Steven Furtick - Avoiding Disappointment Isn't a Solution
Disappointment can be a disease. It can eat away our ability to dream, our ability to hope and, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick," one Proverb says, the King James version. And when you think about the disease of disappointment is misleading, meaning that there's never a way that a disease in my body is a good thing. We don't ever think of that in a positive sense. Disappointment, while it's not a positive thing to feel or experience, it is in its own way, the necessary flip side of having hope. If you don't hope, you can't be disappointed. If you never are willing to risk disappointment, you can't hope. Man, am I preaching to myself today? Because look, I've spent large chunks of my adult life thinking that I could figure out a strategy to avoid disappointment and still get the things I hope to have. Whether that's with people, man, they let me down.
I'm not going to reach out to them because these last three times they let me down. I'm not going to invest in that relationship because what did that get me with this person over here? Or what did that get me last time that I encouraged them? I'm not saying anything this time, I'm not going out of my way. It's embarrassing to admit that, but even in some of the goals that I've reached that were disappointing or the things that I tried to achieve and I didn't get the success that I wanted and I was disappointed, I developed a strategy and it was a secret strategy. I never came out and said, "Hey, I'm going to set out to avoid disappointment," but I definitely did that in some major ways in my life. "Still am tempted to do it sometimes like, not going to go for it. Not going to initiate it because what if it doesn't work out"?
All of these things are familiar to us, but hope deferred… a dream that doesn't come to pass. Things that don't work out the way you wanted, disillusionment, wishing life would be one way and experiencing it another way. Man, if you don't learn how to recognize that stuff and check it and treat it and deal with it and process it in a good way that honors God and involves Him and brings in His spirit to help you interpret it, it will spread. That unchecked disappointment will spread. It'll spread into your language. It'll spread into your way of thinking. It'll spread into sometimes even subconsciously, the way that you approach your day, the way you carry yourself, the way you treat your body like, what's the point in taking care of yourself? Doesn't ever work out for you anyway. You tried that before.
So disappointment is definitely a disease if left unchecked. But if treated, I actually think it can be one of the things that God can use to develop our trust in Him. Because through being disappointed, that's how God moves us on sometimes or through being disappointed in something, that's how we see that it was empty to begin with. As I teach this today about disappointment and I think about, well, if we're going to experience disappointment, there's no potential for hope without the risk of disappointment, that's my basic premise here. Put that down somewhere, write that down somewhere. There is no potential for hope without the risk of disappointment. I might even need to say it more strongly than that. There is no potential for glory without potential disappointment. And I don't mean glory for just your own self, your own sake, like, "I want glory," but if you don't show up for the race, you can't win it.
If you don't show up for the fight, there's no crown. If you don't engage in the struggle, there is no victory. And to risk disappointment, to risk that it's going to feel like it was all for nothing, to risk that you're going to lose the money or to risk that you're going to waste your time or to risk that it's going to be awkward, that's the part of it. What I have found in my life that made me want to make this video about the antidote… The antidote to disappointment is not to avoid situations that are potentially disappointing. That's going to guarantee a deeper disappointment in the end. You know that, right? That's going to guarantee that not only are you disappointed in an event, but you're disappointed in the entire trajectory and outcome of your life. That's what that's going to do.
If you try to avoid disappointment, like isolate yourself and never play unless you know you can win and never do anything unless you know somebody's going to do it back for you. If reciprocation is the entry price for any good deed that you do or you have to have the instant gratification and validation of everything that you put your heart into working or being accepted or applauded, that in itself is a recipe for resentment. Later in your life looking back, regret and resentment. Man, I would rather have doses of disappointment along the way than the disease of resentment and regret in the end. I would rather have doses of disappointment along the way. Now, I'm mixing my metaphor here, so I'm not sure where I'm going with this either, but work with me. I started out saying, "What's the antidote to disappointment"? But now I want to talk about how there are doses of disappointment that we have to be willing to go through in order to avoid ending our life in a state of regret or resentment.
There are moments that we have to push through of rejection to get to a place where we are willing to risk so that we can have true connection and love in our lives. And to me, the key is like how they say, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket". I think the antidote to disappointment is don't put all your hopes in one outcome. That's what the saying means, don't put all your eggs in one basket. That's what a money manager will tell you. Diversify. Don't just put your money over here in US stocks. Put them in international stocks, not just in small cap, large cap. Now, have some with bonds of 15% here and 20% there, and your real estate. A good financial advisor is not going to tell you, "I got a hot tip from my brother about what Tesla's doing today". No, unless you know what you're doing. Most of us, we have to diversify.
Now, I'm not here to give financial wisdom, but in spiritual terms, diversification of your hopes is really important as an antidote to disappointment. In order to avoid being ultimately devastated by the disappointments of life, you got to have a lot of things going at once. And that does mean that if you put all your hope on any one thing other than God, other than Jesus, it's coming down eventually. If it's a number on a scale that you want to reach, if it is an amount that you want to reach in your financial life this year or in 10 years, which I think those things are great as motivators to move and to incorporate the things you want in your life to feel progress, but those things can't be God. Because Paul says in Romans 5, "We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God that does not disappoint". That's what doesn't disappoint.
Now, if my hope is, "God's going to use this, God's going to get me through this. God is working in this, I'm learning from this," then that's very different than, "I must have this. I must do that. It must be this way". Every time I've done that, it's backfired. Every time that I've put all my hopes on one goal, one way of doing things, one sermon, "This is going to be the best ever". One song, one book, I promise you that even if that thing does well, then what's the next one going to be? So as I'm making things, creating things, ministering things, developing things, it's important that I diversify. It's important that if one of my friends is struggling in their life, I have encouragement to give them because I have somebody else that can encourage me. I can't just be locked into one person liking me.
What if they're having a bad day? I can't just be locked into one person noticing me. What if they're distracted by their own drama? So this is what I wanted to say, and I've been kind of feeling my way through it just to work this idea out and maybe we can straighten it out together. Maybe this will have more clarity as we wrap around it, but the antidote to disappointment is diversification. For me, that means every time I release one sermon and preach it, I'm already working on another one so that if this one feels a little disappointing, the next one is coming.
Even as we prepare to release songs, we're releasing songs that I'm excited about here over the next few weeks and months, elevationworship.com. Today's post's sponsored by elevationworship.com. Even as we're getting ready to release those, I want to be working on some other ones and I am. I got some that are going to Spotify and Apple Music. I got some that are on my phone. Why? Because I need to know that if these songs just were meant to live in church or were meant to live in the hearts of those who wrote them and experienced them together, then that's going to be okay because there's more on the way. That's the spirit I want you to get right now. That's okay. There's more on the way. Say it out loud. That's okay, there's more on the way. There's another one on the way. That's okay. There's more on the way. And lose a little money. That's okay. I don't like it. I'm not going to try to lose money, but there's more on the way. God is my supplier. That's okay.
"You know that person over there? They're moving. They're going to Argentina. They're not going to be in your life anymore". "Well, bless them. I'm going to miss them so much. I'll throw them a farewell party. I'll keep up with them," but I'm not building my life around any one person and that's okay. Doesn't take the pain out of when people leave your life, but they don't like you. That's okay. There's people that do like me on the way. I have to tell myself that all the time because I know there's people who don't really like my ministry. That's okay. There's more on the way. There's people coming that need help, and they'll be able to receive what Jesus wants to speak through me. That's okay. There's more on the way, and when Jesus shows up in a situation, there's more on the way.
You know that he's very capable of turning ceremonial washing jars into big old wine glasses. He can turn a common ordinary object into something that holds something very special. He can transform the wine while it moves across the room. That's okay. There's more on the way. "We're out of wine. We're out of strength. We're out of ideas". That's okay. There's more on the way and that's very different than having an expectation that this one source that's not God is going to meet my needs. This one job, this one stream, this one relationship.
Diversify. Divine diversification is what I'm talking about. Knowing that if the brook dries up, God's got a widow in Zarephath, and if you will meet the next need that God put in front of you, this is the story of Elijah. I know you were already there with me, but just in case you weren't tracking. When you get there and you give her the instruction so that her family can be fed through the famine, I'm going to meet your needs too. That's okay. The brook dried up. There's more on the way. And I feel that the divine strategy or antidote for disappointment is diversification. That you know that the Lord has lunches in the hands of little boys.
Even if it's a remote place and it's getting late and the crowds won't go away, that's okay. There's more on the way. That's okay. There's more on the way. That mentality, that spirit, not because I'm so good, but because God is within me and there are rivers of living water that flow from me. That's okay. There's more on the way. Easy to say, harder to live, so let's live it a little bit today. I'm not talking about not getting your sight set and focusing on something. Yesterday I talked about focusing. I believe in focusing. I believe in setting goals and targets. I believe in insisting on reaching them and not just watering down what you want to match what you think you can do, but I also believe that you have to leave room in there so that God is not in this box for God to do what He wants to do and use you how He wants to use you and bring about what He wants to bring about.