Hey everybody. This is John Ortberg with a passage to wisdom. So glad you’re tuning in, a special hi to anybody up in Seattle. I was up there with Scotty Scruggs and north row church where I got this cool sweatshirt and then group of pastors yesterday from my old denomination converge. And it was so good to be there. But when I got back today, I had lost the clip that attaches my microphone to a shirt. So I have to hold it. It makes me feel like a giant. When I look because it’s a tiny little microphone, which reminds me of a movie with a giant Andre, the giant quirky little film that I liked a lot, you might have seen called the princess bride. One line in particular in Eagle Montoya, the man who famously said you killed my father. My name is ego Montoya. You killed my father prepared to die is fencing with the masked man who turns out to be the hero, but he doesn’t know who this man is.
He just knows that he’s an extraordinary fencer. And he’s so good that indigo has to switch from his right hand to his left hand, cuz he is lefthanded. And then the masked man does the same thing and turns out to be an even greater fencer than the world class indigo Montoya. And so Montoya asks him, who are you? I must know. And the response from the mass man is get used to disappointment. So I wanna talk about disappointment today and how do we deal with disappointment? How do we get used to it? Not in the sense of being a pessimist or becoming like your, from the old one of the poo stories where you just walk through life with this CLO of negativity, how do I get used to it so that I can learn to exist in it, find God through it and even grow and be useful in it.
And that gets us into this little book, screw tape letter, screw tape is writing to wormwood during the second world war and the war is allowing for warm wood to torment the human being that he’s leading and screw tape is gonna talk about the difference between a person experiencing torment versus experiencing spiritual destruction, being moved away from God and he’s warning Winwood. Don’t mistake, just producing terror from doing spiritual damage for the first time in your career, you have tasted that wine, which is the reward of all our labors, the anguish and bewilderment of a human soul. And it’s gone to your head. I can hardly blame you don’t expect old heads on young shoulders. Did the patient respond to some of your terror pictures of the future? Did you work in some good self pitying glances at the happy past some fine thrills in the pit of his stomach?
Were there you played your violin ply, did you? Well? Well, it’s all very natural. We can experience all those things, but they do not necessarily separate us from God. Do remember wormwood, that duty comes before. Pleasure. If any present self-indulgence on your part leads to the ultimate loss of the prey. You will be left eternally thirsting for that draw of which you are now so much enjoying your first sip. If on the other hand, by steady and cool headed application here and now you can finally secure his soul. He will then be yours forever. A brimful living Chaus of despair and horror and astonishment, which you can raise to your lips as often as you please, if you want a little glimpse of hell, it’s there and then this. So do not allow any temporary excitement to distract you from the real business of undermining faith and preventing the formation of virtues.
So let’s pause there for a moment. The real task of life is to learn, to trust God, to know God, to find God and his goodness right here, right now in this moment. And then to have a character that enables me to live in his kingdom, be formed inside me to have, uh, God powered virtues, love, joy, peace, patience, be formed in me so that I will be able to love God and other people. And that is the real business of life and nothing, no disappointment by itself can prevent that from happening or gain in the way of it. And in fact, disappointment actually provides a unique opportunity for it. Get used to disappointment.
Uncle screw tape goes on. Of course the war is entertaining. The immediate fear and suffering of humans is a legitimate and pleasing refreshment for our myriads of toiling workers. But what permanent good does it do unless we make use of it for bringing souls to our father below. When I see the temporal suffering of humans, the temporal sufferings of humans who finally escape us, I feel as if I’d been allowed to taste the first course of a rich banquet and then denied the rest. It’s worse not to have tasted it at all. The enemy true to his Barbaras methods of warfare allows us to see the short misery of his favorites only to tantalize and torment us to mock the incessant hunger, which during this present phase of the great conflict, his blockade is admittedly imposing. Let us therefore think rather how to use than to enjoy this European war for it has certain tendencies inherent in it, which are in themselves by no means in our favor. We may hope during a war for a good deal of cruelty and UNC chastity. But if we are not careful, we shall see thousands turning in this tribulation to the enemy and in suffering in pain in tribulation, very often the human soul will turn to God. If we’ll let it
While tens of thousands who do not go so far as that will nevertheless have their attention diverted from themselves to values and causes, which they believe to be higher than the self. And now that lies before me today, I can look for values causes, even helping a single other person. That is something that transcends my own self. I can try doing that today. Screw tape goes on. I know the enemy disapproves many of these causes, but that’s where he is so unfair. He often makes prizes of humans who have given their lives for causes. He thinks bad on the monstrously soft sophistical ground that the humans thought them good and were following the best. They knew what a gracious God, God is consider too what an undesirable deaths occur in war time. So when we talk about getting used to disappointment, now death is right in there. Men killed in places where they knew they might be killed and to which they go. If they are at all of the enemies party prepared, this is so striking to me. So countercultural in our day, how much better for us if all humans died in costly nursing homes, amid doctors who lie, friends who lie as we have trained them promising life to the dying, encouraging the belief that sickness, excuses, every indulgence. And even if our workers know their job withholding all suggestion of a priest, less, it should be betrayed to the sick man, his true condition.
And how disastrous for us is the continual remembrance of death, which war enforces. One of our best weapons, contented, worldliness is rendered useless. And one of the strange dark painful gifts of disappointment is it has a way of piercing, contented, worldliness. That feels so good and does so much damage in war time. In disappointment, we might say, not even a human can believe that he’s going to live forever. I know that Sabre and others have seen in wars a great opportunity for attacks on the faith. But I think that view is exaggerated. The enemies human partisans have all been plainly told by him. That suffering is an essential part of what he calls redemption.
That suffering is an essential part of what he calls redemption get used to disappointment. So here’s what we can do with this today. Uh, there’ll be some disappointment in your life. Doesn’t have to be large. It often it’s very good to start with something small could just be the hassle of traffic could be your job could be your marriage could be another person could be a child, could be a family member. I think about somebody I heard of about yesterday. Who’s got a younger family member that they love, but they’re really disappointed in the, the way that that life is turning out could be a dream. Think of that right now. Now instead of being immersed in it, instead of being engulfed in it, instead of only seeing the disappointment, see myself in that moment, how am I responding to the disappointment? Cuz I can’t control it, but I, I can control how I’ll respond to it with God’s help. And then I ask if I was watching somebody else go through this and there was a person who is precisely in my position, what would they have to do? How would they have to respond for me to deeply admire them?
Or if you’re a follower of Jesus, you might ask, how do I think Jesus would respond to this? And then I ask God, would you help me to respond in this way? This appoint is such an interesting word. Um, when you think about it to be disappointed, to not have what I felt like was my appointed situation or my appointed circumstance.
And yet I was thinking about this, getting ready to do this video with Jesus. Um, he was the anointed one. That was his appointment to be the Messiah, to be the anointed. One of God, the crucifixion was intended by Rome to be the dis anointment of any Messiah Messiah’s were not. It, it actually came from word that meant the anointed one. That was gonna be the leader that was anointed by God to liberate Israel. So Roman intended the cross to be the dis anointment of the anointed one. But of course for Jesus, the cross was the Supreme place where his identity and mission as the anointed one was fully expressed and achieved. My disappointment turns out to be my appointment. It does not interrupt it. It does not get in the way of it. It is where I find it get used to suffering. We live in a world where it goes on, not like a pessimist, not like a negative or cynical, ER, going through life with a furrowed brown get used to because I can find God there today. How would Jesus go through what I’m going through? My disappointment is in fact, my appointment.
I’ll see you next time.