Fear of Disappointing God

Last week we were looking at the fear of whether or not our lives matter. Do people notice us? Does anyone really care? Does the God who created the universe notice and or even care about us? What we learned is that from the beginning to the end of the Bible the answer is yes, God does notice us, God does care for us, and in fact – God’s love for us is boundless and endless. The knowledge that God loves us can help us overcome this fear of thinking that our lives don’t matter, but when it comes to our relationship with God there is perhaps an even greater fear we face and that is the fear of disappointing God. You see, if God really does know us, if God knows everything about us, if God knows every hair on our head, then surely he must be disappointed with us because he knows how often we fail. If God really does know us then He knows we have not lived up to the life He has for us. This fear of disappointing God is real for many of us because we know the fear of disappointing others. Too many times we have felt the pain of disappointing others and letting people down, and we have also experienced the pain of having someone stop loving and caring for us when we have let them down.


The summer I graduated from college a spent a few weeks working at a camp on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. It was a beautiful setting and most of the children who attended this camp came from wealthy families in the Washington DC area. One week there was a boy in our cabin and his very first day he got into trouble. He identified the toughest boy in his group and started a fight with him. Then he picked another fight and by the middle of the second day we had to punish him so he was not allowed to go swimming during our free time. As he and I sat in the cabin and talked he began to tell me about his family. He said that if he got an A+ on his report card it would go up on the fridge, but if he got anything else, anything lower than a perfect score and his parents wouldn’t display it. As we talked more he told me how disappointed he thought his father was because he wasn’t as big and smart and athletic as the rest of his family. As he shared that with me, all those fights he started began to make sense, he was just trying to prove how tough he was, he was trying to show how strong he was, he was trying to prove himself because he father constantly told him how disappointed he was. As this little boy sat on his bunk bed and cried, my heart broke. Here was an 8 year old who felt like he had already disappointed his father so much that there was nothing he could do to earn his father’s love. Because he had failed and disappointed his father he felt worthless, alone and afraid.

Isn’t this exactly how we feel at times when it comes to our relationship with God? We know we don’t live up to God’s standards, we know that we fail to be the man or the woman God wants us to be, and whether we are 8 or 80 there are those times we feel that we have so disappointed God that there is nothing we can change our situation. We begin to believe that our failures have moved us beyond God’s grace and our fear is that there is simply no way God can forgive us. Too many times we look at our lives and end up feeling exactly the way Paul did when he wrote in Romans 7:15 and 18 - I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Paul feels so helpless about his situation that he ends up saying, what a wretched man I am, who will save me from this body of death? What Paul fears, and what we all fear is that we have so disappointed God that there is nothing that can save us, nothing that can rescue us from our failures and sin. We fear that God can not forgive us or worse yet, that God doesn’t want to forgive us because of our failure and sin.

One of the hardest things for me as a pastor is to listen to people struggle with this fear. I can look at them and see so much value and worth and potential, but all they can see are the string of failures and disappointments they have experienced in their lives. While I was in Lewisburg I talked with a lot of college students who often knew they were making poor choices and because of the actions and behaviors they questioned whether or not God could still love them. They had made poor choices in dating, they had taken advantage of friends, drank too much, cheated to get ahead and while they wanted to find some way, any way out of bad patterns of behavior, even if they found some success, it often wouldn’t last. After making poor choices on Saturday night they sat in church on Sunday afraid that God could not forgive them and that there was no way God could love them. Many Sundays I looked out into faces of fear and I realized that I was once again sitting on that bunk bed listening to a child wonder if their father could ever love him or ever forgive them.

I know that there are some of us here today that are asking the very same question. Have I so disappointed God that he has given up on me? Have I sinned one too many times for God to forgive me? I know the things I do wrong and I can’t seem to stop them. Like Paul, I want to, I know I need to but I seem to fail time and time again and with each failure I fear that God can not forgive me. If that is what you are asking yourself today, if this is the fear you face then you need to hear this, if we desire God’s grace and if we are open for God’s love to be a part of our lives, then there is no sin that God can not forgive and there is no disappointment that will keep God away. In fact, God knows we need this forgiveness and grace before we even ask and he is ready, more than ready to extend his love and offer his forgiveness.

That’s one of the messages from today’s gospel reading. Jesus forgave the man of his sin before he even asked for it, in fact, I’m not even sure the man was looking to be forgiven. The paralytic was brought to Jesus by his friends because they believed that Jesus could heal him physically. What the friends were thinking was that Jesus would be able to strengthen the man’s legs so he could get up and walk and so they go to these extraordinary lengths to bring their friend to Jesus. Since they can’t get to Jesus through the front door or the back door because of the crowd, they actually go up onto the roof and begin to take the house apart in an effort to lower the man through the ceiling. Can you imagine what the owner of the house is thinking? Can you imagine what Jesus is thinking?

As the man is lowered into the room, Jesus takes a good look at him. He obviously sees that the man needs to be healed physically, but Jesus sees beyond the physical need to the heart and what Jesus sees in this man is that for whatever reason, he needed to experience God’s forgiveness and grace. While we do not know anything about the background of this paralyzed man, we know that there is some disappointment he must feel towards God. We know there is some sin, some failure that he is wrestling with and while he may believe Jesus can help him walk, he fears that God may never truly forgive him. We know that fear is there because the first thing that Jesus says to this man is not to get up and walk, it is to take heart, or do not be afraid. The first thing Jesus says to this man is do not be afraid and the fear isn’t coming from his physical condition otherwise Jesus would have addressed that, no Jesus says, do not be afraid your sins are forgiven. This man’s fear wasn’t coming from his paralysis, it was coming from his sin, from his fear that he disappointed God so deeply that God would not forgive him.

While his friends were looking for Jesus to physically heal the man, and the crowds were looking for Jesus to heal the man and probably even the owner of the house by this time wanted Jesus to heal the man (after all they had torn his roof off for Jesus to have the chance to heal him), what the man longed for was not the ability to walk but the freedom from his fear that his sin had forever cut him off from God. What Jesus does here is so compassionate because he addresses the man’s greatest fear and says; do not be afraid, your sins are forgiven. Whatever your disappointments are, whatever you have wrestled with, what every failures you have experienced in life, whatever you have done, it is all forgiven and then to prove to this man and to his friends and to the owner of the house and to the critics standing along the wall putting Jesus down, to prove them all that he had the power to forgive sin, Jesus then says to this paralyzed man, get up and walk and the man gets up and walks.

The physical healing Jesus performs here is the confirmation that Jesus does have the power to forgiven sin. Throughout his teaching Jesus makes clear that physical problems are not a direct result of sin. This man is not paralyzed because of his sin, but he is afraid that his sin has cut him off from God. His fear is that he has so disappointed God that he can’t be forgiven and what the healing of this man shows us, no, what the healing of this assures us is that God can and does forgive sin – our sin – your sin – my sin. The healing of this man assures us that if we desire God’s grace and if we are open to God’s love being apart of our lives then there is no sin that God can not forgive and there is no disappointment that can keep God away.

Can we hear that message today? There is no sin that God can not forgive. There is no failure that keeps God from us? We may fail God each day, but it says in Lamentations, 3:22, the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies (or his forgiveness) never comes to an end, they are new every morning. Every morning God’s forgiveness is there. Every evening God’s mercy extends to us if we will accept it. God may be disappointed that we are not experiencing the fullness and freedom of life He offers us, but that disappointment doesn’t keep God away and it doesn’t keep God from being a part of our lives. God is only disappointed because he wants more for us and because he wants more for us he is always with us offering us his forgiveness and telling us that his forgiveness can set us free to live a new life.

That is the other message from this story of the paralyzed man. The forgiveness of sin set the man free – he got up and walked and when we understand that God really does forgive us and that he doesn’t hold our sin against us and his disappointment doesn’t separate us from God forever, when we really understand this we can begin to rise up and live a new life. We don’t have to live with the sins and the failures of our past. We don’t have to allow our failures to determine our future – we can get up and move on to a new life because that sin and those failures have been removed. In Psalm 103:12 it says, as far as the east is from the west, so far has God removed our transgressions from us. Not from him, God doesn’t just remove our sin from his eyes so he doesn’t see it, he removes it from us. God removes our sin from us so we don’t have to have our lives controlled by its power forever. Since God removes our sin from us, we can experience the freedom of new life – we can get up and walk in a new direction, live a new life. Isn’t that the message of the cross? Jesus took on our sin and paid the penalty for it, he took it from us, he removed it from us on the cross and then brings a resurrection – a new life, not just for Jesus but for us as well.

Now none of this means that we will never struggle with sin again – we will. We will fail at times and we will feel like we have disappointed God, but if we trust in God’s love of us, if we trust in the cross which is the sign of God’s forgiveness and grace, if we trust more then we will fear less. If we trust in God’s grace then we can overcome the fear that our sin can not be forgiven. So to an 8 year old boy sitting on a bunk bed wondering if his father would ever love him and be proud of him I want to say, your heavenly father loves you more than you can possibly imagine, so trust more and fear less. To a broken hearted college student who feels the weight of her failure and the consequences of her sin and wonders if God can ever forgive her I want to say, there is nothing in this world that can keep you from the love of God, so trust more and fear less. And to all of us today who struggle with the fear that we have so disappointed God with our failures and sin I want to say, no God wants to say to us, son – daughter your sins are forgiven. Whatever those sins are, whatever you have done or not done, whatever you fear is beyond my grace, it is forgiven. So trust more and fear less.