Moving Past Disappointment

Have you ever been disappointed?

Of course you have. Everyone has been disappointed at some time.

Disappointment can go in two directions: 1) it can cause you to quit, or 2) it can lead you into new adventures.

The choice is yours. Make sure you make disappointment propel you into new adventures.

Consider Thomas Edison. He tried 1000 times to invent the light bulb . . . and then he succeeded. He succeeded and his invention changed the world.

I remember distinctly a time in my childhood when I was just four years old. Once a week school let out early and the students went to religious training. I wasn’t in school yet, but I was included. I’m not sure why.

Well, we had a fun time and for a while most of us were working on puzzles. I was working on one and an older girl who was one of the instructors came by and said, “Oh, that one is too hard for you. I’ll get you an easier one.” So, she took my puzzle and came back with an easier one.

Well, that made me real mad. Too hard for me? I’ll show her!

When she wasn’t looking I took the puzzle back to the table and got the one I was working on earlier. When she came by the next time I was almost done.

“You little stinker!” she exclaimed.

Maybe that was an experience that shaped my future for life. If someone tells me I can’t do something, something rises up inside of me that says, “How dare you tell me I can’t do that? I’ll show you!”

I seem to function the best when a challenge is way over my head and I’m “under water,” so to speak. Because I am determined not to fail, I then get really motivated.

At one time I was asked to do an outreach event in Fort Wayne, Indiana. We secured a date and a location, but the pastors dragged their feet and finally we had to give up the date. We set another one, and that one, too was cancelled. We set up a third, only to see the same thing transpire. The pastors did not get up to speed in time.

I was so disgusted, I told the Lord, “I’m done with this city!” . . . And I went home.

But God said, “Oh, no you’re not. Go back and try again!”

I didn’t go back. I was so disgusted, that I just stayed at home. In time, I suppose I would have gone back to try again, but God brought something across my path that got me moving again.

I was talking on the phone to Sujo John, an Indian man I had used for a previous event. Sujo was in the World Trade Center, on the floor just below where the first plane hit. He had an amazing story of how God delivered him out of the 9-11 tragedy.

I was an elder at Minnesota’s largest Assembly Of God Church, and the denomination was having its yearly national convention in Washington D.C.

“Are you going to the national convention?” Sujo asked.

“No. I don’t like crowds and the ministry doesn’t have the finances for me to go,” I replied.

After a brief pause, Sujo said, “I’m supposed to pay your way.”

Well, if Sujo was going to pay for my plane ticket, that had to be God. I couldn’t really say “No.”

So I went. There were about 4000 people at the convention. I had just developed a new promotion piece for the ministry, a full color card with part of the American flag on the front.

I don’t like traditional brochures. Usually they are tri-fold and have way too much information in them. My new piece had four points on the back that described what our mission was. You could read it in a minute or two.

So the first day of the convention, all of a sudden, the crowd parted and there was Pastor Ron, the lead pastor from Fort Wayne. We talked a bit and I gave him my new promotion piece. He read it quickly and then said, “Well, I think we can do this event.”

“Oh really!” I thought, rather sarcastically. I was thinking, “You messed up three opportunities, but you still want to do the event?”

I confess, I didn’t have good feelings about doing the event. Were we going to set another date and then have them drag their feet again?

That afternoon, the president of the Assemblies Of God was speaking at a coliseum in a different location. When I entered the building, I first decided to visit the men’s room. When I went through the door, there right in front of me was Pastor Ron. There were about 2000 people in the building.

Well, sometimes I am dull of hearing, but I was smart enough to know that running into Pastor Ron among thousands of people, twice within a few hours was not coincidence. It was God telling me that I better get on this event.

So, in a couple weeks I went back to Fort Wayne to try again. This time, the event took root and developed nicely. It turned out to be the largest event I ever did, reaching about 23,000 students through school assemblies and a large evangelical event at the coliseum.

Disappointment can lead to discouragement and discouragement to despair. If you let it take you to the despair mode, you will probably quit . . . and that is what the devil wants.

But if you don’t quit, you will eventually succeed.

I have a suggestion. View your disappointment as an opportunity. Proverbs 24:16 NKJV says:

For a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again . . .

So if you fall down, get up again, dust yourself off, and “charge.” Go after that challenge until you defeat it, even if you fall down seven times in the process.

This may be an overused saying, but it is still every bit true.

Quitters never win, and winners never quit.

There were over 300 that gave their lives to Christ at the coliseum event. In addition to that, Ron’s church got letters from teachers in the public schools asking if we could do the assemblies again. The event was unprecedented in that it was the largest effort of the churches of Fort Wayne to reach their city. Over 100 churches participated in the outreach.

If I had let disappointment get the best of me, all of that would never have happened. Don’t ever let disappointment defeat you. Push through it and win your battle! If you do, you will change history and change lives.

Photos of Lorraine sharing her children’s story and drawings she is working on at the Waskish Baptist Church

In His Service,

George and Lorraine Halama