Dealing with Disappointment in Others

By John Orlando

My friend writes: "Our attendance last night at church was way down. And the singing was just terrible. I could not feel the Spirit of the Lord at all. There is just no life in these baptised in vinager christians!! The Choir has ceased to exist as well as the impromptu choir on Sunday mornings. There just is no commitment anymore and no one wants to sing for the Lord!! I can't even find two people in the whole congregation that want to be a part of a praise team and willing to practice once a week. They are all soloists!! Do not attend all services, and sick every other week!! What a mess!~ There was no sincere worship at all. Hopefully the Lord will send me some fresh saints..." END

I thought a good deal about this, and then I sent this response:

My Response:

"Our frustration with others and their seeming lack of response to the glories of the Gospel is born out of a true desire to see people edified, and because we want God to be worshipped for all that He is. How do we keep from allowing this to frustrate us, or worse, to develop bad feelings about those that we’re having the problem with? That is tough, but I think it is helpful for us to keep a couple of things in mind:

1. First, when we get frustrated with others over their sin, I think we need to immediately seek the Lord’s face; but not so that He will “fix” them first (though we will get around to praying for them), but so that He would be gracious to me and that He would cause me to look at Christ and the glories of His Gospel. As I do this, I will quickly realize that if truth be told, no one truly worships God purely and perfectly and in the manner prescribed by God, to include me. Only one person ever offered God perfect worship, and that was our Lord, and the only reason God accepts any of our worship (even when we think we are worshipping aright) is because of the perfect righteousness of Christ that has been imputed to us by His grace alone.

As I go to the Lord in prayer, I am (or at least should be) reminded of how far short of His glory I fall in every conceivable way, whether it is in word, thought, and deed. I realize that I, like my brothers and sisters with whom I am disappointed, are all just beggars in continual and constant need of God’s grace. But as those that have been united to Christ by God’s grace alone, we can rejoice because we know that His grace constantly flows towards us from the Father, in Christ, and through the Spirit. It is here where we need to live and not be moved, because it is here where we will be able to view others through the Gospel.

I can look at others and see where they fall short (hey, we fallen human beings are pro’s at that! :-)), but when I begin to consider God’s grace that has been extended to me, and I consider the depths of sin that still remains in me, I am overwhelmed by His grace, and I am then able to see others with their “shortcomings” through the same grace of the Gospel that has been extended to me. In other words, we need to keep before us the saying that you and I love so much: “I’m just an old sinner, saved by grace.” That is all we will ever be, no matter how much we grow in our sanctification, and the great irony of course is that the more I grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ, the more I am confronted with the ugliness of the sin that still resides in me. And just as I am “just and old sinner, saved by grace,” so are our brothers and sisters in Christ, and all that we are in Christ we are by His grace alone.

2. Having dealt with ourselves first, I think we can move on to prayer for our brothers and sisters. We have been laid bare before God’s holiness and have experienced once again the amazing grace that comes to us in the Gospel. Now we want to pray that God would be so gracious as to do a similar work in the lives of our brothers and sisters. And we appeal to God, not looking down upon them, but out of a supreme love for them, and because we know that the only way any of us will ever desire anything related to God and the Gospel is if God first gives us the desire. We need to pray then that God would give them, and me, a hunger and desire for more and more of Christ, and that He would inflame our hearts and minds with the Gospel, and that Christ and Him crucified would be the thing that we treasure most.

3. Then I would pray and ask God how it is that I could be a conduit of His love and grace…how can I be a display of the love and mercy of God to them? Here I believe that we will be directed to biblical love as most clearly presented in 1 Cor 13; consider especially: “love is patient…it keeps no record of wrongs…”

4. When I then interact with them, I would point them to the glories of Christ as revealed in the Gospel, and then leave the results to God. You see, the thing that will motivate a Christian to service is not a list of do’s and don’ts, rather, it is the Gospel. Our obedience is grounded in, and flows out of the riches of the Gospel that we have experienced. In other words, the more and more we fall in love with Jesus, the more and more that will manifest itself in our lives.

Thus, we want to exhort and edify one another in the Gospel. We love Him because He first loved us, and because of His radical love for us, I am now motivated to live a life committed to Him. As the Christian falls more and more in love Jesus, he or she will want to get involved, not to get anything, but because they have everything in Christ. This is why biblical preaching is so important…we must constantly be putting Christ before God’s people, and exhorting them to rest in Christ.

I can certainly relate to your frustration, but, I think we get a good perspective when we go back to the cross and see ourselves in light of it. If we are thinking properly about the cross, it will always magnify the depravity and sin that is within me, but it will also magnify the glories and greatness of God’s grace toward me and those that may not be “measuring up” to some preconceived standard that I have, which, if I’m honest, I can’t even live up to perfectly. Only God can give the increase, whether we are talking about unbelievers being saved, or believers being revived, and it is only the Gospel that is the power of God unto salvation…all of salvation, whether we are talking about our justification, or our sanctification." END