God is Disappointed in Me
God Is Disappointed in Me
The Comfort of the Gospel in Psalms 34:18
“The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and the crushed in spirit”
All scripture communicates the Gospel, and the Gospel connects back to the entirety of the scripture. At its core the Gospel is a message of hope and love, showing God coming near to and saving us. For the Christian struggling with anxiety, depression, and feelings that you’ve let God down, this message is for you. The hope of the gospel can be found in Psalms 34:18, “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit”
As a mental health counselor who has worked with people for over a decade, I have seen many Christians seek out counseling because they feel like they’ve let God down and He’s disappointed in them. This belief creates worry that they will go to hell if they don’t do the right thing. It can also create depression because they feel like they can never be good enough to get God’s approval and unfortunately these beliefs create a functional theology that is based in “works”, not “grace” and imprisons them.
2 years ago, in the summer of 2022, I was meeting with a young woman in my office. She was hoping counseling would help her depression. She described how medication and past counselors hadn’t helped, unpacked hurt and emotional wounds from past family and friend interactions, and described a disconnected and disorganized relationship with God. Her upbringing was religiously rigid. Her conclusion was that her depression was due to shame and guilt because she wasn’t a good Christian. The god she grew up with and the Living God of the Bible she read about, especially Jesus, didn’t match up. The god she was familiar with was always upset with her for not reading the bible enough, not praying enough, or not serving enough in church. This god focused on “good” behavior and rule following and was not interested in her emotions or feelings. Since this was the god, she had experienced god was not to be trusted with emotions and feelings, causing her to sink further into shame, exhaustion, and hope depletion.
Like many Christians, she coped with her depression through self-reliance and the distrust of others. Her coping strategy was often ineffective, but she was more comfortable in dealing with her self-destruction than trying to figure out how to have a relationship with God. She was disconnected from the God of the Bible and depression was affecting the way she lived.
“For my client, there was no solution other than to try harder and be better, but it is this very belief that was crushing her.”
God Is Disappointed in Me
Seeing the hopelessness and underlying anger towards God I decided to ask a question that I hoped would disrupt her depressive thoughts.
I asked, “what does God think about you?” This question caused her to blankly stare at me.
She didn’t answer me for a full minute, which in counseling can feel like an eternity.
She finally responded and said, “I don’t understand the question.”
I rephrased it and said, “If Jesus was in this room and He and I were talking about you, what would He say?”
She took less time to think, as she began to recall lessons from Sunday school and said, “Jesus loves me, and He died for me.”
I immediately responded with, “True, but is that what you really think He thinks about you?” She was taken back by my response; you could see on her face she was searching for what she might’ve said wrong.
I asked again, “in the deepest part of your heart, in the core of your being, do you think that Jesus loves you on a daily basis or do you think He thinks something else about you?”
Her face immediately sunk; the heart of my question finally hit her. She was no longer looking at me, her shoulders sagging as she stared at her knees. She said in a meek voice, “He’s disappointed in me.”
You could see the shame on her face. This is the same shame that a young child may have when he spills milk on the table. Her words, “He’s disappointed in me” were heavy. She had been carrying around this belief for years and it was breaking her. It was clear that she had become accustomed to the weight of this belief because she didn’t know how heavy it was, let alone that she even had it. When she expressed her thoughts on how God feels about her, you could see some momentary relief, but the burden of her beliefs quickly returned because her experiences taught her God was only happy with her when she behaved right. For my client, there was no solution other than to try harder and be better, but it is this very belief that was crushing her.
This is the secret existence many Christians live in. “God is only happy with me when I (fill in the blank)”. They hold on to the belief that Christ and by extension God, is disappointed in them because they haven’t done something right, or they’ve done something wrong. Often, they are plagued by past sin and suffering that has a hold over their mental and emotional health. They function in relationship with Jesus like He is a disapproving and withholding parent and they are the constant failing child. I remember growing up, my father would tell me stories about his time in Catholic school. As he recounts, the nuns were strict and wouldn’t hesitate to physically punish the students if they got out of line. This punishment was often connected to following God’s commands and His approval of you. If God approved, there would be no punishment. If He didn’t approve there would be punishment. My father felt like relationship with God was impossible because He wanted perfection and if God didn’t get it, He would punish my father.
Often, Christians just feel like God is distant, silent and absent from their lives. From these feelings they discern that they have done something wrong. This belief has single handily imprisoned many in an invisible cell of depression. The god they’ve encountered has crushed them with silence because they’ve been “bad.” A “works” based message of hope will always leave us feeling like God is distant, which is why it is important to look through the Bible and connect the loving God we see in Christ to the rest of scripture.
We see this same radical love in the Gospel present in Psalms 34:18. Like the love and hope of John 3:16, Psalms 34:18 shows the God of all creation coming near to and saving us. This verse says nothing about what we must do to earn God’s approval. Our relationship with God does not depend on our “good” works, but upon God alone. Our ability to come to Jesus means God came near to us first. How do we connect to this concept? We connect through faith.
Faith not Feelings
Faith often means having trust and confidence in something without having absolute certainty. When we get in our cars and drive on the highway, we exercise faith that the other drivers will obey the rules of the road, though we cannot have absolute certainty that they will. Another example of living by faith is that most of us have bank accounts that hold our money. We have faith that when we go to access those funds they will be there, though we cannot have absolute certainty that the money will be there. We trust our bank to act in good character to make sure our money is protected. When we talk about biblical faith, we are using the same words “trust” and “confidence”, except the object those words are directed to is God. To grow in faith means reading scripture and learning about God’s true character.
What my young female client felt was distance and silence from God in her life. She felt like God was not near to her. Psalms 34:18 is a counter to that lie. Our feelings are always trying to dictate reality for us. In our modern age we are guided by the philosophy of “Speak your truth”, which in essence is saying trust your feelings to tell you what is true. As Christians, we are not aiming to suppress our feelings but rather keeping them in check and making scripture the foundation of objective truth in our daily lives. The Bible shows the character of God in that He pursues those that are broken and what is required of us is faith that God is who He says He is and that He will do what He says He will do.
God’s grace, not our good works
Psalms 34:18 finishes with “and saves the crushed in spirit”. This is good news for the depressed and anxious Christian. God is the one who does the work to save you, and we see this in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Our salvation does not depend on how many times we read the Bible, pray, or serve in church, but it is completely and solely dependent on what Christ did on the cross, which is summed up perfectly in Eph 2:8-9:
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
The main ingredient to trusting in the promises of God, once again, is faith. God is not disappointed in you dear Christian; he treasures you and loves you beyond anything you could imagine. Timothy Keller puts it this way, “The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.”[1]
Where Do I Go from Here?
1.Be a part of the local church
Shifting from a perspective that God only approves of you because of your “good” works to, God did everything for me through His Son Jesus Christ and I am now seen as righteous and fiercely loved does not change overnight. Psalms 34:18 and the rest of scripture is meant to be experienced and lived out in relationships. God did not design us to live in isolation. We need Christian community to speak the truth of the Gospel into our lives daily; be a part of your local church and be known by the people there.
2. Read Scripture Daily
Going without daily scripture reading is like going without food for the day. This is not a tactic to shame you into reading the Bible, but it is an encouragement to create a healthy rhythm that feeds your spiritual, mental and emotional state. Reading scripture daily introduces us to God and His good character, exposes us to the promises of God, which have a transformative effect and saturates our brains with truth, which makes combatting intrusive thoughts such as, “God is disappointed in me” much easier.
3. Pray Frequently, Specifically, and Intimately
Finally, pray often. Come to Jesus with your specific concerns, fears, anxieties, and requests. Talk with him intimately, like He is a loved one that you have complete trust in. Praying frequently builds the habit of turning to God, rather than ourselves in times of stress. It teaches us how to articulate feelings that may lead us astray. Praying also opens the communication pathway for God to confirm and reaffirm His love for us by bringing scripture to mind like Psalms 34:18
Christian, the Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.
Christian Bringolf MA LMHC
[1] Keller, Timothy, “The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God