Real Life Radio

Jack Hibbs: How do you know right now if in your moment of disappointment, there's not some divine supernatural invisible answer right over your head? Radio waves are flying through this room. Data is coursing through this room. You can't see it. Is it a fact that data is flying through this room? Absolutely. But you can't see it.

David J.: This is Real Life. Welcome to Real Life Radio with Pastor Jack Hibbs. I'm David J., thanking you for joining us today as we listen, learn, and are challenged by God's word, the Bible.

Do the children in your life know why America is worth celebrating? The faith that founded it, the heroes who fought for it, the God who blessed it. The free Happy Birthday America Kids Guide from Real Life Network puts that story in their hands. Beautifully designed, faith-centered, and yours for just the cost of shipping. Get yours at JackHibbs.com/kids250.

On today's edition of Real Life Radio, Pastor Jack continues his series called Disciplines of Life and a message called Discipline of Disappointment. We've all felt it. Disappointment is a normal part of life. But if we handle it well, it can actually make us spiritually stronger and wiser.

Disappointment comes when reality doesn't match what we've hoped for. Maybe we're expecting too much from people or wanting life to go a certain way. We could avoid disappointment by avoiding risks or relationships, but that's certainly not the life that God intended for us.

Today Pastor Jack teaches that we often place hope in the wrong things. Many disappointments happen when we rely too much on our good intentions or others' unreasonable expectations. So we need to move our trust back to God who never disappoints. Now with his message called Discipline of Disappointment, here's Pastor and Bible teacher, Jack Hibbs.

Jack Hibbs: In Genesis 3:4, the Bible says, then the serpent said to the woman, Eve, "You will not surely die. For God knows in the day that you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of the fruit and ate.

What is that all about? Disappointment comes when hope is misplaced. Was not Eve supposed to be hoping, trusting, living, and walking with God? Then Satan comes along and says, "Hey, I got an idea. Why don't you eat this thing?" God says not to eat it. "Oh, yeah. He doesn't want you to become like Him."

Any doctrine that says that you can become a god comes right from old Satan himself. Come on, Eve. What she did was she took that and it must have been so appealing to her that she misplaced her hope. She took another doctrine. She listened to another form of teaching other than that which was scriptural from the mouth of God.

Here's the fix for that. God's word says in 1 Samuel 2:2, "No one is holy like the Lord, for there is none besides You, nor is there any rock like our God." I hope this is exciting to you what I'm about to say because it really got me going. If there is no god like our God, He's the only one that there is.

He's enthroned in heaven. Take your finger and point to where heaven is, symbolically. Now watch this. We need to stop thinking from the bottom up in our life regarding disappointment. If He is our God and our Lord and there's none like Him and that's where He's at, is not our citizenship, says the Bible, in heaven?

Is that not our home? Does not the Bible say that we're not home yet? We're passing through. We're going home. We're in route. So check this out. We need to stop thinking from the bottom upward. If our citizenship's in heaven, we need to start thinking from the top down.

Isn't that what God does with the Bible? He wants us to think heavenly thoughts. He wants us to think godly thoughts. He wants us to make our decisions based upon the information from above. I find it kind of interesting that everything that you and I do now is almost predicated upon getting information from above.

What's my phone say? What time is it? What temperature is it going to be? How should I dress today? Where am I going? Maybe you have this app on your iPhone, but if I park at some big place where I'm not sure I'll remember where my car's parked, when I pull up, I pull out my iPhone and I press a button and it memorizes the exact GPS spot of where my car's parked.

I go on my trip, I come back, I walk out of the airport, I press the button, and there's a little blue dot, that's me, and a little red dot, that's my car, and it leads me to my car. When you're over 50, that's what you do. It's really cool. It's a great little app.

Everything's coming down from above. If things can come from a satellite and direct us, don't you think it would be even wiser yet still to have God let His wisdom and His guidance rain down from above and speak to us and lead us and guide us? God speaks to us from the top down. We need to stop viewing it all from the bottom up. His vantage point is perfect.

I love this in 2 Kings 6. This is a great event. Elijah and Gehazi, his assistant. Elijah saw things. He could see things. Elijah would talk to God, "God, show me something," boom! In 2 Kings 6:15, it says, "And when the servant of the man of God arose early, he went out, and there was an army surrounding the city with horses and chariots."

His servant said to him, "Alas, my master, what shall we do?" So he answered, "Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them." Excuse me, there's two of them and they're surrounded by a massive army. Then Elijah prayed and said, "Lord, I pray, open his eyes that he may see."

Then the Lord opened the eyes of the young man and he saw and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elijah. The enemy had his army that you could see on this level. "Oh, my goodness, we're going to die!" In the invisible realm, looking from above, Elijah just simply says, "Those poor armies."

His assistant's freaking out and he says, "Lord, open his eyes so he can see what we can see." The guy blinks and opens his eyes and he sees flaming chariots about ready to slaughter the armies of the enemy. How do you know right now if in your moment of disappointment, there's not some divine supernatural invisible answer right over your head?

Radio waves are flying through this room. Data is coursing through this room. You can't see it. Is it a fact that data is flying through this room? Absolutely. But you can't see it. It's completely invisible to your naked eye, to your human eye. But it's here.

Think, the Bible says that whenever the word of God is opened up, angels look into those things. There's angels in the atmosphere right here where we're at. Spiritual entities. Can you imagine? I have never prayed this prayer, I don't ever intend to pray this prayer, but can you imagine if I were in the place of Elijah and I said, "Lord, open up their eyes that they might see"?

We would probably freak out at what is going on in the spirit realm. But I learn from the Bible, I bet you we'd be radically encouraged because those that are with us are much more than those that are with them. Why do we experience disappointment? Disappointment comes by others letting us down.

Listen, disappointment comes by others letting us down. That's going to happen. This is just part of life. Setbacks, difficulties, rejection, but it's not the end of your life. Why is it we've gotten so thin-skinned that if somebody rejects our offer or rejects our affection or rejects our whatever, we freak out? Are we so thin-skinned? Are we so fragile?

I don't think so. When I read history, I know that God has made the human heart and the mind and the spirit stronger than that. When you look at great moments in history where people were let down and when you read your Bible, God's speaking to you when you read your Bible. He's constantly making promises to us.

Is this not the book of promises? God gave us this book and you might be here tonight and you're saying, "Well, I'm cool with everything, but if I read that and He doesn't come through for me, then it's going to break my heart." Listen, you've got to trust Him. He's the one saying to you tonight, "Step out of the boat and follow Me."

You've got to trust Him. He will never let you down. People disappoint us. It's going to happen. I've learned a couple things. Number one is to stop making promises to God. That's a joke because as much as I want to, I'll fail at them. I learned that from Paul the Apostle, by the way, in Romans 7 and Romans 8.

But I've learned to stop making promises to people. I'm pretty sure I've stopped saying, "I promise I'll be there." Do you realize I have no power to fulfill that promise? Do I intend to be there? Yes. Do I even set out to go? Yes. What if I run out of gas? What if I drop dead? What if I'm late?

That's why I'll pick you up at nine. Listen, if you say to somebody, "I'm going to pick you up at nine," I don't know how you were raised. This is how I was raised. My dad said if you're supposed to be somewhere at nine o'clock, you better be there at eight. My wife was brought up, if you're supposed to be somewhere at nine, get there at ten.

I'm going to tell you the biggest struggle of our marriage has been what time are we going to get there. I'm serious. Disappointment, expectation, promises. James tells us you should say, "If the Lord wills, we will go to such and such a place and do such and such a thing."

You say, "Well, Pastor, I'm sitting here to the man I'm engaged to and he's promised me to love me all the days of his life." I understand his emotion saying that. But the only way that that marriage is going to truly work out is if each of you are lifting one another up to the throne of grace and asking God to fulfill His promise to your marriage. Because He's in on the marriage. He digs it. He loves it. He wants it to succeed. But the ultimate keeping of a promise is a divine move of God.

Psalm 61:1, here's the fix. How do I overcome the disappointment of others? Psalm 61:1 through 3 says, "Hear my cry, O God, and attend to my prayer." You don't cry to your friends and say, "Answer my prayer, Bob." Not going to happen. "From the end of the earth I will cry unto you, when my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the rock that is higher than I. For You have been a shelter for me and a strong tower from the enemy."

Those are beautiful promises. Here's the thing. You can see them on the screen, you can write them down, but unless you apply them, they'll never become your promise. They've got to be your promise. Parents sometimes have huge burdens on their kids that are unreasonable and set the kid up to let the parent down.

A lot of parents live their lives vicariously through their kids. Maybe the dad was a rotten basketball player so he wants to compensate for that by having the kid go to every basketball camp on the planet. And when the kid misses a shot, the father has a heart attack breakdown. "What's wrong with you? How could you miss that?"

Listen, the truth is, when a father does that, what he's really saying is, "You missed it just like I missed all the shots in my life." Setting the kid up for huge disappointment. Listen, don't misunderstand me. We need to pursue excellence. If you're a basketball player, do your best for Jesus. Be the best at it.

But parents, if your kid fails after having done his or her best, make sure they know you love them anyway regardless. By the way, I think if they know you love them, no matter how it turns out, I think they'll try harder. Encourage your child, support your child, pray for them obviously, and let them hear your prayer for them.

I think that is what the whole story of the Prodigal Son's all about. He's off living his life being an absolute mess, running around hanging out with girls, getting drunk, winds up losing everything, sleeping with pigs in the mire. And the father was consistent and that boy knew he could always go home to his dad. That love. People are going to let us down.

How many of you have kids in here? Raise your hands. Have you let your kids down? You want to think you haven't maybe, but you have. You can make that such a teachable moment. You can tell them, "Junior, I'm sorry I was 15 minutes late in picking you up. Just understand this, God is not like me." And when that kid knows that love, there's a lot of grace.

The Bible says in Ephesians 3:20, listen to this. You say, "Well, Jack, this is a big expectation verse." Yes, it is. But notice the target and notice the base. Ephesians 3:20, "Now to Him," that's your Father in heaven, "who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us."

That's the Holy Spirit. That's huge expectation, is it not? Notice, God does not want to set you up for pain. He's not wringing his hands right now trying to figure out how to ruin your life. He wants you blessed. He wants you growing. This verse is God's promise that if you let Him lead and guide your life, stop scheming, stop planning, and let Him rule, let Him guide you, let Him lead you, He'll never let you down. And when you think this moment of disappointment has come, the truth of the matter is God is preparing you for a great thing.

The disciplines of disappointment is preparing for the disappointments of life. We need to prepare for them. And you need to be able to think mature thoughts about that. It requires us to grow up in spiritual matters when we talk about disappointment. How do we handle them? How do we deal with disappointments?

It requires you and I to grow up spiritually regarding spiritual matters. There is literally no biblical excuse for you and I to whine or complain about why did God have me lose my job. Notice how God always gets blamed for everything. First of all, people lose their jobs. Did you know that? It happens.

You want to take it a little deeper? You can be in this room tonight in the sanctuary, the most right-on godly Christian on the planet, and your child dies. It would be completely biblically incorrect for you to stop and say, "How could this happen?" We say things like that and we get disappointed horrifically because we view it wrong.

We somehow think that maybe because we're Christians, we're exempt from certain pain, from certain disappointment. Not so. The truth of the matter is you and I need to know our Bibles. Everything that happens in your life, in my life, is pre-programmed to be answered in this book.

Every one of us, every human being that has ever lived, the answer to life's disappointments is in the Word of God, guaranteed. This book is the answer to your soul's quest. Look, none of us are exempt from this. When I'm tempted to say, "I don't know why the Lord just doesn't bring fire down and have them consume that guy," the answer is in the book. God says when I calm down, "I am slow to anger, I am patient, back off, Jack. Vengeance is mine, I shall repay, saith the Lord." You see?

David J.: Pastor and Bible teacher, Jack Hibbs. Here on Real Life Radio with his message called Discipline of Disappointment. This message is part of Pastor Jack's series called The Disciplines of Life, a series that highlights the disciplines of a Christ-follower and the high cost of sharing our faith with others. And we'll continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio.

Pastor Jack, every once in a while I like to feature a listener letter and I want you to do a shout-out to Vonnie. Get this. Vonnie says, "I stumbled upon Pastor Jack about two weeks ago and I wanted to shout with joy. I'll be 92 in August and I've lived in Brazil for the last 50 years. I've had an adventure I would have never dreamed of as I serve God."

Oh, that's a topic for another day, isn't it? She says, "I'm amazed at how Jack and Amir are filling some of the gaps in my life. The Lord has been using them to give me more hope. The world is crazy, but the Lord isn't." I'm going to have a T-shirt with that on it. She says, "I'm thanking God for you and if there's any way that I can help, let me know. I'm here, send me." That's Vonnie.

Jack Hibbs: First of all, all of us should be ashamed. Right? Come on, what's our excuse for not serving the Lord? Vonnie at what was it? 92? God bless you, Vonnie, that's incredible. And you might even find it to be a little bit more of a fun insight to know that Amir, she's referring to Amir Tsarfati, the founder and president of Behold Israel, and you need to listen to Amir.

He and I have been very close friends. We're almost going on three decades of being close friends. In fact, I'm going to be with Amir in a couple of days. But yeah, Vonnie, what an encouraging word that is. God bless you. And you asked how can you be involved? I'm going to take a wild guess and say that you already are because there's probably a good chance that you pray for us and that's the greatest thing you can do is ask God to grant us His favor.

David J.: You know, if you'd like to drop a note of encouragement to Pastor Jack, that'd be awesome. He'd really love to see what you have to say about him and how his ministry's affected your life. So please do that. Go to the connect tab at JackHibbs.com. That's the tab labeled connect at JackHibbs.com.

Hey, thank you again so much for listening. And if you'd like to hear or see more of what we do here, you can always go to JackHibbs.com for all the latest on what's going on with this ministry. And please, if you're ever in the Southern California area, come see us at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills. We'd love to see you there in person.

It has been so good to be with you today and I pray you find yourself in the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. See you on the next episode. This program is made possible by the generous contributions of you, our listeners. Visit us at JackHibbs.com. That's JackHibbs.com. Until next time, Pastor Jack Hibbs and all of us here at Real Life Radio wish for you solid and steady growth in Christ and in His word. We'll see you next time here on Real Life Radio.