Intimacy with God requires that you deal with your disillusionment. Sometimes I meet people who say, “I used to follow Jesus, but then I just got disillusioned.” Do you know what disillusionment really is? It is about losing your illusions. We think of that word negatively, but I wish we could think of it positively. Because every time you feel disillusioned, it is an invitation to a deeper faith.
Barbara Brown Taylor says:
“The disillusioned turn away from the God who was supposed to be in order to seek the God who is. Every letdown becomes a lesson and a lure. Did God fail to come when I called? Then perhaps God is not a minion. So who is God? Did God fail to punish my adversary? Then perhaps God is not a policeman. So who is God? Did God fail to make everything turn out all right? Then perhaps God is not a fixer. So who is God? Over and over, my disappointments draw me deeper into the mystery of God’s being and doing. Every time God declines to meet my expectations, another of my idols is exposed. Another curtain is drawn back so that I can see what I have propped up in God’s place – no, that is not God, so who is God? It is the question of a lifetime, and the answers are never big enough or finished. Pushing past curtain after curtain, it becomes clear that the failure is not God’s but my own, for having such a poor and stingy imagination. God is greater than my imagination, wiser than my wisdom, more dazzling than the universe, as present as the air I breath and utterly beyond my control.”
Susie Grade 