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To My Children:
It’s easy to think that God’s blessing and favor means giving us everything we ask for. When we don’t get what we want, we’re tempted to think God doesn’t love us. This thought bleeds into our other relationships. If our parents don’t take us to the concert everyone else is going to, they don’t love us. If our friends don’t pay attention to our new outfit or invite us to their party, they don’t love us. If our teacher doesn’t let us hand in our assignment two weeks late, they don’t like us.
Right now, your disappointments are small—your parents not allowing you to be on the cheerleading squad, not getting the spot on the sports team or the part in the play, or not being picked for class president. As you get older, the disappointments will come on a larger scale—getting outbid for your dream house, getting passed over for the promotion at work, watching the person you thought you were going to spend the rest of your life with marry someone else, or longing to be a parent but not being able to have children. That’s why it’s important to learn to handle disappointments in a healthy, biblical way now while you are young.
While disappointments will come on a larger scale, the ones you are facing now mean just as much to you in this moment. They also share the same root cause—trust and contentment.
When we don’t get the things we want, we need to trust that God loves us and knows what is best for us. He has sovereignly ordained everything about us and in our lives. Acts 17:26–27 says, “And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us.”
God made us the way we are, decided where we would live, how much money we would have, how many people would be in our family, where we would go to school, church, work, and so on. And He didn’t do it arbitrarily—He didn’t roll the dice or draw straws. Our God is not a God of chaos but of order. He did it with an all-wise, all-knowing plan for our lives—and that plan was so we would seek Him, find Him, and know Him as our loving Creator and Savior from our sins. And once we know Him in that way, everything else in our lives is planned so we would be conformed to the image of his Son. Every yes and no in our life is meant to make us more like Christ. First Thessalonians 4:3 says, “For this is the will of God, your sanctification.” God knows this is what’s best for us and will ultimately bring us the most joy.
Knowing and trusting God will then help us practice contentment. Contentment is being joyfully and thankfully at peace with any circumstance we find ourselves in—not because every circumstance is pleasant or preferable, but because the One who placed us there is loving, good, and trustworthy. When we believe those things about God, then we can be content with whatever blessing comes from or is withheld from His hand and know that He still loves us.
I love you. Grow in godliness and in your love for God.
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