1. The feeling that accompanies an experience of being thwarted in attaining your goals.¹

2. An act of hindering someone’s plans or efforts.

3. That awful sinking sensation in your gut as your eyes dart between the clock, a blinking display reading ‘Paper Jam E-5,’ and the absurdly complex directions on the inside of the copy machine door.

“Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails.”

                              - Proverbs 19:21, NIV

When you get down to it, the issue of frustration boils down to one thing: plans. The very meaning of the word frustration is to have your plans thwarted. You want to do one thing, but something else gets in your way. It may be as little as trying to make copies or as big as trying to start a career – when you want to do something and it doesn’t work out, you feel frustrated. 

If you think about it, you could avoid frustration altogether if you simply gave up on making plans. Nothing can go wrong if you refuse to define what’s right. Unfortunately however, you’ve got to make some kind of plans or you might not bother to get out of bed in the morning. Our entire lives run on plans of one kind or another. Plan to have breakfast; plan to go to work on time; plan a shortcut to avoid traffic; plan to get a better job so you can pay for the ticket you got on the shortcut on the way to work… it’s all plans. We make them constantly. The question is, why is it so hard to get any of them to work out?

And then there are God’s plans. If we’re going to talk about frustration, we’ve got to come to grips with the striking difference between our plans and God’s. As Christians, we live for God’s plan. We pray and seek and strive to discover just what God has in store for us. We love to quote Jeremiah 29:11 and hear God saying to us, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (NIV). Yet for all our searching, the details of God’s plan for each of us remain a mystery. It would seem that God wants us to be content to simply know that He has one, and to trust that it is good. 

I Plan, God Laughs

Discovering God’s plan for my life is not easy, but there is one thing I can tell you about it for sure. Whatever God’s plan is, it is not the same as mine. Not entirely anyway. There are two distinctions that clearly set my plans apart from God’s. First of all, mine are easier. Much easier. Second, my plans don’t usually work out. Not the way I want them to anyhow. God doesn’t have that problem. His plans never fail. They can’t fail. As I understand things, it’s a physical impossibility.  

The real challenge for you and I is knowing whose plan we are working with today. A plan is like a prophecy – sometimes the only way to know whether or not it came from God is to wait and see if it works out. If it fails, guess who’s idea it was. 

On second thought, so what if it doesn’t work out. So what if you fail. Does that always mean that God wasn’t in it? Maybe your plans were the same as God’s, but your goals were different. After all, God doesn’t value the same things that we do. We want success for today, but God values the things that last – stuff like faith, hope and love. God may call you to venture into a complete failure simply to build character. You could feel frustrated with the outcome while God feels quite satisfied. Let’s say you go out for the football team. Maybe you didn’t make the team – but God did some powerful work on your heart during tryouts. Who can put a value on that?

Our plans are easier. God’s plan is better.

It Comes Down to Trust

When we’re talking about plans, the heart of the matter is always trust. Will you trust God when life doesn’t work out the way you want it to? I am convinced that most of life’s frustrations are really lessons in trusting God. If you read the Bible, it doesn’t take long to realize that God is big on trust. I challenge you to find one Bible hero who didn’t go through some major trials to build up their faith. 

As Christians, we trust and believe that God always has something good planned for us. Actually, Christians are very funny this way. Just watch one of us. When life doesn’t work out the way he wants it to, he’ll say something like, “Well, God must have something better in store.” If something bad happens to a Christian, she will tell you that she is convinced that God must have allowed it to save her from something worse. We have this wonderful determination to believe that God is still in control of our crazy mixed up lives no matter what happens to them. 

That kind of a stubborn faith is a beautiful thing. Nonetheless, I would warn you to be careful about just what it is that you trust God for. If you believe that God closed the door on this job “because He must have a higher paying job in store for me,” then you are really limiting God. Since when is a bigger paycheck the most valuable thing God can give you? Maybe God has a lower paying job that will teach you humility and force you to rely on Him every day. Maybe He has wonderful trials in store for you that will build up a faith that is more valuable than pure gold – and far more enduring (1st Peter 1:7). 

One of the great keys to enduring frustration is to change what you value. When you learn to value the things that God does - the things that last forever – then the trials of life appear much different. When you begin to see the perishable stuff like money and success for what it really is – temporary – then you will experience frustration in a whole new light. Then you’ll begin to see that God’s plan for you is indeed good, even if you can’t figure out exactly what it is…or what traffic jams and paper jams have to do with it.

That’s all for today! We’ll come back to the topic of frustration again in the future. Lord knows it will come back to us. I look forward to hearing your comments. I’d love to know what you have learned from frustration, and how you deal with it. If you enjoyed this post, feel free to subscribe and get more – and don’t forget to click the buttons to put a link on your facebook or twitter. Maybe someone you know needs a little encouragement through a rough day too. Talk to you again soon!

Always in the unfailing love of Christ, 

 - Pastor Kris  ( 8-D=

¹ frustration. Dictionary.com. WordNet® 3.0. Princeton University. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/frustration (accessed: November 25, 2008).

Okay, this is a pretty big topic. I have actually been working on it for a while now. I even put together a book idea. One of my preliminary subtitles was “The Theology of Murphy’s Law.” You know the rule, if anything can go wrong, it will. The law is as widely accepted as gravity. Life is unceasingly frustrating. But what causes it? If God is in control… and if His plans for me are always good… then why is it that my plans never seem to work out?

For the record, I don’t recommend attempting to write a book about Murphy’s Law. Apparently old man Murphy declares open season on anyone fool enough to attempt to unravel the mysteries of his infamous law. The other day I called up the bank to follow up on a form that I had sent them in March. For about an hour, I was sent on a toll-free wild goose chase of 800 and 866 phone numbers and on-hold-elevator-music. “I’m sorry sir, this is the wrong department for your question. I will connect you with the refinance department. Hold please…” “Wait! I just talked to them! And they sent me to you!” Elevator music again. Too late. 

 Now I realize that this stuff happens to all of us, and it should come as no surprise (though I was a little surprised when I received two jury summons in the same month this year). What I want to know is why it happens; and I want to know where my faith in God fits in. 

Some of the frustrations are our own fault, to be sure. If you make foolish decisions, life will be more difficult. If you buy a fixer-up ‘93 Yugo, you shouldn’t expect to get to work on time every day. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the stuff that you just can’t control: traffic jams at the worst possible time; copy machines that run out of ink only on the day that important papers are due; that kind of stuff. Why does it happen, and how are we supposed to respond in faith?

So that’s my new topic. I have thought about this a great deal, and I have searched the Bible for answers. You may be surprised to find out just how much the Bible has to say about frustration. After all, we’re talking about one of the most consistent elements of life here. Our plans are constantly being foiled. Sometimes it’s big stuff, most of the time it’s just little – but whatever the case, things rarely work out the way we want them to. I am convinced that God is still in control, and that He has a very good reason for all of it. I won’t start in on any of the answers I have found just yet – but I will give you this one verse. It’s a big one, so it takes a careful read to really get it. When you do get it, a lot of life’s little perplexities begin to make more sense. Here’s the verse…

“For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” 

- Romans 8:20-21

Well, that’s it for today. As we continue with this topic, we’ll unravel that verse, and we’ll tackle questions like “Why does frustration bring out the worst in us?” and “How do I learn to trust God’s plans when none of my plans seem to work out?” I look forward to getting your input on this as well. Please send me your thoughts and ideas. Most importantly, send me some good frustration stories. They’re good for a laugh, and they’re even better for helping me write a good book! Until next time…

Always in the unfailing love of Christ, 

- Pastor Kris  ( 8-D=