Is God disappointed when I mess up?
Have you ever felt like that? Have you ever wondered if the mistake you made has disappointed or angered God? Have you thought that maybe God loves you less or is going to take away an opportunity from you in the future because you did that?
I’ve definitely felt like this and wrestled with each one of those questions. But there are three things that are important to understand to answer this question.
The Mess in this Mindset
The idea that God is disappointed when we mess up is founded on the belief that our relationship with God is built on obligation, and that’s just not true.
We aren’t meant to serve God and be obedient out of obligation, but overflow from a relationship with Him. The Bible compares our relationship with God to sheep and a shepherd, children and their Father, a bride and her groom. All of these relationships in a perfect state are filled with love, trust, care, tenderness, and compassion.
The sheep follow their shepherd and rely on him for protection and provision. A father is loving, kind, and generous with his children. A bride trusts and respects her groom and that relationship is built on love, not on obligation.
When we view our relationship with God as transactional, where we have to obey His commands, follow His laws, and serve Him, it strips the love out of that relationship.
1 John 5:3 says, “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.”
If we feel like God’s commandments are burdensome, it’s because we’re not viewing that relationship in the loving way that it is meant to be, but as obligatory.
My son is two years old and learning boundaries and rules right now, and he’s in a phase of slamming every door he can find. The other day, he went to slam the door and I shouted “Ziah, don’t slam the door!” It scared him and he started to cry because he thought he was in trouble.
I was afraid he would slam it on his fingers and get hurt, and I wanted to protect him.
God does the same thing with us. He shouts into our spirit, “Don’t go that way! Don’t do that! I don’t want you to go down that path because I know how it’s going to end up.”
God isn’t shouting in anger or disappointment, but to pull us back to Him because He knows the outcome and how badly it’s going to hurt us. He’s trying to protect us.
The sweetest thing was that when I yelled at my son, he ran into my arms to be comforted.
I think this is exactly how our relationship with God should be. When we mess up, we run to Him for protection, comfort, guidance, and love. When we know we’ve screwed up, we also know that we desperately need Him in that moment.
Just like I don’t expect my son never to try to slam a door because I know he is still learning those boundaries, God knows we are still learning too. Learning what it means to follow Him. Learning how to put aside our desires and trust that God has something better in store for us. Learning to take our thoughts captive and make them obedient. Learning to put our faith into action.
He does not expect perfection from you- no loving parent expects their child never to make a mistake, especially as they are learning and trying. You reading this right now shows that you want to please God and that you are trying.
That starts with understanding that our relationship with God is built on love. God doesn’t love us because of our actions, so our actions can’t change His love for us. Even in the midst of us knowing we have messed up, His love for His daughter has not wavered.
David, in the Bible, screwed up big time when he was king. He took a woman, sexually assaulted her, got her pregnant, and murdered her husband to try to cover it up.
In Psalm 32:5 David wrote, “I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.”
In verse 7, he goes on to say, “You are my hiding place; you protect me from trouble. You surround me with joyful shouts of deliverance.”
David confessed his sins to God, and God forgave David. Then, God protects him, comforts him, and surrounds him with “joyful shouts of deliverance.”
So often, we hide in shame. But if we hide in God, we are surrounded by freedom and shouts of deliverance instead of shame and fear.
The History of Humanity
The very first people God created sinned. It didn’t take a generation or two before things got messy, it was immediate. Adam and Eve, in the perfect garden walking with a perfect God, messed up.
In Genesis 3, Eve talks to the serpent, telling him exactly what God said about not eating from the tree in the middle of the garden. It wasn’t that she forgot what God said or didn’t understand Him correctly. It was that she believed a lie from the enemy over the words God said to her.
From then on, every single generation, every human who has ever walked the earth (except for Jesus), has messed up. If God were disappointed each time someone sinned, He would just be in a constant state of disappointment.
The definition of disappointed according to Oxford is, “sad or displeased because someone or something has failed to fulfill one’s hopes or expectations.”
God does not hope or expect that we will be perfect. He loves us, chose us, and continues to pour out compassion on us despite knowing that we will mess up.
The entire Bible is filled with stories of people who messed up and yet God still loved them immensely, used them radically, and wanted them to be a part of His story. We still read about them. A lot of them are in the lineage of Jesus.
Those messed up people led to the perfect Messiah who came and lived a flawless life.
If God can use all of those people despite their mistakes, He going to use us too. He’s going to love us too. He’s going to pour out compassion on us too.
Sin is one of the few things that every single person in the world today and in all of history has in common. Your mistakes are not unique. Your mess-ups do not make you more messed up than any other person.
If we could all be a little more open and vulnerable about our mistakes, I think it would bring us together. That there would be more understanding, compassion, love, and forgiveness because we’ll realize how similar we all are.
The shame from our mistakes and our fear of them being found out can make us feel really alone. It’s exactly how Adam and Eve felt when they sinned – the Bible says they covered themselves and hid from God.
How often do we do the exact same thing? We make a mistake and hide because we are ashamed. But if we could go to God and repent, then turn to other people and open up about our struggles and mistakes, it would bring us closer together.
The Covering of Christ
Jesus Christ lived a perfect, sinless life on this earth, and God sees us through Him. We don’t have to come to God in shame or fear because when we have faith in Jesus, His perfection covers us.
Romans 3:22-26 describes it like this. “The righteousness of God is through faith in Jesus to all who believe, since there is no distinction. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. God presented him as an atoning sacrifice in his blood, received through faith, to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his restraint God passed over the sins previously committed. God presented him to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so that he would be righteous and declare righteous the one who has faith in Jesus.”
We are declared righteous by God; that’s how God sees us.
God knew the mess ups of humanity before sin even entered the world, and His plan for redemption was always Jesus. We see clues of this all throughout the Old Testament.
God’s plan was always for Jesus to come to a messed-up world, love messed-up people, and live without ever sinning. He fulfilled the law and every requirement to be holy. Then, He died brutally. His body was physically destroyed, and He took on the punishment required for every sin and screw-up that had ever been and would ever be committed throughout all of history.
We could never have saved ourselves from the weight and cost of our sins. It isn’t possible. But God didn’t make it so it would have to be, either. It is the easiest, simplest, most possible thing for us to be reconciled to God because of the heavy price Jesus paid.
Romans 5: 1 says, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
By faith in Jesus. That’s it. Believing that He came and paid the price for every mess-up we’ve ever made. That it was sufficient to make us pure and blameless before God, we can have peace with God. We can repent and know that we are forgiven because Jesus already paid the price.
God views us as righteous because of our faith in Jesus.
If we falsely believe that God is disappointed or angry with us when we sin and repent, we have not fully grasped what Jesus accomplished on the cross.
That act obliterated the weight and cost of sin. God doesn’t see us with all of our sins and mistakes. He sees us covered with Christ’s perfection because of our faith in Jesus.
It is the biggest, greatest gift that you could ever receive, but it’s been given to you. All you have to do is accept it. You won’t feel worthy or deserving of it because you aren’t. No one is. But Jesus gave it anyway because God loved the world so much that He sent Jesus to pay the price to reconcile us to Him so that anyone who has faith in Jesus will have eternal life.
None of the penalty of our sin is on us. Jesus paid the price already and all we have to do is have faith and accept that gift. That’s the message of the Bible from start to finish. God loves humanity. We mess up. Jesus pays the price to cover it all and bring us back to God.
If you’ve never accepted that gift, it’s as simple as admitting that you sin and could never live a perfect life, but you know that Jesus did and that His life covers yours. His death paid the price for your sins, and you accept that free gift so that you can have eternal life with the Father.
God gave us such a simple, beautiful way to be reconciled to Him.
When we accept and understand this, our mess-ups become part of our message to show others how insanely good our God is.
Looking for more? Check out the latest blog posts below!
- How to Read the Bible and Actually Understand It
- How to Practice Self-Care as a Christian | Part Five: Gratitude
- How to Practice Self-Care as a Christian | Part Four: Community Support
- How to Practice Self-Care as a Christian | Part Three: Service
- How to Practice Self-Care as a Christian | Part Two: Scripture
