You know the old Davy Crocket song that begins with “Born on a mountain top in Tennessee”? Well, that pretty much sums up the humble beginnings of my dad. Except the mountain top was in Virginia.
His childhood was spent in the tiny mining town of Lynch, Kentucky where his father worked the coal mines. They had a small one bedroom home but lots of love filled those walls. Dad’s parents weren’t really church goers but he did have a teacher who had a love for my dad and a love for Jesus. She talked to him about God and prayed for him, I am sure.
In his teen years her prayers were answered. My dad met Jesus. Days later his mother, father and sister all committed their lives to Christ, too. And somewhere in his journey with God he learned an important lesson that he passed on to me and my siblings: People will disappoint you but God never will.
Then he would follow it up by saying, “Your friends may disappoint you, but God never will. Your family may dissappoint you, but God never will. I may disappoint you – although I’ll never mean to – but God never will.”
Powerful truth, this fatherly nugget of wisdom.
Have you grasped this truth? It’s all too easy to place our hopes and dreams onto those around us and end up feeling disillusioned, disappointed and frankly, let down.
Have you placed your hope in…
Your children
Your husband
Your girlfriend
Your church family
only to find that they just didn’t measure up to your expectations?
May I gently offer this thought? Have you perhaps failed to really grasp the reality that only God will never let you down?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that people we love and trust intend to disappoint us, hurt our feelings or fail to live up to our expectations. Sometimes people have the best of intentions.
But they aren’t God.
Only God is God.
And when we forget this we can become disillusioned. Disheartened. Devastated. And we can even become tempted to chuck the whole thing we call Christianity.
But don’t.
Instead, remember that people aren’t God. They (we) are the ones who need God. We need his goodness. His righteousness. His perfect holiness. His inability to ever, ever hang us out to dry.
God won’t abandon you.
God won’t betray you.
God won’t gossip about you.
God won’t reject you.
Yes, my dad’s words are true. People will disappoint.
But
God
Never
Will.
God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”
Hebrews 13:5
Nice article.