EVER BEEN DISAPPOINTED?

I cannot think of anyone who has never experienced in one way or another being disappointed.

We have all experienced disappointments from childhood; The Christmas day ones, where we just didn’t get what we were expecting; The birthday day ones that didn’t live up to our expectations; The exam results that fell short of what we had hoped for; The new job or move away from home and then the real disappointment of a failed relationship that just didn’t work out and so the list goes on. We are all the results of our responses to the reproofs of life.

 

Many people misquote (Ps 37:4) and think that God is going to give them the desires of their heart without delighting in him and that won’t work. ‘Delight yourself in the LORD and (then) he will give you the desires of your heart’.  It’s when you main desire is the Lord himself that he then can give you the desires of your heart. ‘He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him (Heb 11:6).

 

All the disappointments that we have experienced in life are hopes that have been pushed to the one side and because those hopes have been shattered, we experience a wounding in our spirit. Then we try to cover up the hurts by putting sticking plasters over the hurts to prevent us from getting wounded again, so we put on masks and pretend that everything is all ok. There are so many things within that we have hidden away and then like the Disciples on the road to Emmaus we carry with us heavy hearts, because our hope has gone.

                 THE LESSONS WE CAN LEARN FROM LEAH

 

The story of Leah gives us an insight in dealing with all the hurts and disappointments we go through in life. Here is the background that leads up to her wows. (Gen 39: 17-30)

 

Now Laban had two daughters; the name of the older was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah had weak eyes, but Rachel was lovely in form, and beautiful.  Jacob was in love with Rachel and said, "I’ll work for you seven years in return for your younger daughter Rachel."  Laban said, "It’s better that I give her to you than to some other man. Stay here with me."  So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her.  Then Jacob said to Laban, "Give me my wife. My time is completed, and I want to lie with her."  So Laban brought together all the people of the place and gave a feast.  But when evening came, he took his daughter Leah and gave her to Jacob, and Jacob lay with her.  And Laban gave his servant girl Zilpah to his daughter as her maidservant.  When morning came, there was Leah! So Jacob said to Laban, "What is this you have done to me? I served you for Rachel, didn’t I? Why have you deceived me?"  Laban replied, "It is not our custom here to give the younger daughter in marriage before the older one.  Finish this daughter’s bridal week; then we will give you the younger one also, in return for another seven years of work."  And Jacob did so. He finished the week with Leah, and then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel to be his wife.  Laban gave his servant girl Bilhah to his daughter Rachel as her maidservant.  Jacob lay with Rachel also and he loved Rachel more than Leah. And he worked for Laban another seven years.

 

 

 We are told that Rachel had a ‘sparkle’ in her eyes beautiful to look at and she had a good figure. She would be your life of the party person, great personality, and had everything visibly that a man could desire.

Then you have Leah, the complete opposite, no sparkle in her eyes, didn’t have a good figure and she was what we would call a ‘plain Jane’ (sorry if your name is Jane) she was probably the type of girl visibly that would pass you in the street and you wouldn’t give her a second look.

Brides would have been veiled at their wedding and Jacob only realised in the morning that he had been deceived. Here is also another truth, Jacob deceived his brother Esau out of his birthright and blessing and now he was being deceived. You reap what you sow, what you do to others will be done unto you.

 

This was the start of Leah’s problems, for in verse 31 we are told ‘When the LORD saw that Leah was not loved’.

Can you imagine yourself in her position;  through no fault of her own, she happened to be the eldest daughter so custom took first place. She was not the object of desire but an object of deception and her husband did not desire her, there was no love there, but in the midst of all the emotional hurt, pain and rejection she was experiencing, we are told that ‘the Lord saw her pain’.  Maybe you have gone through the pain of being rejected......... The Lord knows all about it!!!

 

 

 

The story goes on and we read, ‘he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. Leah conceived and gave birth to a son. She named him Reuben, for she said, "It is because the LORD has seen my misery. Surely my husband will love me now." She conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son she said, "Because the LORD heard that I am not loved, he gave me this one too." So she named him Simeon. Again she conceived, and when she gave birth to a son she said, "Now at last my husband will become attached to me, because I have borne him three sons." So he was named Levi. She conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son she said, "This time I will praise the LORD." So she named him Judah. Then she stopped having children. (Gen 39:31-35)

 

 

Leah’s one desire was that her husband would have loved her so when she gave birth to their 1^st child we are told that she named him ‘Reuben’, his name means ‘one who sees’.  In her misery she thought that producing a child for her husband would make him love her. The truth is that you cannot force anybody to love you and by trying to do so you only drive them further away, so here she was using God to fulfil all her desires. Like many people she tried to manipulate God so that her desires would be met. Jacob was so besotted with Rachel that he was blinded to Leah’s needs, and in naming her son Reuben she was telling Jacob to ‘open your eyes, I desire you to be close to me.

That didn’t work so she conceived again and named her son ‘Simeon’ meaning ‘one who hears’. In naming him Simeon she was telling Jacob, ‘you are not hearing the cry of my heart, you are deaf to my needs.

Like Jacob many of us have eyes that cannot see; ears that cannot hear and hearts that don’t respond to the needs of those around us.

So she conceived again this time naming her son ‘Levi’ meaning ‘one who is joined to’ her one desire was that her husband would be ‘joined’ in a close relationship with her.  They were living together like married singles, there was no close union, no affection, no intimacy, and what do you do in a situation like that? There is an answer!!!

So again she conceived and this time she named her son ‘Judah’ meaning ‘praise the Lord’. So having tried everything she knew to get her husband to love her, this time she gave up the struggle. There is a lesson here that we can learn from. The Lord Jesus would have put it this way, ‘seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, then all the desires of your heart and all your needs will be met. Hand all your cares over to him, seek first his face and let him fulfil all your desires for you.

Leah now was seeking God for himself and not for what she could get from him. What she was saying was ‘from now on Lord, I am going to praise you no matter how I feel; you are the only one who can satisfy the hunger and thirst in my soul, I give you all my disappointments, hurts and pain because doing it my way doesn’t work.

                                                     AN ANSWER TO PRAYER

In the middle of a hopeless situation, when Leah started to praise the Lord, something must have happened to Jacob. His last instructions to his sons on his death bed was ‘Bury me with my fathers in the cave in the field of Ephron the Hittite......There Abraham and his wife Sarah were buried, there Isaac and his wife Rebekah were buried, and there I buried Leah (Gen49: 29-31)

Leah was buried in a place of honour, beside her husband, not Rachel the beautiful one (her tomb is in Bethlehem)

The Lord must have opened Jacob’s eyes to see an inner beauty within Leah that caused him to place her in a place of honour beside him.

Leah learned to praise the Lord in the midst of her situation and what appeared to be impossible for her and for all of us is that there is nothing impossible for the Lord.