is what you said to do. You said to anoint Saul, you said I’m going to prepare this king, You said all of these things, you said, go anoint him and I do and now everything has come tumbling down. His reality. Perhaps did not meet his expectations. Saul failed drastically. Samuel even Samuel, the man of God, the Prophet of God did not see this coming. So he’s mourning and so he’s grieving and so he’s crying tears. And so he’s crying out to God. And the next chapter says that the Lord said to Samuel, we don’t know how long it is, maybe it’s a couple of months, a couple of weeks, but he’s in a season of just grieving over saul texas. He doesn’t see him again until he died. So he’s grieving, he’s mourning, it’s going through, he has an expectation, but that wasn’t met. The reality looks very, very different. And he’s in this period of grief and as he’s in this grief as he’s in this a disappointment in dealing with this. The Lord speaks to him and says, how long will you grieve oversaw? The tears are still on his face and the Lord says, how long will you sit here and cry? How long will you sit here and grieve? How long will you sit here and mourn? How long will you grieve over saul since I have rejected him from being king over Israel. If you want to get closer to me, you want to get closer to my heart. You want my life to become your likes, my dislikes, to become your dislikes, my ways to become your ways. If you’re getting closer to me, the one thing that we cannot do, Saints of God is let our disappointment detain us. Don’t let our disappointment detain us. It can stop you. It can hold you, it can keep you stuck. It can keep you immobile. It can keep you from progressing. It can keep you from moving forward. It can keep you from actually uh doing what it is that God has called you to do. If you stay wallowing in your disappointment and we can feel entitled in our disappointment. God, this happened. We can have a logical conclusion. This is why I feel that way. Don’t you see what’s taken place? Don’t you see what was taken from me? Don’t you see uh that I didn’t deserve this? Don’t you see that I didn’t see this coming. Don’t you see that what happened now isn’t what I thought would happen based upon what you told me. Don’t you see God, this is how I feel and we can feel so entitled in our in our uh in our depression, so entitled in our discouragement, so entitled that we don’t really get up from our disappointment and we never we never really move on from it. We let our disappointment detain us and our disappointment can stop us from progressing and moving forward the way God wants us to. And now as people we can be disappointed for many different reasons through many types of types of pains and many types of unmet expectations. But in Samuel’s case. And sometimes in our case as well, we may be grieving over a door that God’s closed. He said If we read verse 16, how long will you grieve over saul since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? I’m the one that rejected him. It was my hand that that that that that that that did this mm hmm. And we’re we we oftentimes we were grieving over something that we don’t understand because it’s out of our time. God’s ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. God’s understanding is beyond our comprehension. And sometimes the seasons that he shifts the doors that he closes. The loved ones that are taken. We don’t understand. So we heard and grieving is okay, grieving is normal grieving is a human process. God doesn’t say uh Samuel stop grieving. That’s not of me believe God gave us emotions, emotions are not bad things, emotions are good things that God has given us jesus, we see experienced emotions. So it’s not sinful to feel. But if we let these feelings sit for too long, it can stop us from being mobile. It can stop us from moving forward. It can stop us from advancing. It can stop us from taking the necessary steps and being the sons and daughters that God has called us to be so grieving is okay, but I want us to to understand Ecclesiastes these three. It says for everything, there is a season And a time for every matter under heaven. A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance. That’s in verse four. So what what what God is saying to Samuel is now is not the time for tears. Samuel, there is work to be done, it is now time to get up and go. It is now time to fill your horn with oil and move forward. It is now time to get up and move. It is now time to make some progress. It is now time to move forward. It is now time to hit reset. It is now time to go and prepare. There is time for your tears and time for your testimony. There is time for your pain and there is time for your promise, there’s time for your hurt and a time for your healing. But in order to experience the ladder, we must get up and move forward and God is always moving. Even if we don’t see it, we may be stuck in our sorrow. We may be stuck in our pain. We may be stuck in our difficulty. We may be stuck in how we’re feeling. But if we are to follow God, we must move. When God says move, God gave Samuel a time to grieve and said, how long will you remain grieving over something that I’ve rejected. The text says that God was grieved as well. But God’s timetable says, look, all right, I’m done grieving, I’m done regretting that I’ve made Saul king. Let’s move on to the next thing. If it’s a door that I’ve closed, I’ve closed it for a reason. If it’s something you can’t understand to know that you can trust my hand even though you don’t understand it. And then he says something to Samuel, he says, fill your horn with oil and go fill your horn with oil and go, how long will you grieve over soul since I’ve rejected him from being king over, Israel fill your horn with oil and go now as a prophet, Samuel has a job as a prophet. Samuel is not just someone that walks with God casually, but someone whose responsibility it is to hear from God and obey to hear from God and be his mouthpiece to hear from God and do what the Lord wants to do within the earth. And so he has this horn and it was like a ram’s horn uh that he would carry with him as the prophet. And they in times to anoint kings would fill the horn with oil and then then doing this, they would take it when they saw the person that would be anointed. They would take the oil that was within the horn of the rim and pour it over the individual. So God is saying fill your horn with oil and go that prophecy that you said that you didn’t want to say to solve because it grieves you. But you had to say. And you said that it was two fold. It was I rejected you and I’m giving your kingdom to another. It was two fold. You’re so busy focused on the rejection, focused on what you’ve lost that you’re not looking forward to what it is that I’m going to provide. It’s two fold. And so what we must do as people of God, as people that whose not whose responsibility it is not just to walk with God casually but to obey God, trust and obey every step of the way. We must put our mission over our emotion. We must put our mission over our emotion. If you’re taking notes, write that down, Put the mission over your emotion. There is work to be done. There was something I have for you to do. There was someone I have for you to anoint. There is something I have for you to do. There’s someone I have for you to annoyance. I know you want to stay here and grieve. I know you want to stay here and play your sad songs playlist. I know you want to stay here and stay stuck with the ice cream and mourning and in your season of wallowing and grieving or however it is, I don’t know you want to stay here lying on the floor weeping with your tears and your pillow. I know you want to stay here and grieve, but there’s work to be done. There is work to be done, fill your horn with oil and go. But God, what if I don’t feel like it? Put the mission over your emotion. We talked about gps and Gps. God positioning system versus your emotional positioning system. You must submit your emotions to your purpose, your emotions to your mission, your emotions to God. Once again, emotions are not bad. They’re good things. But if you lead with them often they can take you so far from where God called you to you can submit your emotions to the Lord and end up where he wants you to be or you can be led solely by your emotions and stay in a season too long and so oftentimes what what we do is we stay too late or we can go too soon. We overstay our emotion, We overstay our time. We’re grieving. We’re grieving, we’re grieving God is saying, Get up, get up, get up, get up, get up and we don’t get up so we overstay or the flip side of it. We go too soon. You say I’m done, I’m ready. I’m good. But we haven’t processed, We haven’t done the work. We haven’t gone through the emotional, uh, ebbs and flows that we need to. But often times we also go on time. But maybe we go without God. The text says, fill your horn with oil. The anointing of God, The presence of God, fill your horn with oil and go. That means we’re moving on God’s terms, many of us move. But are we moving with the oil? We’re moving on our own empty. Moving on what God says and what God wants, not on what we want. Because disappointments can fuel us to make the wrong decisions. And if we go led by our disappointment, we can go from one disappointment to another disappointment to another disappointment, to another disappointment to disaster. And that’s not where anybody wants to end up. If we’re honest with ourselves, that’s not what we want to end up, no one starts being disappointed saying I’m going to stay here until things really look bad. But oftentimes, if we don’t get up, if we don’t move forward, that’s what can end up happening. So we need to practice regular habits of surrender in our lives, believers. We need to move in God’s grace with oil with anointing with power with his spirit. We need to move forward to everything there is a season, but we just read Ecclesiastes three to everything. There is a season. So what do you do when the Lord tells you that your time for weeping is over? What do you do when the Lord tells you your time for Morning is done. You get up and you walk, you get up and you march forward. You get up. You fill your horn with oil and you take one step and you take another step and you take another step. Even if you don’t feel it, you take another step with tears streaming down your face. You take another step. You put the mission over your emotions. You submit your feeling to your faith. You submit your personal preferences to your purpose. You move forward and what God has called you to do. He says to Samuel. He says, I will send you to jesse the Bethlehem it for. I have provided for myself a king among his sons. Your anointing has an assignment. God has called you to some things that are unique to you. Your anointing has a destination. There’s a place that you must arrive to to fulfill the call that God has called on your life to unleash what God has called you to unleash in the world. I told you a secret. It’s not a secret. It’s pretty well known, but we often forget it. The devil does not want you to anoint David. The devil does not want you to anoint David. He wants you to stay stuck on Saul wants you to stay stuck in sorrow, he wants you to stay suck stuck in disappointment. He wants you to stay stuck in fear. He wants you tied to your soul. Because oftentimes what’s before you is greater than what’s behind you. What’s before you is greater than what’s behind you. And he wants you stuck to what’s behind you. The enemy wants us to be detained in our dysfunction, detained in our disappointment. But we have to learn to deal with our disappointments, discipline our disappointments so that we can move forward. We have to bring it to God. God can’t heal what we won’t reveal, he can’t make well what we have kept masked. And whatever your David is for you represents, uh, unlocks new potential. It could represent the new season. It could represent this reset that we’re speaking about for this year. It can represent a new era, a new chapter in your life. Whatever that is, the enemy does not want you to get there now. It does not mean that Saul is inherently bad or inherently evil or all of these things. But whatever the soul is in your life, is just is in the past. It’s not in the present. And no matter how painful that maybe God has called us to in time in his time. Get up and walk forward. Get up and move forward. And if David represents the reset, are we willing to dry our tears in God’s timing and step forward towards what God has called us to step forward to If we are willing to do this, we need, we must know that it’s going to cost us. It’s going to cost us. Samuel says in verse two, how can I go? How can I go? If Saul hears it? He will kill me. And the Lord said, take a half or with you and say, I have come to sacrifice to the Lord. So take a young a cow with you and say, I’ll come to sacrifice to the Lord. Moving forward is going to cost us our perspective. Samuel says, God says, get up for your home with oil and go. Samuel says, how can I go? How can I do this? Sometimes. Moving on from disappointment seems impossible. It seems impossible to move on from this disappointment seems impossible to move on from the situation that should have been because we keep replaying it in our minds again and again. It feels impossible to actually get up and take a step forward because we’re so weighed down by our feelings by our emotions weighed down by what should have been weighed down by what could have been weighed down by how it could have played out, but never did weighed down by our regrets. Way down by the past. So many of us. Uh it seems impossible to move forward. He says, how can I? But last time I checked as believers, we walk by faith and not by sight. We walk by faith and not by sight. And even though sometimes what we see may seem looming, may seem heavy, may seem large. God is bigger. God is greater. He’s called us to step out and walk on the water has called us to step out and walk and and call things that are not as though they were called us to step out in faith and to walk by faith and not by sight. So it’s going to cost us our perspective, dealing with disappointment will cost us our perspective, secondly, dealing with disappointment will cost us our fears. He says, how can I go if Saul hears of it? If Saul knows that I’m going to annoy someone else, he’s gonna kill me. God Sam, you didn’t say this with a smile on his face, He was fearful. Feel fulfill his life. How can I do this? If so hears of this? He is going to kill me. It will be the end of my life. But what we have to realize we are led by faith, not fear. We are led by faith, not fear. If Samuel were led by fear, he would still be there morning, be there grieving. But faith doesn’t know we have to get up and move forward, even though we’re feeling afraid, God has not given us the spirit of fear but of power but of love and of a sound mind. So it’s going to cost us our fears, we must move forward anyway. And then also dealing with our disappointment is going to cost us our comforts. We must sacrifice something. He says, take this cow with you and say this happened with you and say, look, I’ve come to sacrifice to the Lord. Something had to die. Something had to be laid down, Something had to be uh tied to the altar and killed so that this could take place. You’re gonna have to get uncomfortable. You’re going to have to get uncomfortable when you deal with your disappointment. It’s not something you can just do in a hammock, not something you can do in a rocking chair, not something you could do laying back. You have to get uncomfortable when you deal with your disappointment. I’m closing soon. And so as the team comes up to deal with our disappointment, it’s important that we remember what lies ahead is greater than the disappointment that we’re currently feeling. We have to bounce back. We have to be able to move forward. But let’s think about this. If we’re dealing with disappointment. If you miss these notes, I’m gonna say this again. If you’re dealing with disappointment. # one, don’t let disappointment detain you. Don’t let it stop you because it can and it will. Number two, put the mission over your emotion. Put the mission over your emotion. No. three Do not forget that the devil does not want you anointing David. I mean, he doesn’t want you moving forward. He wants you stuck. And if the devil doesn’t want it, it’s got to be one of the things on our to do list. That was like, I don’t like that. I’m like, okay, you know, that’s that’s great. That means I should do that. The devil does not want us anointing David because it means something new. It means something fresh. It means we’re moving in the direction that God has called us to move in his sons and daughters. So that’s something that we have to engage in. We have to bring, we have to discipline our disappointment, deal with our disappointment and give it and bring it to jesus Matthew, chapter 1128 says, come to me all who labor and all who are heavy laden and I will give you rest, take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. You know, you can be honest to God God knows and you could say, look, I’m disappointed God many times we serve the Lord with a smile and inside were crumbling as if he doesn’t see and we never bring the decaying pieces of us to God and say, God, look, this is what I’m dealing with. This is how I’m feeling. This is what I had in my expectation, but my reality looks so different. I just can’t help but feel like there’s a failure all around me. I just can’t help but feel like there’s disappointment all around me. I just can’t help but feel so heavy. God, Many of us, we never have that conversation with God and we go through life carrying it all by ourselves, bring our disappointment to the Lord, lay it at the foot of the cross again repeatedly, because many times we say, oh, you know, I brought that to God, I’m good. I I laid out on his feet, I’m good and it pops up again and we’re like, wait a minute, I thought I left it at his feet. Yeah, you did. But you gotta do that repeatedly. The text says, pick up your cross daily and follow me. So, some of those things that you lay down, some of those disappointments that you lay down may creep up again, but be persistent, be committed and lay it down until it’s no more. So, bring it to jesus again, bring it to jesus, repeatedly. 2nd thing in dealing with disappointment is share it with someone else. This isn’t an example that we see in this text, but what I want us to understand as believers is, we don’t have to walk through this thing alone in the text. We see Samuel sorting through it and and and being obedient in spite of how he felt and I believe that there are seasons for that where God calls us to rustle with things alone. But oftentimes we see in scripture that God calls us to do things in community with one another, bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of christ, Help one another out. The text says I’m 32 for when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through groaning all day long. And this is yes, talking about sin and this particular passage, but I think it also has to do with our disappointments and the things that we’re feeling. It can also apply there as well. And many times we do one level of confession we only confessed to God and confessing doesn’t just only have to be sin. It could just be about how we’re feeling. Hey, I’m disappointed because this didn’t work out, or because I had this expectation and my reality fell way below it and we don’t, we give those things to God and that’s wonderful, That’s great. But oftentimes, uh, God’s called us to live this out in community as well. Okay, so we can find someone that we can share with a friend, a brother or sister, someone that we can trust and rely on and say, look, I’m disappointed because of x, y z. I’m disappointed because my expectation didn’t match up with my reality, I’m I’m disappointed because of what’s going on. It’s right down. There’s levels to this, there’s levels to this that’s what we need to do. Saints of God is, is be open with sharing with someone else as well to help us as we navigate and move through our disappointment. Walk through the light with walk in the light with God and men third. And finally, and this is the most important step. If I’m uh, if I may say so after we’ve done these, we have to do this. A third one is this, roll up your sleeves and get to work, get to work, get to work, get to work, get to work, get to work, get to work. Saints of God. We cannot be afraid of the work, we cannot be afraid of the work. Last week, I talked about preparation and talked about what God is doing and what God wants to do in our lives and for us in order to reach the goals that we’ve set in order to uh have expectation be at least I have reality be at least close to the expectation. We’ve got to get to work. Yeah, you’ve got to get to work. We have to what? Fill our horn with oil and go as work as work. We cannot be afraid of the work. We have to what confront what must be confronted if Saul hears of this, He’ll kill me. I don’t know. But I have to step forward anyway. I’ve got to move forward anyway, even though it’s difficult, I’ve got to move forward anyway, even though uh there’s this king that I’m supposed to anoint. Little did Samuel know that this king, this young shepherd boy, David, who was ostracized who no one wanted anything to do with, who was disappointed in his own realm and whatever else was going on with him, Little did Samuel know that he would be the king and what a king he would be that through his line would come the messiah, that through his align would come, jesus, the christ through his line would come the son of the living God, who said, you know what, not my will, but yours be done. I’m disappointed that this cup won’t pass. But God, I’m going to stick with it. I’m going to deal with this disappointment and nail it to the cross of christ as I’m crucified. I will say, father forgive them for they don’t know what they’re doing. I want them to do better. But even in my disappointment, I will say, forgive them. Even in what I’m going through, I will offer up myself as a sacrifice. Samuel did not know that this task of filling his horn with oil and going would lead. So the messiah coming through this, this individual’s David’s bloodline. We two don’t know the ripple effect that our righteousness will produce when we rise up and deal with our disappointments, I encourage you today, Saints of God not to be overwhelmed not to stay stuck. But in God’s timing and God’s season rise up and deal with our disappointments. Let’s pray dear God, I thank you so much for this time. Thank you for who you are. Thank you for who you have called us to be as sons and daughters. And my prayer Lord, is that you would have your way in our lives Father. That the things that we understand, the things that we don’t understand father uh last year was a very difficult and trying year and many of us may be grieving. Many of us may be going through. Many of us may still even be adjusting to the ramifications and the ripple effect of covid 19 and so my prayer father is that you would be our strength and this time you would help us in our weakness Lord, that father in the midst of disappointment in the midst of us maybe not understanding that we were trusting you, trusting your will, trusting your way Lord and you would continue to help us as we surrender to you. As we deal with our disappointment like God, we thank you, we praise you, we give you glory. We ask these things in jesus name Father, I pray that you would be with your people this day and every day I pray that we would rise up and do what you called us to do. We thank you and praise you in jesus name. Amen and amen if you’re here listening and you’ve heard this message, you’re tuned in right now when you don’t know jesus, I’m gonna ask you to text to text saved to the number at the bottom of your screen, saved to the number at the bottom of your screen. We have individuals that will be able to text with you and share with you the good news of jesus christ and so I’m just gonna pray with you. Dear God, I thank you so much for those that are listening that maybe don’t know you, I pray that they would uh text the number at the bottom of the screen and that their lives would never be the same. Whatever disappointment it is that they felt the father that they would run to you, Run to your alter, run to your truth through this simple text and that you would have your way in their lives. You thank you for the new salvation that has come to them the new life that has come to them by being obedient in this area. We thank you and praise you in jesus name. Amen. God bless you, everyone thank you and let’s continue to give God praise honor and glory, jesus name God bless you. Thank you. Hello again and thank you so much for tuning in to the message at global seven. Once again my name is roderick caesar the third, the lead pastor of Bethel Gospel Tabernacle. My prayer is that you were blessed and encouraged by the message. And if you want to contribute and give to the ministry, you can text b g t f I 277977. Again, you can text b g t f I 277977. We’re so thankful for you and my prayer is that God will continue to strengthen and empower and encourage you as you listen to this message, we hope you tune again later and God bless you. Thank you so much.