You probably have already met people (maybe even yourself) who were in some point in their lives disappointed with God. This disappointment may cause them to feel unable to fully trust in God and sometimes even cause them to turn away from Him. But why does this disappointment occur?

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First let’s check what the word “disappoint” mean:

to disappoint: to fail to meet the expectation or hope of  (according to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary)

The keyword here is expectation. The person expects something from God, and when it doesn’t happen as they expect, they get disappointed with God.

A person can get a wrong expectation from God in several ways. Most commonly, it is due to the lack of knowledge of the Word of God from the Bible, which also includes incorrect interpretations.

Recently we talked about Peter’s dramatic change, from a coward simple man into a bold preacher of the Gospel. Another person who went through a change like that was the apostle John. The Gospel written by John is my favorite book of the Bible, and he is the apostle that I like the most. Why? Mostly because he was known for his love.

Picture credit: St John the evangelist, by Guido Reni (Creative Commons)

Nowadays, people call John the “apostle of love”, but it wasn’t always like that. In fact, when John and his brother James first joined Jesus’ disciples, they were called “sons of thunder” (see Mark 3:17), which shows that they were mostly known by their temper.

We know that Peter’s faithfulness to Jesus failed when he denied Him three times. But John also failed a test before that:

As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” But Jesus turned and rebuked them. Then he and his disciples went to another village. (Luke 9:51-56)

Yep, John and James wanted to destroy the whole city. Not exactly what Jesus meant by loving your enemies, right? They definitely had faith, but they lacked love.

John was probably like many of us. He was probably a “good person”. But Jesus wanted more. He wanted him to live the love of God!

“My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.
A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:33-35)

I’ve been praying about the theme for this blog. Something that I could focus on when writing the posts. And God has shown me in several ways that I should talk about love.

As I have already shared with you in one of the first posts I wrote, God has been working in my life in that area.

When I changed the visual of this blog, I thought it would be a good moment to give it a theme, a main subject.

Yesterday, the sermon at church was about the importance of community. He focused on the community of believers in the Church, and he mentioned a few examples from the Bible.

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In one of the illustrations, the preacher used an interesting episode from the Bible, from Exodus 17:8-13:

The Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim. Moses said to Joshua, “Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands.” So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill. As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning. When Moses’ hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up—one on one side, one on the other—so that his hands remained steady till sunset. So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword.

Moses delegated to Joshua the leadership of the army, and he gave him this assignment: gather soldiers and fight the enemy. People would probably think that Joshua and the army were the ones who would determine the outcome of the battle, victory or defeat. They were the ones who were actually doing the fighting, right?

If you ask people about romantic couples from the Bible, they would probably mention David and Bathsheba or Samson and Delilah, mostly because Hollywood have portrayed a version (not necessarily the real one) of their lives in several films.

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To be honest, I don’t even consider David and Bathsheba or Samson and Delilah as romantic couples in the classical sense.

Delilah was paid to find the source of  Samson’s great strength, so the Philistines could find a way to defeat him. She did it, and there is no indication that she had any feelings toward him or that she felt sorry for what she did (see Judges 16:4-22).

About David and Bathsheba, they were both married to other people when they got involved. She got pregnant while her husband was away in battle. Ultimately David got her husband killed so he could marry her (2 Samuel 11:14-17). That’s definitely not a good way to start a relationship.

We can see in the Bible how they all faced severe consequences for their choices. Their lives are examples of how things can turn out really bad when we make choices out of impulses and desires instead of following God’s will.

If you ask me, my favorite romance from the Bible is Boaz and Ruth’s. If you are not familiar to their story, you can read it in the book of Ruth. It’s a quick read and it’s worthy it.

Jesus said:

“I am the good shepherd […] I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.” (John 10:14,16)

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Jesus presented Himself as the Good Shepherd and his followers were His flock. In the verse mentioned above, He wasn’t only talking about His current followers of that point in time. He was letting them know that many more would add to their number, not only from different locations, different cultures, but also from different times throughout History.

Ever since then, Christianity grew and many people chose to belong to Jesus’s flock. People so diverse, but they all had at least one single characteristic in common, and that’s what allow them all to be part of one single flock: they all follow the same Shepherd, Jesus Christ.

For the last couple of weeks we have been talking about Jesus presenting Himself as the good shepherd and referring to us as His sheep.

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In addition to the quotes I’ve mentioned before from John chapter 10, Jesus also used a well-known parable to illustrate His love for each one of His sheep:

Then Jesus told them this parable:
“Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’
I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent. (Luke 15:3-7)

This parable was intended to portray a person who was part of Jesus’ flock but turned away and got lost. They strayed away and lost sight of the shepherd and the flock.

The amazing thing about Jesus’ love is that the parable shows that the Shepherd doesn’t wait for the sheep to realize that it is lost and call for help. He doesn’t sit and wait for it to come back to Him. He pursues the lost sheep! He wants to bring each one back to His flock.

Everything about nature, including our lives, is cyclic. We have periods that start, later they finish, then another one starts again.

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This is a characteristic that the Creator assigned to His creation. He created time and He gave us the perception of cycles within it.

At the very begininning, back when God created the heavens and the earth in 6 days and rested on the 7th day, He established the weekly cycle that we follow up to today.

There are some cycles that have a special meaning to us: birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, etc. Each date marks the end of a period and beginning of something new.