When You’re Afraid God Might Disappoint You

You don’t have to live long before you start lowering your expectations.

A friend promises to keep in touch, but then weeks go by without hearing a word. A parent makes a vow they can’t keep. A relationship ends despite words like “forever.” A prayer is whispered again and again, but the answer you seek is nowhere to be found. Over time you stop expecting too much. When someone makes you a promise, you tell yourself to be realistic, to stay grounded, to protect your heart.

And gradually, hope becomes something you ration, something you hold at arm’s length. You believe, but cautiously. You trust, but only as far as you can see.

Through the Lens of Letdown

I think we often read God’s promises through the lens of our past disappointments. It’s not that we think God is a liar; it’s that we’ve learned to expect letdowns. The more you’ve experienced broken promises, the more natural it becomes to brace for the worst—even with God.

So what do we do when we read a verse like Joshua 3:5?

“Sanctify yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.”

Sometimes our first instinct when reading the promises of the Bible isn’t always awe. Sometimes it’s skepticism. What if nothing happens? What if I risk believing, and I’m wrong?

God offered this promise to the Israelites thousands of years ago, and He offers it up to us today, too. But to receive it, we’ll have to wrestle with the fear we don’t always say out loud: What if He—just like so many others—disappoints me too?

The Moment Before the Miracle

Joshua 3:5 is one of the most striking lines in the entire passage because it promises a miracle before anything has changed. It would be one thing if the people were already halfway across the river or if God had given them a glimpse of what was coming. But that’s not how this moment unfolds. The river is still high, the land on the other side is still occupied, and God’s people are still standing on the edge of uncertainty. And yet the promise is spoken as if it’s already fact.

The lesson points to this verse as a turning point not just in Israel’s journey but also in their faith. God isn’t asking them to plan or predict. He’s asking them to prepare—not with strategy, but with surrender. Before anything changes, before anything moves, He tells them to set themselves apart.

This isn’t the only promise spoken into the unknown. Just a few verses later God says through Joshua, “This is how you will know that the living God is among you and that he will certainly drive out” the nations ahead of them (Joshua 3:10, NIV). Before a single step has been taken, God is already declaring victory.

Then, in Joshua 4, after the river parts and the people cross, the narrative circles back to a previous promise that was fulfilled: “The Lord your God did to the Jordan what he had done to the Red Sea” (verse 23, NIV). It’s a reminder that what He’s doing now is anchored in what He’s done before.

The miracle at the Jordan was part of a larger story, one that runs from Genesis to Revelation. Time and again God steps into human history and speaks hope into hopeless situations. He tells Abraham he will be the father of many nations when he has no child. He calls Moses to lead a people out of slavery while he’s still hiding in the desert. He tells Mary she’ll carry the Messiah while she’s still an unwed teenager.

These moments weren’t backed by evidence. They were backed by the character of the One who made the promise.

To rely on God’s promises means believing that He does not carry the flaws of the people who failed us. He’s not bound by the track record of our pain or the wounds others left behind.

When God Makes a Promise

Still, we hesitate. Even when the promise is spoken by the omniscient, omnipresent Creator of the universe, our hearts don’t always know how to receive it.

The challenge, for many of us, is that we’ve seen promises fall apart too many times. We’ve gotten used to backup plans, to soft landings, to lowered expectations. We’ve taught ourselves not to hold too tightly to anything, even to hope. So it makes sense that somewhere along the way, we started treating God the same way.

But here’s the truth: God is not like us. He doesn’t forget, flake, or fade.

Scripture says, “God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind” (Num. 23:19, NIV).

To rely on God’s promises means believing that He does not carry the flaws of the people who failed us. He’s not bound by the track record of our pain or the wounds others left behind.

The Promises That Still Stand

The promises that God made to the Israelites at the Jordan reflect a much larger pattern of promises from God. All throughout Scripture God makes bold, specific, personal promises to His people. But many of them still ask the same thing from us that Joshua 3:5 did: to believe before we see.

He says, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Heb. 13:5, NIV), even when loneliness lingers.

He says, “Do not fear, for I am with you. . . . I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isa. 41:10, NIV), even when there’s still the weight of anxiety in our chest.

He says, “In all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Rom. 8:28, NIV), even when life doesn’t feel good at all.

These promises don’t come with blueprints or timelines. They come with the assurance of who God is. That is what makes all the difference. We don’t put our faith in the outcome; we put our faith in the One who speaks.

Ellen White wrote, “Every promise in the word of God furnishes us with subject matter for prayer, presenting the pledged word of Jehovah as our assurance.”[*]

Through the Lens of Who He Is

So, again, what do we do when we read a verse like Joshua 3:5?

“Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do amazing things among you” (NIV).

We remember who said it. We steady our hearts not on what we see, but on who He is. The miracle may not come today. The water might still be high. But we choose to prepare our hearts even when nothing around us has changed, because God has spoken, and His word still stands. We step toward the dry land, not because we see it yet, but because we trust the One who promises to part the waters.

[*] Ellen G. White, Thoughts From the Mount of Blessing (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1956), p. 133.