God’s gifts are good and are meant to be enjoyed. Yet none of them can deliver all that they promise. Each of them brings a level of satisfaction but also a level of disappointment, a sense of beauty but also a sense of longing for more. We need to be wary of that longing for more because it can motivate us to make poor decisions or even depraved ones. It can lead us to forsake the ones we love and be discontent in even their greatest efforts and best attempts to love. 

One of the most important habits you can develop is the habit of accepting that life is full of disappointments. One of the best ways to grow in contentment is to accept the inevitability of discontentment. One of the ways you can be most joyful in life is to be realistic about life, to know that the people in it will so often fail to meet your expectations. Having admitted all of this, you can embrace it as the way life is and even the way God means for it to be.

Your church will disappoint you. The pastor will preach some weak sermons, the elders will make some poor decisions, and the members will fail to share every one of your burdens and minister to every one of your sorrows. You will be tempted to become discontent with your church and begin to cast wistful eyes toward other congregations. You will begin to wonder if the path to joy involves picking up and moving on.

Your husband will disappoint you. He will fail to please you, fail to fulfill you, fail to be all you want him to be. You will be given too little attention, sinned against too often, hear too little of your love language. You will be tempted to become discontent with him, to demand more, and to insist that peace will come only on the other side of his personal reformation. You may even be tempted to leave him altogether and start over with someone who promises more.

Your sex life will disappoint you, the wonder of the early days soon giving way to the struggles that come with too little opportunity or too little willingness, too much demand or too much distraction. How many people have made shipwrecks of marriage, family, and ministry because they could not accept the disappointment of a sex life that is imperfect and less than completely fulfilling?

Your parents will disappoint you and so too your children. Your friends will disappoint you and so too your relatives. All will fail you at many times and in many ways.

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