A number of years ago a young single woman named Cheree (not her real name) came to my office wanting to talk about some spiritual issues in her life. She was not a member of our congregation but had attended several events at our church and I had gotten to know her by name. She was a schoolteacher, very bright, and very faithful in her church.

I asked her what she wanted to talk about and she told me immediately that God didn’t seem to be answering her prayers anymore. She was frustrated and confused. Cheree told me that she had always had a powerful prayer life and was used to God answering her prayers in amazing ways but over the past few months she felt as if her prayers were just hitting the ceiling and falling to the floor. She was concerned about the shift in her spiritual life and hoped I had some insights that might help her get back on track.

I asked Cheree what she had been praying for lately that was seemingly not getting through to God. I was prepared to talk about God’s timing and his working behind the scenes and not to be discouraged but to keep asking, seeking, and knocking. But then Cheree told be what her prayer focus had been lately. Without hesitating she told me that she had been involved with a married man for several years. Her prayer had been that he would leave his wife and children and marry her so they could live happily ever after. Okay… for a moment I was grasping for a pastorally professional response. Cheree was bewildered with God and frustrated because he was not answering her heart-felt pleas.

After a moment, I asked Cherie why she thought God should answer that particular prayer. She then stated a theological position that I suspect many of us subscribe to from time to time. She said, “God should answer my prayer because he wants me to be happy and that would make me happy.” We talked about her theology and went on to explore the meaning of adultery and God’s unwillingness to participate in our sin while leaving a wife and three small children abandoned. It was interesting to watch the lights come on when we talked about her sin. It was as if Cheree had never considered the implications of her desires. For her it felt good so it must be good.

Cheree was also operating on an unstated premise that God’s sole commitment to us is to make us happy. In the kingdom of God, however, holy must come before happy and sanctified must come before satisfied. Paul tells us, “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son” (Rom.8:29). God’s primary commitment to us is not to make us happy, as we understand it in our immaturity, but to make us into the image of Jesus. Being “conformed” usually requires some bending, shaping, stretching, and sometimes hammering. Like diamonds it involves time, pressure, heat and often a Father’s discipline. Ultimately, the work of God in our lives will bring happiness but it rarely comes in the form we first imagined.

The idea that if God loves me he will give me everything I want is very childlike – not in the good sense of innocent and trusting, but in the self-centered sense of a two-year old demanding his way and being angry at his parent if he doesn’t get it. If we are honest, we all have a bit of a two-year old inside of us. God works on us with an eternal perspective while we tend to operate in the here and now and seek immediate gratification even in spiritual things. Sometimes we do get that immediate answer and an amazing miracle where God manifests his goodness for us in a singular event. But more often God manifests in a process that takes time and even effort on our part.

That is because process is usually more formative than an event or even an impartation because process develops character. I remember Renee, the wife of a former senior pastor at Mid-Cities, saying with a laugh, “ I don’t want to have to work for it, I just want an impartation.” We all laughed, but secretly I’m with her – I just want an impartation. But God is wiser than that. Too often, if God were to give us the desire of our heart as soon as we asked for it, we would not have the character to manage the gift or the blessing. We would mess it up or misuse it.

So, does God want us to be happy? Yes, God wants us to be happy but not just for a brief season until “the new” wears off of our latest toy. He wants us to possess joy and possess happiness but that comes after the shaping and the molding of our hearts. I’m not saying you shouldn’t ask for what you desire but first of all examine that desire of your heart to see if it lines up with God’s values and purposes. Ask him to reveal the areas of growth he wants to work on next in your life and invite him to do the work and cooperate when he does it.

God is a great coach. When I ran track in high school, what I wanted and what would make me happy on a daily basis was an easy workout, finishing early, and a pat on the back for a job not done. That would make me happy in the short run but that happiness would quickly fade. The coach had something else in mind – the joy that would come from winning the race at the next meet and the race after that and the race after that. The joy and satisfaction that would come from a career of winning with medals in the display case would far out weight the happiness of an easy workout. So…we didn’t get easy workouts. We went home late not early and there was always one more lap.

There is a cost to lasting happiness. So when God says no or not yet don’t despise him. When you face hardships that are not quickly settled but that you must endure, know that God is making you into a champion who will one day possess joy and happiness rather than always seeking it in the “next new thing” you desire. Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us (Heb.12:1).

Have you ever been disappointed or felt betrayed by God? Those feelings typically arrive when we feel that God let us down in some way or didn’t give us the desires of our heart. I’ve known a lot of people who were angry with God. I recall one man in particular that I worked with when I was a new believer in my college days. I rode in a company truck for two hours with him every day and each day I tried to share my faith in some way. One day he stopped me and said that he didn’t want me to talk about “the God stuff” anymore. He went on to explain that he had once been a strong believer and very involved in his church. But one day he had come home from work early only to find his best friend in bed with his wife. He said, “I decided right then that if that was how God was going to treat me after the way I had been serving him, I didn’t want any part of him.” I don’t know if he and his heavenly Father ever reconciled.

In his short book, Hiddenness & Manifestation, Graham Cooke speaks about the phenomenon of unmet expectations in our relationship with God. He says, “…if we’re honest, we sometimes have a perception of how God should be, how things should work, and what He should be doing. When things don’t happen the way we expect, we live with a sense of disappointment that maybe God has in someway let us down. The disciples said to one another, ‘We were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel.’ They had this expectation of God which he had no intention of fulfilling at the time. I wonder how many of us are living with an expectation of God which He has no desire or intention to fulfill in our life, because our expectation is flawed? Often our hopes and expectations about God are built on very shaky thinking and need to be pulled down” (p.27-28).

The Jews had a set of expectations regarding their Messiah that Jesus didn’t meet. They expected him to come as a statesman and a warrior to deliver them from Roman oppression. However, Jesus seemed to skirt politics and he told his followers to put up their swords rather than to raise an insurrection. The Jewish leaders expected the Messiah to come to them with praise for the way they had maintained traditions and kept the Law. I’m certain they expected to have seats of honor around him as he established his kingdom on earth. Jesus, however, had little to do with the Jewish leaders and little regard for them. Most of his encounters with them led to scolding them for their hypocrisy rather than praising them for their religious fervor. They expected Messiah to be born into an aristocratic family of the Jews and attend the finest rabbinical schools. However, Jesus was raised in the backwater town of Nazareth and attended only the local synagogue school. Jesus did not meet their expectations of Messiah so they killed him and, in a sense, missed God altogether.

My co-worker from years past expected God to override his wife’s and his best friend’s free will and to guarantee him a happy wife and happy life because he taught Sunday school and coached church softball. Others I have known felt betrayed by God when a loved one died or when a marriage ended in divorce as if God had contracted to keep us from all hardship if we were followers of Jesus. I believe that one of Satan’s great strategies is to establish unbiblical expectations about God in our minds so that sooner or later we will be disappointed and blame God for welching on a promise he never made.

If you were to sift back through the New Testament you would find that Jesus never promised smooth sledding but, instead, he assured us that in this world we will have trouble. He never promised “the good life” as the world defines it, but tells us clearly that in this world we will be persecuted because if we love Jesus the world will hate us.

God does not promise us a trouble free life. What he does promise is that he will be with us in all of our troubles. He does not promise a pain free life but does promise healing from the pain. On the other hand, He does promise to fulfill the desires of our hearts but some believers approach that promise as if God were a genie in a bottle doing their bidding. We need to understand that he fulfills the desires in our hearts when those desires are aligned with his heart.

An inaccurate expectation of how God works in our lives has caused many to miss the Father just as the Jews missed Messiah. If we find ourselves disappointed or angry with God, it might be good to examine the source of our anger and to make sure that we are not holding Gold responsible for something he never promised. It’s also good to get alone with God and air out your thoughts and feelings. Shout a little. Pace back and forth. Talk to God about your frustrations and ask him for a revelation that will help you understand what has happened in your life and how you can find his love in the midst of your pain. You will find that he is faithful and that he can be counted on to keep his word.

Expectations are important but if you have felt disappointment with God or are angry with Him,check your expectations. See if they are biblical as you consider the whole counsel of God rather than just one verse. But more than that, have it out with Him if you must. He can handle it and in the end, all He wants is for you know Him better and to trust Him again.

I’ve put off commenting on the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage because everyone and their dog have been commenting on it from every direction. For some it was no surprise – just the inevitable end of a long slide toward anti-biblical and anti-Christian values in America. For others it was the last nail in the coffin that will surely bring down the wrath of God on this nation. For still others it was a step in the right direction for tolerance in America moving us toward a “just America” where everyone is equal in the eyes of the law.

I guess I will share my thoughts now to add to your own. First of all, God was not taken by surprise when the edict from the Supreme Court was announced. In fact, very few of us were surprised. We had hoped for another outcome but did not have a great deal of expectation. A large majority of states has already legalized same-sex marriage and the number of homosexual couples in America did not suddenly spike because of the ruling. Those individuals were already living the lifestyle and won’t be anymore displeasing to the Lord today than they were a week ago. In addition, all of the heterosexuals in America who are cohabiting or secretly sleeping with someone else’s spouse or abusing their children won’t be any more displeasing to the Lord than they were a week ago.

I’m not saying the decision doesn’t matter. It does. Leadership matters. The White House or now “the Rainbow House” has not only tolerated the homosexual agenda but has now elevated it to a celebrated lifestyle. This, however, is just one more example of a nation’s leaders labeling those things that are good as being evil and those things that are evil as being good. My biggest concern is that this public declaration by the Supreme Court will convey the idea to our children and teens that homosexuality is now a moral lifestyle because it is protected by law. Remember, however, that at one time, slavery was protected by law. A nation’s law may say something is good or acceptable, but does not make it so.

I am also convinced that since our leaders continue to align themselves with Satan, they have opened the doors to even more demonic activity in America than we have seen before. We will be seeing a spike in the “spiritual warfare meter” over America. The mainstream media will be complicit with this agenda and will celebrate and continue to normalize same-sex marriage so that our children will grow up believing that it has always been part of the fabric of American culture – along with the sexual immorality, violence, and “real housewives” behavior that they see hourly now.

In the midst of this, what is our response? We live for Jesus. Our King is still on his throne and has not compromised. We have dual citizenship as Americans and as citizens of heaven but our citizenship in heaven must always have our greatest loyalty. As the light of the world, His church should shine even brighter in this darkness. Our values do not change even as culture ebbs and flows. Our assignment is still the same – make disciples of all nations beginning now with America. Will there be persecution in America? Probably. Christians who stand on the Word of God will be labeled as intolerant bigots and those who demand tolerance will attempt to crush those who don’t agree with them. But that is already happening.

Undoubtedly we will begin to feel some of the heat that our fellow believers in the rest of the world have felt for decades. Believers in America will have to decide whether they will stand with Jesus or bend to the culture trying to seek acceptance. Is all lost? Not at all. The church survived the brutality of Rome and built churches on the ruins of that nation that tried to stamp out the faith. The church is thriving in China while government bulldozers level church buildings and drag pastors off for interrogation and re-education. House churches are springing to life in Muslim nations where there are severe penalties for being a Christian. The church will prevail. The only question is whether we will be faithful or not.

Is it too late for America? That probably depends on the church. God would have spared Sodom for the sake of ten righteous men. There were many times that Israel seemed doomed to be erased in the dust of history but God would raise up a righteous leader, the people would repent, and Israel would prosper in peace again for a generation or two.

No doubt the Supreme Court decision is another wake up call. Judgment may come on the nation but God’s judgment always has a redemptive purpose and he will be with his people in the midst of that judgment if it comes. The church can roll over and let culture have its way or the church can rise up in prayer, holiness, love, and disciple-making and exalt the name of Jesus in this nation once again. Paul reminded the church at Corinth that many of them had been in bondage to sin as adulterers, drunks, homosexuals, swindlers, and so forth ( 1 Cor.6) but that they had been redeemed and transformed. Our culture is not beyond the reach of God and his power to save.

If you have seen the Apollo 13 movie with Tom Hanks, there is a scene in Mission Control where some are beginning to talk about the disaster that the probable loss of the spacecraft and crew will be for NASA. Everything was against them. A multitude of unknown variables probably did mark the flight for disaster. At the moment everyone else was despairing, however, Gene Krantz, the flight director played by Ed Harris, stands and says, “I believe this is going to be our finest hour.” A few minutes later the Apollo 13 capsule landed softly in the ocean and the crew was retrieved shaken but unscathed. I believe this too can be the church’s finest hour in America if we will stand.