How to Deal with Disappointment — Murray on Hope Deferred
⏱ 14 min read
The thing did not happen. Or the thing happened, and was not what you had hoped for. Or the thing keeps almost happening, and then quietly does not, and you are now in the part of the year where you cannot tell whether to keep hoping or to stop, because the hoping has been costing more than the waiting was costing, and you have begun to suspect that the small steady erosion in your chest is the price of not having let the hope go yet.
You are not faithless for being here. The Bible has a name for this exact place — hope deferred maketh the heart sick — and the proverb was written by a man who knew what he was naming. The slow Christian answer to how to deal with disappointment is not to stop hoping. It is to learn the kind of trust that can hold a long unanswered hope without being broken by the holding. Andrew Murray, who wrote Waiting on God in a season when his own ministry was producing far less visible fruit than he had asked of it, walked this exact ground in three passages worth a slow evening. The Everspring Dry Season Devotional carries this kind of reading into a daily companion for the long unanswered season. For now — read slowly. (If the disappointment has begun to sour into something heavier underneath, the companion how to overcome bitterness — Murray on the root that defiles was written for exactly that drift. If the disappointment is bound up with old guilt you cannot quite name, what does the Bible say about guilt — Murray on the conscience walks the slow companion. What is the peace of God — Murray on the peace that passes is the gentler next page, and what does the Bible say about waiting — Murray on Waiting on God is the long-form companion to this one.)
Andrew Murray was a Dutch Reformed pastor in South Africa who, for the last thirty years of his life, kept writing about waiting because he himself was being asked to wait for things he had asked God for, and had not been given, and would not be given in his lifetime. The slow attention he gives the doctrine of disappointment is the attention of a man who has lived inside the question for decades and refused to harden in it.
The first passage — the heart as a resting place
Murray, in Holy in Christ, wrote a sentence that reframes the whole question of what disappointment is asking of you.
“It is where Thou enterest to rest, to refresh and reveal Thyself, that Thou makest holy. O my God, may my heart be Thy resting-place. I would, in the stillness and confidence of a restful faith, rest in Thee, believing that Thou doest all in me. Let such fellowship with Thee, and Thy love, and Thy will be to me the secret of a life of holiness.”
— Andrew Murray, Holy in Christ
Read it once. Then read it again, slowly.
Notice what Murray is asking for. He is not asking God to give him the thing he was hoping for. He is asking that his own heart become Thy resting-place — the chair God can sit down in, the place God can refresh Himself, the small still room in him where God’s presence can be at home. This is a profound and quiet reversal. The disappointed Christian has been asking, for months, that God would arrive at the thing she has been hoping for. Murray, who knew the same kind of waiting, asks instead that God arrive at her. That her heart be the place He rests. That the thing she has been hoping for be slowly subordinated to the deeper thing — His presence at home in her.
The reversal is not a pious sleight of hand. It is the slow Christian answer to how to deal with disappointment without becoming bitter. The bitterness comes when the hoped-for thing has remained the centre of the asking, and the thing has not arrived. Murray’s prayer slowly moves the centre. The centre becomes the resting — the small quiet fellowship with the God who is already in the room, whether the thing has arrived or not. The thing may still come. The thing may not. The resting does not depend on which.
This is not the answer the disappointed heart wants in the first month of the waiting. It is the answer it learns to want in the second year of the waiting, because the first year’s prayers — please give me the thing — have run their course, and the heart has begun to suspect that the giving it most needs is not the thing itself, but His settling into the room. Murray, who waited for things he never received, found out that the resting is the gift the waiting was meant to produce, and that the gift is durable in a way the thing would not have been.
For the woman who has been hoping for a particular conception, a particular reconciliation, a particular healing, a particular open door — Murray is gentle here. He does not say the thing will not come. He says: while you wait, let the heart become the resting-place. Let the small daily fellowship with Him be the work the disappointment is, slowly, doing in you. The disappointment is not pointless. The disappointment is the school. The school is producing a soul God can rest in. The thing, when it comes — and sometimes it does — will arrive into a soul that has been quietly made ready for it. The thing, when it does not come — and sometimes it does not — will be replaced by something the waiting itself produced, which is fellowship that does not depend on the thing.
(If the long-unanswered hope has been about marriage in particular, the slow companion waiting on God for marriage — Murray on the long wait walks the same ground for that specific kind of disappointment. The sibling article how to forgive someone who hurt you — De Sales on hard forgiveness walks the next page for the disappointment that is in a particular person.)
The somatic — for the body that has been carrying it
Pause here. Disappointment lives in the body the way unanswered hope does — in the small set of the jaw, in the shallow held breath at the top of the chest, in the chronic tightness across the upper back that has been there so long it has stopped registering as tightness.
Sit somewhere quiet. Both feet flat on the floor. Place one hand, lightly, just below the collarbones — the upper chest, where unanswered hope most often pools in the body. The chest there has been small and bracing for a long time. The breath has been working high in the chest, in shallow pulls, the way bodies breathe when they are quietly preparing for another no.
Take one slow inhale. Not deep — slow. Let the breath travel low, beneath the hand, into the lower belly, the way it travels when the body trusts it can have the next breath without effort. On the exhale, let the breath go all the way out, slower than the inhale. Let the upper chest, under the hand, lower by a small amount. Let the jaw soften.
One more slow inhale. One more longer exhale. Then take the hand away.
The body did not need to do anything. The body needed the acknowledgement that the upper chest has been holding the question of whether the thing will arrive. Murray’s restful faith is not only a doctrine. It is a small physiological possibility. The slow exhale is a small piece of the body practising the restful faith. The disappointment is still in the room. The body lowering is the slow Christian first piece of how to deal with disappointment, before any further word is read.
The second passage — the quiet that is the strength
Murray, in Waiting on God, gathered a small chorus of scriptures together and wrote a paragraph that names the disappointed heart’s exact temptation and the exact alternative.
“If we are to have our whole heart turned towards God, we must have it turned away from the creature, from all that occupies and interests, whether of joy or sorrow. God is a being of such infinite greatness and glory, and our nature has become so estranged from Him, that it needs our whole heart and desires set upon Him, even in some little measure to know and receive Him. Everything that is not God, that excites our fears, or stirs our efforts, or awakens our hopes, or makes us glad, hinders us in our perfect waiting on Him. The message is one of deep meaning: ‘Take heed and be quiet;’ ‘In quietness shall be your strength;’ ‘It is good that a man should quietly wait.’”
— Andrew Murray, Waiting on God
Read it twice. Slowly.
The line worth keeping near the page is the third one. Everything that is not God, that excites our fears, or stirs our efforts, or awakens our hopes, or makes us glad, hinders us in our perfect waiting on Him. Murray is naming what the disappointed Christian has been doing for months. The mind has been turning, restlessly, between the thing hoped for and the fear that the thing will not come — between small new evidences that maybe it is coming and small old evidences that it will not. The turning is the hindering. The hoping itself has become the noise that is keeping the heart from settling into the quiet waiting that is its strength.
This is the second thing to say about how to deal with disappointment as a Christian. The hope has to be slowly handed back. Not abandoned. Handed. The thing you have been hoping for is given, in your evening prayer, into His hand — not as a small renunciation of the wanting, but as a deliberate setting of the weight in a place that can carry it. Murray’s word for this is quietness. The quietness is the strength. The quietness is the resting of the small heart from the small turning. The thing is still wanted. The turning has been stopped.
There is a sentence in this passage that the modern disappointed Christian needs to read three times. It is good that a man should quietly wait. The waiting itself is good. The disappointment has not erased the goodness of the season. The season is, in its own slow way, doing something a season of arrival could not. The quiet is what the soul is being given the chance to grow inside of. Murray, who waited himself, is not romanticising the waiting. He is naming it. It is good. The goodness is not the absence of the longing. The goodness is the way the soul learns to be still inside the longing, and to find God already there, in the stillness, the way He could not be found inside the noise of the unceasing turning toward the thing.
For the woman whose disappointment has been a long unanswered prayer for a child, or a marriage, or a healing, or a vocation — Murray is gentle. The prayer can still be prayed. The quietness can also be entered. Both can be true. The quietness is not the giving up of the prayer. The quietness is the daily small settling of the heart into the resting-place Murray named in the first passage, so that the prayer can be prayed from inside the rest, not from inside the desperation. The desperation has been costing you. The rest is, slowly, the alternative.
The Everspring Dry Season Devotional was built around this kind of slow quiet — one short passage each evening, a verse held next to the long unanswered hope, room for the honest sentence about the day. The journal is not the cure for the disappointment. Christ is. The journal is the place the quiet practises being quiet.
The third passage — the still small voice that is mightier than the storm
Murray, in Abide in Christ, wrote one of the most quietly arresting sentences in his entire body of work — a sentence the disappointed heart needs near the page.
“Let us set ourselves in quiet trust before Him, waiting to hear His holy voice — the still small voice that is mightier than the storm that rends the rocks — breathing its quickening spirit within us, as He speaks: ‘Abide in me.’ The soul that truly hears Jesus Himself speak the word, receives with the word the power to accept and to hold the blessing He offers.”
— Andrew Murray, Abide in Christ
Read it once at speed. Then read it again, slowly.
The image is borrowed from the prophet Elijah, who, after the loss of his hope, stood on the mountain and waited for God. The wind came, and tore the rocks; God was not in the wind. The earthquake came; God was not in the earthquake. The fire came; God was not in the fire. And then, after the fire, a still small voice — and God was in the voice. Murray’s sentence is a quiet refrain of that whole scene. The disappointment, the noise, the turning, the heart-sickness — these are the wind, the earthquake, the fire. They are loud. They are not where He is meeting you. He is meeting you in the small voice that arrives after the loud has finished being loud, in the quiet evening half-hour when you have stopped, finally, trying to make the thing come.
The voice, when it arrives, is mightier than the storm. The disappointed heart, hearing it, receives the power to accept and to hold the blessing He offers. Notice the word accept. The hearing of His voice is what makes the accepting possible. Without the voice, the heart cannot quite hold what He has been offering — not because He has not been offering, but because the noise of the disappointment has been louder than the offer. The slow practice of waiting is, in Murray’s account, the slow practice of letting the noise subside far enough that the voice becomes the loudest thing in the room.
The blessing Murray names is not necessarily the thing you have been waiting for. The blessing is abiding in Him. Abide in me. The blessing is the small fellowship that the long disappointment has been quietly preparing you for — the resting-place heart from the first passage, the quiet waiting from the second, and now, in the third, the hearing of the voice that has been quietly speaking under the noise the whole time. The three passages are one slow movement. Heart at rest. Heart at quiet. Heart at hearing. Murray is walking you, in three small steps, from the disappointed soul that is still turning toward the thing to the soul that is settling into Him.
This is the third thing to say about how to deal with disappointment as a Christian. The disappointment is loud. His voice is small. The small voice is mightier than the storm. The storm passes. The voice does not. The slow daily practice — the chair, the verse, the longer exhale, the honest sentence about the day — is the practice of letting the small voice become the loudest thing in the room.
What the slow reading will do over a year
If you sit with Murray’s three passages — one a month for three months, and then the long question how to deal with disappointment as your slow companion for the rest of the year — what happens is not dramatic. The thing you were hoping for may still arrive. It may not. Murray does not promise either. What happens is that the centre of gravity of the waiting moves.
The heart, slowly, becomes the resting-place Murray asked for in the first passage. The chest stops bracing for the next no. The breath lowers. The turning between hope and fear becomes a thing the soul notices less, because the soul has begun to live in the quiet underneath the turning. The voice, when it speaks, is small — and the soul hears it. The phrases, slowly, become small lit rooms in the mind. Heart as resting-place. It is good that a man should quietly wait. The still small voice that is mightier than the storm. You step into the rooms when the disappointment surfaces. The rooms are furnished. There is a chair in each. Murray put them there a hundred and twenty years ago for the woman who would, one day, need to sit down inside the disappointment and find it already half-answered before she finished asking it.
The slow reading does not erase the longing. The longing is its own slow companion. The slow reading does not promise the thing will come. Murray never promised that. What the slow reading does is companion the disappointment. The waiting and the resting can live in the same chest. Both are true. Murray held them together for the last thirty years of his ministry, and the holding has not yet stopped working. The slow walk of the next year is the slow learning of how to carry both.
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A daily home for the slow waiting
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Dry Season Devotional. Each evening, one short passage and a verse, with room for the honest sentence — a small daily place to let the heart be the resting-place, while the thing is still in the post.
The Everspring Dry Season Devotional carries Murray’s slow vocabulary — the heart as a resting-place, the quietness that is strength, the still small voice mightier than the storm — into a daily companion for the woman whose hope is taking longer than she had thought it would, without rushing and without pretending the longing is smaller than it is.
