Category Archives: Sacred Mundane

So the reality of the matter is that we can sit and talk about loss and pain and trusting God even when it hurts, but the reality is that God GIVES US GOOD GIFTS.  Ask anyone who has walked with God for any length of time and ask them to share some stories of the miraculous ways that God has fulfilled His promises and done great work through their lives.  He doesn’t just give suckers, He does fulfill His promises, He does give us the desires of our hearts, He does come through in miraculous ways.  If we ended this retreat after the last session, I feel like though it would be good, we’d be surrendered and empty handed, we’d be unprepared for life, because the reality is that most of us at some point will be floored and blessed by seeing God’s words come to pass.  He blesses us like a father.

One of my favorite Psalms reads like this 66:12.

10 For You, O God, have tested us;
You have refined us as silver is refined.
11 You brought us into the net;
You laid affliction on our backs.
12 You have caused men to ride over our heads;
We went through fire and through water;
But You brought us out to rich fulfillment.

God brings rich fulfillment. He’s not obligated to, but you cannot read through the entirety of scripture and not realize that God is longing, waiting, eagerly, to bless us. So we must be ready for this.  We don’t hope in it, but we prepare ourselves for it.  Our hearts must be ready to Enjoy Fulfillment while Worshipping God.

So tonight we’ll briefly look at the rest of all the stories. We’ll look at the end of the disappointments that we examined in the first session, and see what happened when the fulfillment came at last.  And then I’d like to share a few things from my own life, and how I’m just now beginning to see the fulfillment.  This is what we will talk about tonight-the fufillment.  The things.  However, what we’re looking at tonight is the danger involved in Fulfillment, and how we can successfully receive God’s blessing.  The very blessings of God that because of sin can potentially bring the ruin of our souls.

Abraham. God finally fulfills the promise.  Isaac is born, the seed of Abraham through whom the nations of the world will be blessed, through whom the Messiah will come.  Glorious fulfillment! Abraham has waited 100 years to have a son, a son by his true wife, the son of promise, of course he will adore him. How easy it is to wait upon the Lord, broken, praying in humble desperation, until the promise is fulfilled. Then we take our goodie, say thank you very much and excuse me I’ll be off enjoying my new god so please leave me alone. That of course is an exaggeration, but we come close to that.  But God loves Abraham too much to let this happen.  And Abraham is called to kill the very beloved son, kill the very fulfillment that God has finally brought to pass.

What happened to Joseph-God’s word was fulfilled.  He used Joseph to preserve the nation of Israel, providing food for them from the plenty of Egypt. His brothers did indeed bow down to him, and Joseph shines as an example of one who responded in Christlike manner, assuring his brothers, what you meant for harm God meant for good.  There is a man who understands the disappointments of God, the severe mercy of God.

Moses: God did do what He promised, delivering the children of Israel into the promised land. But it was not easy going for Moses, and his act of disobedience cost him the chance to see the promised land.  This is a warning for us.  Just because God fulfills His promise, or gives great spiritual blessing, does not make us immune to failure.  Each act of faith and obedience still matters to God, and we are still capable, at any point on our journey, of missing out on the promises of God because of unbelief or disobedience.

The Children of Israel:  This is perhaps the saddest because we know that once they inherited the land, they became fat with the abundance of the land, and forsook the Lord their God. This is the prime example of what we hope and pray does not happen.  Protect us from the danger of the good land!  Protect us from taking our fill of the blessing and fulfillment and forgetting the One who gave it all to us.

David:  David did become King, and didn’t worship his status as King, though he faltered at times in his integrity.  Perhaps it was the 10-14 years of misery, of wandering in the desert, that so prepared David’s heart before God that nothing, no Kingdom, no power, no glory would rival that love God had knitted so deeply into his heart.  Tale of Three Kings.

The Disciples: As far as we know, all the disciples (except Judas), who were so forsaken when Jesus died, went on to establish the church and die martyr’s deaths for Christ (except John who tradition tells us died of natural causes).  Apparently after he rose they finally “got it”-they figured it out.  Everything Jesus said finally clicked.  And while they had their rough spells as well, God used the trials and disappointments of before to prepare them for the work and glory ahead.

Story of a place to live.  Story of my internship.  Story of possibility of Jeff’s job.

These are amazing examples of how God orchestrates every little detail, even the disappointments, in order to bring about the rich fulfillment.  So then what?  First, of course, we fall on our faces and worship Him in thanks!  But then what?

Now I think that the hard part actually comes after the storm is over, when the terror is gone, you no longer cry yourself to sleep or are filled with anxiety.  God provides a job.  He provides a home. He pours out his spirit on some great event or ministry experience.  God brings your wayward child home.  He restores your marriage. He gives you a child.  He brings a man into your life.  Hey, I’m talking to a body of believers who have seen God bring them into rich fulfillment right before their very eyes.  The story of your building is miraculous.  We walked through the 10 years of pre-fulfillment, picking up the chairs and loading the Uhaul.  You all are seeing the fulfillment, so I dare say this is applicable.  God does fulfill his promises.  But the scary part is the we are SO prone to then worship the very gift instead of the Giver.

So how do we receive the good blessings, the promised land, the rich fulfillment that God gives, without turning on our backs on him and idolizing the gift that God so gracious gave. It seems to me that while God is always the initiator of things, there is a portion that is our part to play in this and a portion that is God’s.  For example, it seems to me that God divinely orchestrates the fiery seasons, the trials, the dark hour, the severe mercy, so that we will not become overly attached the good things, the blessings, and things of this world.  When are broken, we can become conduits for God’s blessings, letting them flow through us rather than hoarding them all up and calling them “my precious”.  God breaks us so that we are safe.  Unbroken people are unsafe recipients of His blessings. Just like horses and toddlers, we must be broken before we are safe.   That is God’s part.  Just as the Psalm said, he refines us like silver, but brings us into rich fulfillment.  As we mentioned before in Romans 5:1-5, “tribulation produces perseverance; 4 and perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 Now hope does not disappoint”…this is what God accomplishes through trials (again, we could do an entire retreat on suffering).  Just last week I read

Proverbs  20:30 which says 30 Blows that hurt cleanse away evil,
As do stripes the inner depths of the heart.^“

God uses the disappointments to cleanse us from evil and bring perseverance and character, all of which helps ensure that we are able to handle blessing, to be safe with blessing.  That is what God does.

So then there is our part.  Our part then is to constantly be on guard for the subtle sin of letting things become internal.  Letting things creep into the single throne in our heart. As soon as something becomes absolutely necessary for our life and well-being, it is threatening to be an idol.  Then we, like Abraham, must lay it on the altar.

I think Hannah is an excellent example to us in this regard.  Here is a woman who truly longed for something-a child.  This is the kind of longing I’m talking about-the aching yearning deep inside that is torturous.  And, it might even be God-given, so it’s not like we can just forsake it, like a sin, and move on.  So she longs and aches for this thing, and then, as God so often does, He brings fulfillment to this desire.  Her son is born. Samuel the prophet.  Not just any son, a son of promise, set apart for God.  And what does she do? She kept the child with her until he was weaned (which could be anywhere from 2 years to 5 years), and then she takes him to Shiloh, and offers a sacrifice, and gives back her child to the Lord.  And her famous words in 1 Samuel for us to follow are this:  “‘For this child I prayed, and the Lord has granted me my petition which I asked of Him. Therefore I also have lent him to the LORD, as long as he lives he shall be lent to the Lord’.  So she worshiped the Lord there.”  What an amazing response.  I just weaned my son a couple weeks ago, at 20 months old.  I cannot even imagine now having to give him up. In fact, I recently read this trilogy by Liz Curtis Higgs, a rendition of the story of Jacob, Rachel and Leah, and in it Leah has to give up her only son.  I almost couldn’t even read the book, I cried so hard it devastated me, even comprehending the pain of giving over something I love so much. And that pain, that struggle is good, it’s real, but like Hannah, our response must always be that we commit all that God has given us back into His hands.  As AW Tozer has said so perfectly, everything is safe which we commit to Him, and nothing is really safe which is not so committed.

So this is the secret, the part that is our part, the secret that we must take hold up and put into practice-the blessedness of possessing nothing.  All things remain external to our heart, there is a single throne there, where only the King of Kings may reign, and though rival loves may fight, tooth and nail, to earn their way to the center, we battle more, harder, stronger longer, to keep our Lord Jesus securely on the throne.  Consider AW Tozer’s reflection to the Abraham and Isaac story, the ultimate example of giving back to God the sweet fulfillment of His promise that He has given to us:  In what he calls the blessedness of possessing nothing.

(READ PURSUIT OF GOD 27-30).

And by the grace of God, this is what I’m experiencing right now.  A job, a house, an exciting internship opportunity, these things are no longer necessary for my identity and contentment.  They are external. I am thankful yes, rejoicing yes, but none of it defines me.  My job, my house, my education, my status, the way I look, the clothes I wear.  None of these things define. I am a daughter of God, valued beyond measure, sealed by the Spirit. I have freely received, I can freely give.  This is freedom, this is relinquishment, this is surrendered expectation and living in the sweetness of expectancy. Lord I deserve nothing, but Oh you are so good, so I wait on you all the day.  My expectation is from you.

So we’ve covered a lot this weekend.  We’ve covered a lot of stories, a lot of scripture.  We’ve gone from embracing the fact that God deliberately disappoints us or thwarts our expectations, so that He can be glorified by doing greater and more glorious things in our lives. So our response is to process the pain of letting our expectations die, our dreams die.  We surrender, we acknowledge our fears, we name them, pray through them, and allow the grief to actually pierce our hearts.  We let the dream die, trusting that God will raise it from the dead if it is of Him.  And then we unearth expectancy.  We don’t let dreams die and then just wallow in despair.  We turn our eyes to Him, we meditate on His goodness, His omnipotence, His omniscience. We consider who He is, we study His attributes, we fix our eyes on His perfections, and we anticipate the great and glorious things that He will do because He is good and because He is God.  We wait in expectancy.

And then, when God does that glorious work, when He brings us into rich fulfillment, when He gives good gifts, as He loves to do, we respond by giving back.  We embrace what He’s given us and hold it with an open hand. If he calls us to give it back for good, we say Yes Lord, if he calls us to use it for ministry or give it away, we say Yes Lord.  We refuse to worship the gift, we enjoy it and receive it and offer it back up to God daily for His use.  This is the process of our weekend, the journey we’ve been on.  And what’s the common thread?  We hold onto nothing save Christ.  We trust with reckless abandon.  We believe Him period, rather than simply believing Him for something.  We don’t trust in people, we don’t wait on circumstances, we don’t live for suckers.  We hope in nothing except Christ.  We rely on nothing except Christ.  He is our life, breath, sustenance, glory.  He is what we look forward to each day, He is what we hope for at the end of our life.  His presence is our strength, His Word is our guide.  We refuse to settle for the trivial passing pleasures of this world when we can experience the greatest joy and adventure any mortal could imagine.  We let it all go, and we get God.  And we do this not in a sad resigned state of sorrow, but in joyful expectancy.

Expectancy, rooted and grounded in the goodness of God, is our joy.  I pray for this heavenly expectancy for every single one of us, a hope that is firmly based in God’s character, and surrendered to His wise and perfect will.

This journey we took this weekend, is really the journey you will take many times, a hundred little times, during the course of life.  We follow a path of disappointment, surrender, pain, hope, and fulfillment, then possibly back through again.  Some times it’s little, sometimes it’s great. We won’t always do it right!  You aren’t going to go home and live the rest of your life in perfect joyful expectancy.  But we press on! We can learn to go through this process with God, willing to be hurt, willing to feel pain, willing to learn and try and fail and learn again, we will see God move and shape our lives to be more like Christ, which is our goal.

My final question is Will you let God take you through this process?  Let yourself hurt, enter into your disappointments, identify the expectations that led you there, catch yourself hoping in outcomes, waiting on people, living for suckers, and then dig down deep into the character of God and fix your gaze on Him.  And when the glorious promises come, in those golden moments of life, turn your gaze back to him, offer the thing back to Him, and guard that throne of your heart so that He alone reigns in the center.

We’re waiting in Expectancy, Surrendered to Your Sovereignty, why? Because we’re hungry for True Intimacy Lord. For the things of your heart.

So basically we’ve had two pretty down sessions.  Maybe you came here with a brave face saying, my life is good, and you feel like I came in and said, “no it’s not!  God disappoints us!  Admit it! You’re disappointed and full of fear!” Fun huh?  Well my point in all that is just we want to get into our minds the difference between Expectation and Expectancy. Our goal is Expectancy without Expectation.  We treat them like synonyms but there’s an important distinction we have to make.  We’ve tragically mistaken expectation for faith. We set up expectations of what we think should happen, and then we call that faith.  That is not faith, it’s just the same thing that the world does-names things that we really want and then hopes they come true.  So what is Expectancy then?  And how do we unearth it?  Let’s look at Expectancy from six angles, like a giant box, to get a better, and turn the key and discover the secret to living in true Expectancy.

First of all, we have to embrace that living in Expectancy is not simply believing God FOR something. I hear all the time in Christian circles the idea of trusting God for something or believing God for something.  I’m trusting God for and then name a thing that we’re basically just really wanting.  I’ve caught myself doing this a lot-right now I’m trusting God for a job, for a place to live, for money to cover the cost of our baby, etc.  And I think that is really fine, I mean those are the things that I’m concerned about and we’re supposed to lay our cares before the Lord and trust Him with those things.  But I think there might be a subtle difference between trusting God with something and trusting God for something.  The difference between Expectancy and Expectation.

For example, if I’m trusting God with our living and job situation, it means that I’m trusting that whatever the outcome, His grace is sufficient and His character demands my faith and trust.  If I’m trusting God for a job, a house, etc. then I’m placing my own expectations on what I think God should do. It’s like I’m subtly twisting God’s arm saying, “Ok God, here’s my faith, now do what I want you to do.”  I’m afraid that I do this way more often that I even realize.

Let’s look briefly at the prime example of trusting God no matter what the outcome. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego. They were about to be thrown into the fiery furnace and they trust God with their heated circumstances: “Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from your hand, O king.  But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods.”  Basically, they’re saying, We’re not only trusting God for deliverance out of the fiery furnace, we trust God with our situation and He is God and can do whatever He pleases.

Believing God for something is really nothing more than making a wish list, then slapping a holy-sounding word like “belief” or “trust” on it to make my dreams come true.  That is nothing more than expectation.  So instead of trusting God for something, our goal today is to trust God. Period.

Believing God means this, means that even if nothing changes, if my circumstances remain the same.  If the green walls never change.  If I live with my parents forever, if fill in the blank with your worst fear:  (we’ll never have a baby, I’ll never get married, my husband never quits drinking, my children never return to God, my cancer worsens and I die.)  Even if these things happen, I will yet trust Him, I will hope in Him, I will rejoice in Him, I will rejoice in Him.  We say with Job, “Though He slay me yet will I trust Him”  I cannot stress how important this step is.  Now granted, we are very limited in this.  I don’t currently have the grace to even fathom coping with the loss of my husband or my son.  We don’t have to be ok with it-as if Oh I’m fine if my family dies and the world falls apart.  But we can prepare, as best as we know how, so that when the circumstances of life overwhelm us, we are prepared with our eyes filled with expectancy, rather than simply hoping in expectations that we fabricate in our minds.

Secondly, Expectancy is true hope, not the same as “getting our hopes up”.

See words are funny things, and powerful things.  Sometimes, the meaning of our words gets mixed up.  I remember a dear missionary friend who always said, in the foreign tongue, “I gotta just keep my eyes on Jesus!” and then one day realized with horror that she had been saying, “I gotta just keep my eggs on Jesus!”  You gotta pick the right word!  But the sad part is that often our words become defined by the World instead of by God’s Word.   Love for example.  The world would say that two people engaging in a one-night-stand after drinking too much in a bar are “making love”.  God’s definition is a little different.  We have to rethink what our words mean.

This is problem when we talk about hope.  We think that “getting our hopes up” leads to disappointment, so our strategy is to not “get our hopes up” so that we won’t get disappointed.  Therefore in the world’s dictionary, we might read: “Hope = Disappointment.”  These are the words we use.  However, What is the ONE thing we KNOW about hope from Scripture?  Romans 5:5, “Now hope does not disappoint“.  This is God’s definition of hope. God’s definition isn’t tied to expectations, circumstances, or result.  True hope, as defined by God’s Word, does not disappoint.

This is the hope that God’s Word speaks of.  Why are you so downcast oh my soul, (Psalm 42, 43) HOPE IN GOD.  Hope is not in a person, a circumstance, or an outcome.  Hope is in the character of God.  Hope does not disappoint.  So this is a fabulous way to determine if I’m hoping God’s way.  So even last week, something happened that caused a mild disappointment. It wasn’t a big deal, but it caused me to realize that I was hoping as the world hopes-in an outcome-rather than as God’s Word tells me to hope-in His beautiful sovereignty and goodness.

This is the key to waiting on God.  The third key to understanding expectancy is that Expectancy takes place when we wait on God. (WHEN GOD BROKE MY HEART: Part where Dawson says “are you waiting on Jason or waiting on God?”)

This has and will stuck with me for the rest of my days.  I ask myself this question all the time now. Am I waiting on God or waiting on my circumstances to change?

Now, know it’s not always clear-cut, and sometimes it’s hard to tell because part of waiting on God really does include some concrete things like applications, relationships, etc. BUT, the key is this: Waiting on God keeps my eyes firmly fixed on Him, where Waiting on a person or a circumstance keeps my eyes fixed on people and circumstances, which change and shift and will soon lead to disappointment, depression and anxiety.

Psalm 62: 5 My soul, wait silently for God alone,
For my expectation is from Him. (I would use the word expectancy here to keep it in line with what we’re talking about)

Expectation keeps our eyes on the circumstances because we are busy trying to line up what we think should happen with what is happening.  Expectancy keeps our eyes on God-relinquishing what we hope for in favor of trusting God with whatever He sees fit.

Now the fourth key to Expectancy is understanding that our hearts are wicked, and we can even use our Relinquishment of expectation as a means of deceiving ourselves into simply setting up new expectations. I’m telling you, this expectation stuff doesn’t die easy!  The things is that so many of us know from Scripture that often, God rewards those acts of surrender. Abraham got Isaac back, right? I mean, we give things up and surrender them, but then God always gives us something better, right? And sometimes, I know probably none of you do it, but sometimes we can actually begin to play a game with God, thinking that if we surrender our expectations, give something up, lay it down, then all we simply do is replace that expectation with another expectation: That God will give me something better in return.  This is such a subtle thing, but we are so tempted to do it.  I experienced this this year as well, in what I call learning that God does not give suckers.  I’m just going to read it to you from my journal:

I’m painfully aware that God cannot be manipulated.  I’m painfully aware that there is no sucker for me today.  A few months ago I was taking Dutch to get his check-up and immunizations, and realized I needed a Tetanus shot.  So while we waited for Dutch’s doctor, a nurse zipped into our room and while I was still holding Dutch, pulled up my sleeve, sunk in her needle, patted the spot with her guaze and was out the door in 30 seconds (a very expensive 30 seconds I found out when I later received the bill!).  Then later Dutch’s turn came.  First I gave him some Tylenol, so it wouldn’t hurt so bad, then I held him close to me, while the nurse took great care in giving the shots, then found special little Cars bandaids, and offered him a green sucker for being so brave.  Later as I put Dutch into his carseat, I of course was extra careful not to bump his arm with the straps, and hurried him home.  As I drove I rubbed the sore spot on my arm and I thought of the significant truth: “Funny they didn’t offer me a sucker.”  Of course they didn’t offer me a sucker. I am a grown woman. A mom.  They know I don’t need to be coddled and treated for every little brave thing I do.  And that’s right and appropriate.

So why can’t I accept that as right and appropriate from God.  Unknowingly I have set up a set of fairness rules in my mind.  If I sacrifice something, God will give me something in return.  If I respond rightly and obediently, God will bless me in tangible ways.  If I have to get a shot, there will be a sucker at the end.  In fact, there have been so many times this year that I have found myself thinking, “Oh I can’t wait to see the cool things God will do at the end of this year, and how He will bless us!”  I might call it faith, but really it’s just an immature and childish notion that if I sacrifice something or endure some painful shot of adversity, God will reward me with a sucker.  And even worse, thinking that way is nothing more than manipulating God.  We’re saying “If I give this up to God, He will give me something better in return.”  God will not be manipulated.  So here we are, at the end of the year.  The spiritual infant that I am thinks that somehow because I think I have sacrificed somewhat I deserve some candy from God.  And instead God turns to me and says, “Thank you, my daughter. You’ve done what I’ve asked.”  And…what else God??  Don’t you have a sucker for me?!  Don’t you have something cool for me to show for it?  What’s that?  You mean to say there’s nothing at the end of the rainbow except the satisfaction of knowing You’re pleased?  And sadly, the truth is that my wicked heart had hoped for more.  Is God’s pleasure and favor not enough?  How sad that I still act like a spiritual infant, demanding candy for a simple act of obedience.

Well, He did give me more than that, actually. Today as I sat on the couch crying, disappointed once again with the direction life is going, I opened my laptop and discovered an amazing email from a girl who reads this blog.  A girl in Florida who I’ve never met, who stumbled across it and has been faithfully reading.  Her words made me cry even more, realizing that these words poured out, my life poured out, does matter, it does impact people…in ways we may never know. That is a gift.  As I prayed I thought of the times I’d asked God to pour me out for His glory, to pour out my life for the sake of others. But as I sat here today praying, all that could escape my lips was the infant pounding her fists saying, “But I don’t want to be poured out. I don’t want to be poured out.”  I want a sucker.  “No, my child,” God says, “I love you, and it’s time for you to grow up.”

Scan to another scene-Multnomah graduation last Friday.  We went to celebrate with our dear friends Adam and Grace. Adam graduated with honors, earning the John G. Mitchell award, the highest seminary award given for excellence and Godly character.  Afterwards we heard all the stories from the graduates-the pastoral positions, the awesome opportunities oversees, the exciting jobs.  A part of my heart rejoiced with them, but you know what a big part of it felt:  Nothing more than selfish toddler-style envy.  With no more maturity than Dutch when he walks over and takes a toy from another baby, my heart inside wished that we had a cool story, wished that we had a neat job opportunity, wished that we had some sucker to enjoy.  And so I turn again to God right now and repent.  I ask Him to forgive me of my infantile desire for toys and candy from my heavenly Father.  For my immature view of fairness and justice. For my sublte desire to manipulate Him by thinking that by giving something up I’ll get something in return, like a person saying “You take the bigger piece of cake” knowing full well that the person will then give you the larger slice.

Growing up is hard.  I still like suckers.  But I think I want God more.  I want to love Him with more than a childish desire for the toys and candy of life.  I’m not there yet, but I’m somewhere along the way.  And today there are no suckers, only God, and He’s enough.

The fifth and bottom side of Expectancy is hard to see.  This is not easy stuff, not just because it’s hard to relinquish things, but it’s confusing sometimes because we are called to pray specifically, asking God for what we need, but we also have limited understanding, and so most of the time we don’t even know what we need.  So how do we do this?  We’re called to pray for healing for a sick child, and yet we’re also called to relinquish the results to God and not have expectations.  Someone please tell me how this is possible?  I think that it is possible, but not easy, and DEFINITELY not to be done lightly.  If you can easily relinquish the outcome of a situation, chances are it’s not that important to you.

Habakkuk is my another great example of this.  In a nutshell Habakkuk is a prophet, and his little letter is basically a conversation between he and God.  Habakkuk says, “God do something!  Your people are awful!  Draw them back to you!”  And God says, “I am doing something! I’m sending the Chaldeans to come destroy them and carry them all away captive in exile.”   And then Habakkuk says, “Uh, not exactly what I had in mind, God!  How can you use the horrible Chaldeans, heathens, and let them have victory over US, your people? That’s not fair!” And God says, “Um, I am God. I have chosen this as my means of both exercising judgment and of drawing my people back to me.”  So there is a struggle. Habbakuk is an example to us of this struggle.  We don’t just go, “Oh ok, kill us all.  Conquer us, let us die of disease. Ok.”  But we wrestle in prayer, we cry out to God, we plead, we fast, we pray, we intercede for what we understand to be God’s best, as best as we know.  But then, Habbakuk finishes with this, the judgment is determined, the outcome is final.  It is then that he concludes his book: with V. 17-19. Read

He ends with joy! He ends with resolve!  This is our hope. This is our goal.  This is not a lay down and die sort of thing. We first identify what it is that we’re expecting and how we’ve already experienced the disappointment of thwarted expectations.  Then we process through that pain and allow ourselves to be vulnerable with God, recognizing the things we fear.  And we allow those expectations to die. Really truly die, just as Lazarus was dead four days in the tomb.  And then, here, we begin to root ourselves deeper, we wrestle with God, as Habbakuk does.  We plead and implore, we intercede, we let ourselves get involved in the situation.  And then as we wrestle through this, we begin to let a quiet sweet resolve break through, when death is pending, when invasion by the Chaldeans is imminent, when the thing, the hope, the dream has died, then we realize that our expectancy must be in God, our expectations will be thwarted, and something deeper is needed.

So what is this something deeper? We know we set up expectations, we know we’re paralyzed by fear.  So, how do we unearth expectancy?  How do we have the courage to move forward in expectancy?  The 6^th and final and top view, the glorious KEY that is visible from above the glorious circumstance, the essential component that is the key to relinquishing all and living in true Expectancy is this:

We study, focus, meditate on, and memorize that Character of God.  You will trust God when you know God.  When you know God you will trust God.

This is basic, profound, and foundational to everything in life.  Even in human relationships.  People are imperfect, so sometimes when we get to know them it causes us to trust them LESS.  (often that’s the case unfortunately)  But, God is perfect. Because He is infinite, His characteristics are His perfections.  Think about this. When God is wise He is perfectly wise. When God is trustworthy He is perfectly trustworthy. When God is just he is perfectly just.  All that He is He is perfectly. So the more we get to know God, the more we will trust Him.

So the remedy for this malady of fear, of not trusting God enough to relinquish our expectations, is to form a greater understanding of the character of God.

Now we could do an entire retreat on the character of God.  We would be here forever, and you can read entire books on this, you can do a study of the attributes of God, you can pray through thanking God for his attributes, there are a million ways to dwell more on his attributes and study them. For our quick time together I want to share what I call the three legged stool of who God is.  These three, put together, hold our view of God in perfect balance.  Without one of these, we tip over, but if we can rest firmly on these three, our faith and our expectancy will be firmly fixed.

1. God is All-Powerful.  Or Omnipotent.  (scriptures)  God is able to do all things.  He is the most powerful being in the world.  Greater than life, death. He is all powerful.  This means He can do anything He wants.  He can make something out of nothing.  He can heal, he can raise the dead, he can bring death, life, he can cause conception, he can deliver from evil. He can do all things.
2. God is All–Knowing. This means that God KNOWS exactly how to use his power. If he were only all-powerful, but didn’t know all things, then he’d be pretty useless. But because He knows all things, He knows where the sick child is, He knows your pain, your situation. He knows exactly how to use the power which he has.  He is all knowing.  And the third is the key, and it’s the one that most commonly is doubted.
3. God is All-Good.  If He were only all powerful and all knowing, but malevolent, then He could NOT be trusted with our lives. But because he is all three it means that not only can He do all things, and not only does He know exactly how to exercise His power over all things, it means that He is using his infinite power and infinite knowledge for our good and for His glory at all times. This is the amazing truth that fits it all together.  All fear and doubt questions the goodness of God.  When Eve sinned in the garden she believed the oldest lie in the book-God is keeping something from you because He is not good. He is not working for you. He is against You.  He does not love you because He is not good.

Any sound biblical theodicy must maintain these three truths.  You must maintain a Three-legged Theodicy.    ANY compromise of these three is heretical.

I want to admit to you that it has taken me some time to get back to living in a real expectancy of what God will do, because I did allow myself to become jaded.  I felt like we’d had so many disappointments in the past years that the correct response was to expect nothing from God.  But what threatened to die was my true hope-filled expectancy in the GOODNESS OF GOD.  If we only look at circumstances, we will naturally become disappointed, jaded and without hope. But when our eyes are fixed on CHRIST, and the goodness of God, the Father heart of God, the infinite love of God, then our hope is grounded, and we can live in heavenly expectancy of what God will do.

This is hope.  We don’t believe God for something, we believe IN GOD, we believe in His love, His character, His promises.  We trust Him because He is trustworthy.  We believe Him because He is all-powerful, all-knowing, all good.  THIS IS TRUE HOPE.  True hope, that doesn’t disappoint is in the character of God. This is expectancy.  This is waiting on God.  We don’t hope in suckers, we don’t wait on people.  We look to Jesus, and we hope in His goodness.

Meditating on the perfections of God gives us the courage to relinquish all to God. And who cheers us on along the way? Who provided the ultimate example of ultimate relinquishment?  He relinquished His life on the cross, for the JOY set before Him.  If our surrender is not deeply rooted in the knowledge of the attributes and goodness of God, it will be void of hope.  It will only be depressing resignation to fatalism.

If our surrender, our relinquishment of all expectation, is rooted in the goodness of God, then true hope will be birthed, which will not disappoint.

When we understand His goodness, we realize that the truth is that God has more for us than we could ever imagine.

Let’s wait on Him, in expectancy ladies. Let’s hope in His goodness, let’s believe in His character.  Our expectations have died, let expectancy reign in our hearts. Let’s see what God will do, Amen?

So yesterday we did some bird’s eye view of God’s disappointments-specifically in Abraham and also in Jeff and my experience in San Jose.  Now this morning we’re going to look at another example of how God disappoints us, but we’re going to take a closer look at this one passage, because there is a process going on, that I think we might too often miss.  It’s too easy to glibly say, Ok Lord I give you all my expectations!  I’m yours!  There might be more to it. If we do that we short-circuit the real work God’s wanting to do.  So, appropriately for a women’s retreat, let’s look at the story of Lazarus in John 11.  This is one of the most common passages for women’s studies, so most of you are pretty familiar with it, but let’s just look at it chunk by chunk focusing on a few key verses.

V. 3:  The sisters sent to Him.  We’re going to start with some pretty basic questions here.  Why would they send to Jesus?  They expected Him to heal Lazarus.  This was their expectation.  Lazarus is sick. Jesus loves Lazarus.  Jesus can heal.  Therefore, send to Jesus and tell him so that He can come heal Lazarus. (Sound familiar?  I have a problem.  Jesus loves me.  Jesus can fix problems.  Tell Jesus my problem and expect him to fix it.)

V. 4 One of the most significant lines of scripture, Jesus claims that the sickness is not unto death (will not result in death), but is for the purpose that God will be glorified. It’s actually safe to say that all that God does (or doesn’t do) is for this purpose.  This is the overarching purpose of God.  Now we don’t know whether Mary and Martha got this report. But either way, they expected Lazarus to be healed by Jesus and live.  If they got the message, they would surely have that expectation, and even if they didn’t, they naturally expected Jesus to beat feet there to heal him right away.  So, you all know the story, what does Jesus do?

V.5-6 Because Jesus loved Mary and Martha and Lazarus, he stayed two more days in the place where He was. Again, one of the most significant lines in Scripture.  This means that Jesus deliberately let Lazarus die. Remember what I said earlier? God doesn’t just use disappointments for good, He causes them.  He disappoints us on purpose.  Everything that God does is deliberate.  Jesus deliberately waited 2 days, so that Lazarus would die. He disappointed them. He thwarted their expectations.  Perhaps you say, Jesus didn’t know Lazarus had died (I don’t think any of you would say that but perhaps someone would).

V. 11-15 proves that Jesus knew exactly what was happening, He knew that Lazarus was dead, and “was glad”.  Why?  Purpose?  THAT YOU MAY BELIEVE. The reason God deliberately disappoints His people?  That we may believe. This means that He has an even greater purpose than raising someone from the dead. Even greater than life.  Belief is even greater than life. That doesn’t seem logical that He’s disappoint people in order to get them to believe, huh?  It seems like He’d want to fulfill our every wish so that we’d believe that He’s able. Nope. Doesn’t work like that. Romans 5:1-5…it is through trials and suffering that hope is borne. It seems like it would be the opposite, but God knows how to birth true hope, which is through disappointment and thwarted expectations.

So basically they get to the house and Lazarus has already been dead and buried 4 days. I love this–Jesus doesn’t just miss the boat by a few minutes-by FOUR days! He really blew it!  Dead, buried, gone.  All hope is gone.  Lazarus is DEAD.  And now here’s the thing that is so remarkable about God.  He doesn’t just kind of disappoint us. When He strips away something, He lets it die all the way.  It isn’t like Lazarus just breathed his last and maybe there’s hope of reviving him within the hour. When God lets something die in our lives, it’s dead. He lets it die all the way.  SO dead.  Dead and buried 4 days. It stinks.  He lets it sink in.  He lets us grieve, wail, weep.  When He disappoints us, He chooses the things that will cut right to the very core of our being.

Picture this with me. Mary and Martha, who had placed all their hope in Jesus to save their beloved brother, and now Jesus has utterly and completely failed them.  Jesus has failed them and now their brother is dead.  They are weeping, mourning.  It is all over.  And as I said, when God lets something die in our lives, it really dies.  He has a miraculous way of making sure those dreams, those hopes, those desires, the things that we are hoping IN are really truly dead.  So dead that we are devastated, disappointed, grieving.  This kind of sounds cruel, huh?  We kind of start to wonder what kind of God would let us go through all that?

But here is the remarkable thing we see in this passage: God grieves with us. The shortest verse in the Bible, v. 35: Jesus wept.  He “groaned in His Spirit” and was troubled.  Why?  He is God, so obviously it’s not because He thought, “Oh shoot, I should have gotten here earlier!”  He chooses to feel all that we feel.  He is in us, with us, loves us so intensely that when we are crushed, He is crushed.  And I love this because it’s so remarkable that He would do this, even though He knows the outcome. He could have said, “Silly ladies, quit yer crying-I’m gonna take care of it!”  But he doesn’t, He enters into our disappointment.  I’m so bad at this as a mom because Dutch will be waiting to go for a walk, and then I remember I have to run and get something, and he acts like the world is falling down around him, and I just think, “Come on! I’ll be there in a second.”  But Jesus chooses to feel every pain, every disappointment, ever heartache with us.  If you think that God is aloofly and distantly watching, even inflicting your pain from afar, I am here to tell you you are wrong.  That is not the God we serve.  The God we serve and love and worship chooses to experience every ounce of pain that we experience, with us.  When He chooses to afflict us, He is choosing to afflict Himself.  If you are hurting, God is hurting with you.  Please, ladies, hear me.  God weeps with you.  God has wept with me.  He wept with them.  He weeps with you.  He is the God who grieves.

Now because of this, we can bravely and honestly enter in to those disappointments.  Here’s the thing, we acknowledge the big stuff:  the death of a loved on, the San Jose thing, cancer.  Obviously it’s ok to admit that those things hurt, but I’m coming to realize that we spend a huge majority of our life in the midst of the little disappointments, little wounds, little afflictions.  And the thing about those is that we are so good at ignoring them.  Follow me in this for a minute. I remember reading a book by Larry Crabb called Inside Out, and it was saying that what the majority of us do, in order to stay happy, sane and content, is that we pretend like disappointments and pains do not exist.  We aren’t honest with ourselves.  This hit me like a ton of bricksWe moved into this home in McMinnville a few years ago and it had really oddly painted walls.  The bathroom was a bright yellow, not a pretty yellow, but a glaring urine yellow that was jarring, like it glowed even when the lights were off. The master bedroom was lime green and the smaller bedroom was two alternating shades of turquoise-bright teal.  The bathroom and the second bedroom were small and easy enough to fix, we just repainted them. But the master bedroom was very large and had huge vaulted ceilings.  No easy paint job. Upon seeing the soaring ceilings and quickly evaluating the cost and effort it would take to repaint, I quickly insisted that I liked the color.  I like it. It’s apple green.  This is the approach I take to a disturbing portion of life.  I like it!  It’s beautiful. It’s apple green!  Ok, but here’s the thing ladies it was not apple green. It was hideous. And I don’t care what The Secret says, no amount of positive thinking was going to change the fact that it was not apple, or pear, or pistachio, or leaf or anything attractive, it was lime and it was awful.

Now, hear hear, the point is NOT about me having a perfectly painted house.  My desires being met is NOT what makes me happy and content in life.  But we wrongly assume that if we acknowledge we don’t like something, then we will be miserable. If we acknowledge that we don’t like a situation, or that a disappointment still hurts, or that a person has truly inflicted a wound on us, then we reveal our weakness. By admitting that something hurts, bothers us, or disappoints us, we reveal that we are shallow, weak, unspiritual, and needy.  We reveal our vulnerability, and we are afraid that by acknowledging these things, we will never be happy.  However, the opposite is true!!!  So, I read this book and realize, with this revelation of profound joy-I don’t like the green walls!!!! TADA!  Jeff came home that day and I was practically bouncing off the walls with joy and I said, “Guess what?! I hate that green color!  Yup! It’s not apple! It’s LIME! And I hate it!  Woohoo!”

Of course he thought that I’d gone totally insane and probably thought, “Oh no, now I have to paint the room.”  But no, I told him, “You don’t have to paint the room, because get this-I don’t have to have perfectly colored walls in order to be happy!  I can hate the color of my walls and still rejoice and be perfectly content!”  I know, you are thinking I am totally insane at this point (You see why I didn’t share this story on the first night because you would have gotten in your car and driven home).  But the key is this:  If we think that we must lie to ourselves, and pretend that we are ok with every little thing in our lives, then we will never be truly, profoundly, and deeply content. We will have constructed a flimsy façade of seeming contentment that is nothing more than a sorry cover for our unhappy lives.  This, ladies that I LOVE, this is why we must experience the pain, we must enter in to disappointment.  We must acknowledge-this is different from what I expected.  And it hurts.  God, I am willing to be vulnerable and admit that I’m not as tough and as spiritual as I’d like to think, and the bottom line is that I’m hurting.  The bottom line is that I don’t like the green paint.  Can you help me to rejoice anyway? Can you help me to be both honest and rejoicing?  GOD CAN WORK WITH AN HONEST HEART.

So let’s go back and think about our disappointments that we wrote down, or perhaps even things in our life right now.  Can we be brave enough to tell God that the truth of the matter is that I’m really disappointed.  My expectations have been thwarted, and I’m wondering what is going on.

This past year has been an adventure and God has taught me so much about having an honest heart.

For over six months now we have lived with my parents so that Jeff could go to seminary.  We left our home, which I loved, our home-town, and our income to live on our savings with my parents.  This has been the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.  I feel like the very essence of who I am, as a woman, is to make our home, to create beauty and order and a haven for our family to rest and replenish.  We constantly had people over, ministry events, hosted things for people.  Hospitality pulses through my veins.  I love being a homemaker.  I knew it would be hard, but I didn’t realize.  We sold almost all of our belongings and moved the rest into my parents shop, and packed what was left into their two upstairs bedrooms.

They are wonderful people.  But I feel like every day I die.  I feel like my personality, my identity, my purpose, all felt like it was stripped away.  They live miles and miles out of town, on a windy country road, so my daily walks, my visits with neighbors, and friends were all gone simultaneously. Our second car died and we have no job so we can’t get another, so I am truly stranded out here in the wilderness where I don’t know anyone and don’t even have cell phone service.

All of a sudden we weren’t a family anymore, I was back to being a high school girl except now it felt like I had a boyfriend and a son living with me too.  I’m the recipient of charity.  My dishes, my kitchen stuff, my décor, my everything is gone.  I have no projects, no purpose.  Even cleaning-instead of being a homemaker I feel like a maid..  I had no idea how this all would strip me down.

I’m writing this all because I have to pour it out.  I have to be honest if I’m going to relinquish this to God.  I feel like our family has been stripped away, like we’re no longer the Pattersons, we’re Bill & Karen’s kids.  We have no family unit of our own.  We don’t dance in the kitchen anymore or run around in our jammies.

So all of this to say, I’ve let my heart get fixed on somehow getting out-and getting out soon.  I feel like I’ve died all I can die and I can’t do it anymore.  I keep telling God, “I just miss my life, I miss my marriage, I miss life before.”  Why does he put me in a situation where all the gifts and passions in my hear, that ones that He gave me,  lie dead?

I know I have to relinquish my dream of a home, of moving out and having our family again.  I know I have to let those things be crucified, even though it feels like I’m dying all over again.  I know I’ve held them tightly in my grubby little hands.  Instead of hoping in God, I’ve hoped in the possibility of moving out and getting a home.  Instead of waiting on God I’ve waited on when we can finally move forward and get out.

So honestly I’m not yet to the place where I feel like I’ve truly relinquished it all.  Right now I’m still in the Garden, crying and saying, “not my will but Yours.”  I’ll trust Him that somehow He’ll resurrect the right thing in the right time.  I’ll let it die.  I’ll die, again.  I’ll relinquish.

In February, I wrote this in my Journal/blog. This was the point when I let it all out and told God the honest truth of what I was feeling.  It’s not pretty.

I’ve been swallowed up.  This must be what it’s like to be my Grandma, or any really really old person who has to leave their home and take a puny boxful of their life’s belongings to a retirement home, where they are taken care of and treated like an child, patted on the head and told to do crossword puzzles or knit washcloths no one will use.  They must wonder what to do.  No wonder they watch TV all the time.  They must cry a lot and think about the years when they were young, valued, busy.  When they had the freedom to drive, to go out with friends, to clean their own homes or plant a garden.  It must feel frustrating to have nothing but a potted plant to water or at best a tomato plant on their allotted 2-foot square plot of garden in the retirement home courtyard.  No wonder they’re grumpy all the time.  It must be hard.  So hard.

That’s how I feel right now.  I’ve been swallowed up.  Somewhere in the last year Kari was swallowed up and now she sits inside someone else’s life.  I still get glimpses of what it’s like to be me.  On Friday when we hung out in Corvallis and I saw my friends-I got to be me.  On Saturday when we went to McMinnville and saw precious friends and laughed and drove and played with Dutch-I got to be me.  Last week when I drove up to my friend Melissa’s and went for a hike around the lake by her house-I got to be me.

But last July I drove away from me-at least that’s how it felt.  I really just drove away from our home, but we entered a new life.  We now live with my parents.  We eat off my parents’ plates.  We eat food from their refrigerator. We park in their garage.  We sit on their couch.  We also live in a new town.  It is their town.  The town is full of their friends.  We also attend a new church.  It is their church.  The church is full of their friends.  Jeff teaches a class on Tuesday nights.  The class is largely a group of my parents and their friends.  In July I went from being Kari Patterson, to being Bill & Karen’s daughter.  I went from being wife and mother to daughter … again.  Not that I have ever quit being a daughter, but I have, until this point, been a grown daughter.  Now I am not quite grown anymore. I am living with my parents again, surrounded by photos of my childhood, feeling as if I’m awkwardly suspended between two lives-one where I am wife and mom, one where I am still a child.  Dangling-that’s how I feel-dangling, never quite sure how to act and how to be because I am no longer me.  I’ve been swallowed up.

And in this new church I have no fit.  There appears to be no Kari-shaped hole that I can discern.  There is a huge Jeff-shaped hole, which has been filled, and Bill and Karen shaped holes that have already been filled, and I am standing outside the front door, watching, pretending to be busy … but I’m really just watching and wondering where I went.

Dutch provides great joy-but really my role of irreplaceable mommy isn’t that big anymore.  Oma and Papa provide a lot more fun, and since I leave him with them one day a week, somehow it feels that lifetimes go by while I’m away and I’ve missed a significant chunk.  “He’s dong such-and-such now,” they say.  “Oh, I see,” I reply, “I see I must have missed it.”  But this time, this one day away, is the one golden, glorious, beautifully crafted portion of my life where I get to be me-school!  At school I am wholly and completely Kari Patterson.  I have value, purpose, vision.  I have meaningful work to accomplish, goals to achieve, deadlines to meet.  At school I am not swallowed up!

So if only, I tell myself, if only we could move out.  Somehow I could create a haven, a home for our family where we could be a family again. Somehow I could be me!  Somehow I could be all grown up again. I could cook meals for my family and we could eat off our own dishes!  I could decorate and clean and beautify our home, or I could make a mess and not clean it up for three days-because it’s home!  Home home home!  We could come home!  I could be ok not having a place to serve at church just yet, if only I had a place to rest my head where I could somehow just be myself.  It’s as if I’ve spent ten years out on my own developing into a woman and then all of a sudden I’ve been told that those ten years didn’t happen, and I need to forget everything that’s taken place during that time.

But we can’t move out until we know if Jeff will have a job at the church.  We have no income; we can’t move out until we know if we will have an income.  So we wait.  “Soon,” they say.  “Soon.”  So every stupid Tuesday, as Jeff goes into the church office for his meetings, every stupid Tuesday, I tell myself to not get my hopes up. Every stupid Tuesday I wait for him to call-at 2:45-and tell me how his meetings went.  Every stupid Tuesday I hope they will give him an answer-that they will give him an answer that will give me my life back.  And I convince myself-every stupid Tuesday-that it doesn’t matter and that I’ll be ok no matter what.  And every stupid Tuesday he calls and I listen as he says, “Yeah, my meetings went great …” and he begins telling me the details of the staff meeting and then my stomach does that thing-that thing where I feel sick and where that stupid lump comes up in my throat and I realize I’ve done it again: I’ve gotten my hopes up.  And then I do what I know I will do. I ask, “Did he say anything about …?”  and Jeff knows what I mean and he gets quiet then says, “No, Sauce, no. I’m sorry.”  And then I get silent and cry, and I feel stupid all over again because I realize I’ve done it again-I’ve gotten my stupid hopes up that sometime, one of these times, we’re going to get some good news that someone will give him a job and we’ll get to move out and I can have my life back again.  And I do it every stupid Tuesday.  And every stupid Tuesday I chide myself and say “You’re supposed to wait on God, not on them.  Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint.”   And then I sit and wonder when the strength will come and why I’m weary and fainting.  Every stupid Tuesday.

So this is what I was going through this past year.  And I will tell you that this journal entry was a turning point in my life.  When I finally was just honest with God and wasn’t afraid to acknowledge my pain and disappointment, things began to happen in my heart.  Not that our circumstances got any better, in fact they didn’t, and actually some even bigger disappointments came.  But God began to work in my heart.  It was a lesson for me in honesty, before God, but also before others.  Why do we think that we must always have the right, spiritual answer? Yes there is a right, true answer, and praise God for the times when we can truly answer in faith even when our feelings aren’t there.  I’m not saying that we are driven by our emotions, but I am saying that it is a powerful thing when we can humble ourselves enough to say “I know this is what I should be feeling, but I’m not. This is where I truly am.”  God can work with an honest heart.

The last thing we want to talk about this morning is fear. I’m beginning to realize that there is a link between the pain of past disappointments and fear of relinquishing our expectations.  We ignore the pain of the past, but because it is still there, it haunts us, and paralyzes us, and it keeps us from trusting God unconditionally and keeps us forever grasping for a fabricated picture of expectation of what we hope will happen.

Then the expectations aren’t realized, we’re disappointed, but we try to ignore it, and just anesthetize ourselves by setting up another idea of expectation to hope in, and when that doesn’t happen we do it again and again and again, until our life is just one vicious cycle of thwarted expectations. And we either continue in this cycle, stupidly perseverant in our ways, or we become jaded, despondent, cynical, and critical.  We begin to believe the lie-God isn’t good.  We believe that because we see a cycle, over and over and over, of how God has not answered prayer, how He has not come through, how He hasn’t given me what I need.

If God loved me He would do this.  And he didn’t. He allowed my dad to die, this to happen, my marriage to fall apart.  And expectation after expectation is disappointed, when God didn’t design those expectations to be in place in the first place.

So after we identify our expectations (which we did last night), I like to go through and think about, what fear is causing me to set up these expectations.  A few examples:  Relinquishing a relationship (we’ll talk more about when God broke my heart) My fear was: being unloved and alone.  I was afraid that I would never truly be loved.  This was probably the most intense and paralyzing fear, and it’s VERY common in women.

Going to San Jose: expectations of ministry.  I realized I had a fear of failure.  I was so scared that we would take this step of faith, leave everything, and then not be able to cut it.  I didn’t want to be someone who took a leap of faith and left, went out, and then came home to Corvallis with my tail between my legs, realizing I couldn’t make it out there on my own.  I was afraid of failure.  (talk about getting faced with my fear!)

Living with Mom and Dad: I was afraid that we took this huge step of faith, and responded in obedience, that Jeff would never get a job, and that we’d realize that no one actually wanted us.  I remember someone saying, “So you’ve never actually been paid by the church?”  And the horrible realization coming over me (a lie)-we’re just wannabes!  We feel called by God to serve Him full time in a pastoral church setting, but it’s all a pipedream!  It’s all a figment of our imagination because no one wants to hire us!  We’ve been fooling ourselves!  You can’t be a pastor if no one wants you to be.  This fear paralyzed me, and kept me insisting upon my expectations, rather than relinquishing them and trusting God. I was also afraid that our marriage would dissolve, that Dutch would have no relationship with Jeff and would love my parents more than him.  All sorts of fears swarmed my mind and heart.

I think the most common fear is that we aren’t valuable.  We fear that at our core, we are not valued, precious, and worthwhile, so we spend our energy defining ourselves by our relationships (friends, husband, kids), by our job, our accomplishment, our ministry.    We set up expectations, we look forward to things, because we’re afraid that without relationships, without a house or projects or a job or stuff to do, then we won’t have meaning and value.  Or, perhaps the ultimate fear is that of death, for us or someone we love.  This is real, and can paralyze us and keep us from relinquishing control.

It’s not always easy to identify fears.  It’s especially hard because when we’re in the middle of it it’s always hard to see.  But if we stop and quiet ourselves, search our hearts and ask God, Please show me my fear that is driving me away from your presence and driving me to set up these false expectations.  Again, at this point I’m still not even asking you to relinquish your expectations and your fear.  I think there’s still another piece, which we’ll talk about later today. For right now, we’re just searching and asking, God help me work through the pain in my life, help me to identify what fears are holding me back from trusting you completely.  Let’s Pray.

It’s a little tricky to share notes since a lot of it is stories, etc. But maybe this will be helpful for someone, and for any of you ladies who wanted to jot down things from the weekend.  Hope this helps.

INTRO:

I’ll be sharing a lot about my life, so for now by way of simple introduction basically I’m just a girl, with a wonderful husband, a 20 month old son, and another on the way.  We both graduated from Oregon State in 2001, and now are both full-time seminary students (I’m taking my last class right now).  I feel like our life has been one ridiculous adventure after another, and while sometimes I think, Maybe, Lord we could just have a normal life?  I know that it’s His grace that allows us to join Him in His adventure and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

So as you know, the theme of the weekend is Expectancy.

We have four sessions, and we’re basically going to go on a journey together. I believe that God wants to get us to an end point, but each step, each leg of the journey is key.  It’s important that we follow every step along the way.  So, we’re going somewhere this weekend, and I pray you’ll just jump in with both feet and join me on the journey. Bear with me too because tonight we’re not even going to study much Scripture, I just want to share our little story and then tomorrow we’ll delve more into studying God’s Word.

The times I have grown the most in my walk with God are the times when I’ve allowed myself to experience and process the very real feelings of hurt, anger, disappointment, hope, expectancy, confusion.  We are not here to sit around and pretend like we have it all together.  We’re here to grow, to let God reach into those recesses of our hearts, even to the places that hurt so bad we don’t want anyone to touch them.  So all I’m asking is that you silently, right now, say yes God, I’ll follow you on the journey.  I’m going to share a lot of the real raw painful processing right from my journals.  I don’t look good in all of them.  But I’m not with you this weekend to look good, I’m here to prayerfully share little nuggets of truth that God’s been gracious to show me, and hopefully one or two will be for you.

DISAPPOINTMENT

So, if I had to sum up Jeff’s and my life for the past four years since we’ve been here at Calvary, I’d say that it has been a hands-on lab in the study of disappointment.  Now don’t get me wrong, we’ve had some wonderful experiences, but all in all, a common thread throughout this season has been a really frequent occurrence of disappointment.  I don’t even need a show of hands to know that we all have experienced disappointment.  I looked up the word disappointment in my dictionary and it said “thwarted expectation.”  Hm..  Thwarted expectation.  Well what we’re going to talk about tonight is that-expectations and what happens when they are thwarted. You even notice that birthdays, anniversaries, and sometimes even Christmas and other special occasions sometimes turn out to be some of the most depressing times?  The problem is that we come to these times with expectation.  I remember Jeff and my first Valentine’s Day as a couple.  [SHARE STORY]

Disappointment is basically when the circumstance is other than what we had built up in our minds that it should be. We frequently call it “getting our hopes up” and then being disappointed.  I cannot tell you how I have wrestled with this the past year, how I wrestled with not wanting to “get my hopes up” about something, and then realizing that I’ve done it despite all my efforts, and then when the walls fall down around me I am left totally confused, disillusioned and crushed.  I am, in a word, disappointed.  If I had to title this little talk tonight, I would call it “the God of Disappointment.”  I propose that God strategically disappoints us, or thwarts our expectations, so that He can prove Himself greater and more glorious than we had ever imagined.  Each night we’re going to focus on one main narrative story from Scripture, and touch on others quickly as we go.  Tonight is Abraham.

So, consider:

1. Abraham (Genesis 13-22): God promises he will be the father of many nations right? Then what?  He can’t have kids. He’s disappointed. Expectations thwarted. He then gets so frustrated he takes matters into his own hands and has Ishmael, the child of the flesh through his servant Hagar. Bickering and grief ensue.
   1. Timeline: 75 years old: promise given (Gen. 13:14-15 (first place mentioned, reiterated often)).  85 years old (10 years), take matters into own hands with Hagar and Ishmael (Gen. 16:3).  100: son of promise is born (21:5).  15 years after the attempt of the flesh. 25 years after the initial promise.  Sometimes the most detrimental disappointments aren’t those that are a quick devastating blow, but those that are just last a long, long, long, long, long, long time or are the same little disappointment over and over and over.  We tend to recover from quick tragedies, but those things which gnaw at us, wear us down, beat down our courage, strip away our faith.  Those things can be fatal to our trust in God.  Abraham’s disappointment was just such a trial.  God disappointed Abraham for 25 long years.  How many of us have ever tried to get pregnant?  For the two weeks between supposed conception time and period time, we bite our nails, waiting, waiting waiting.  Some of you have struggled with trying to have children for years. Even just a year or two can seem like an eternity when every month you get your hopes up, then are disappointed.  You try to get pregnant, then spend two weeks obsessing over and hoping you’re pregnant. Then the disappointment comes, and it takes two weeks to recover and get your hopes up again and then the whole cycle starts again.  Hope, disappoint, recover. Imagine this, every month, being disappointed for 25 years.  You could figure that’s 300 disappointing months…

Joseph: (Gen. 37, 39-42) God shows him in a dream that his brothers will bow down to him.  (I would not advise telling people if God informs you that they will bow down to you.  Hear this: Not all prophetic things are meant to be shared!!!)  He winds up dumped in a pit (after barely escaping being murdered by them!)  then sold as a slave to the Egyptians (v.28), is lied about so that his father thinks that he is dead, is taken into Potipher’s house where he does everything right, then is wrongly accused of trying to rape Potipher’s house, is unjustly incarcerated, then spends time in prison, helps out two of his inmates by interpreting dreams, but then is forgotten by them and left in prison for TWO whole years before Pharoah has a dream that Joseph interprets and is let out of prison.  Disappointed.  Thwarted Expectations.

Moses:  (Exodus)  Moses’ heart burns with a desire to deliver his people from the unjust treatment of the Egyptians.  Then what? He kills an Egyptian and there’s a warrant out for his head.  He winds up tending sheep in the back of the desert for his father in law in.  Then God’s promise:  Look how it’s worded:  (Ex. 3:7-10). From the sounds of it, you might think that this would all happen in one glorious day, or week.  But no, it happens through failure, complaining, much death, unbelief.  When he first goes back with grand expectations, things only get worse.  Pharoah increases the workload and all the people complain and grumble against him.  And then they continue to complain and whine against him for more than 40 years.  What he expected?  Not really.  Disappointed.  Expectations thwarted.

The children of Israel (Exodus): God is going to deliver them from the Egyptians and the hand of Pharaoh, so after the exhilarating plagues and parting of the Red Sea, then what?  Left to wander in the wilderness for forty years while the entire complaining generation is slowly killed off.  Manna, endless manna.  A wandering circuitous route.  Disappointed.  Thwarted Expectations.

David: (1 Sam. 16) Samuel the prophet anoints David as king, the Spirit of Lord comes upon Him.  Onward King! Right?  No.  Then what? Saul tries to kill him, over and over and over and over and he spends 10-14 years living in caves in the desert, trying to escape from the hand of Saul. His wife is given to another man.  Some of his actions result in the slaughter of 85 priests.  At one point the Amalekites invaded and took all his and his men’s wives and children and all that they had.  What happened to King of Israel?  He is nothing but a homeless man on the run, hated, having lost everything, and still hunted to be killed by Saul.  Do you think this was what he expected?  No.  Disappointed. Expectations thwarted.

The Disciples:  God will send a Messiah who will come and save the world.  Then Jesus comes, who neither fights nor takes over anything, but is a lowly servant and calls them to a lowly servant life.  Then he does the unthinkable and goes and gets himself killed without even putting up a fight-what a tragic end!  Imagine this moment.  They have left everything.  They have left their jobs, some have left their families, possessions, status, everything, to follow his man who claims that He is a king and will be the deliverer of Israel.  They obviously figured there was so gain to be had.  And then, to end it all, their Savior is dead.  It’s all over.  No revolution.  No overthrowing the Roman government.  Nothing.  It was all for naught.  Disappointment.  Expectations thwarted.

As I mentioned before, Jeff and I have had our own little taste of this disappointment, of thwarted expectation.

SAN JOSE STORY (The Road to Santa Clara)

In hindsight, of course, we can see God’s hand in it all, but at the time, it just looked like, we trusted God, we believed we were following Him, and it was one huge disappointment after another.

Now, I realize that we went through a lot of stories without getting to the end.  I know.  And like I said, we’re on a journey, so Lord willing we will continue to follow our path through tomorrow night. 

At this point I’m not even asking you to let go of your expectations, because that’s not something we can do lightly.  My goal tonight is that we can come to terms with the fact that we tend to build up expectations of what we think God will or should do. And secondly, that we accept the fact that God will thwart our expectations and deliberately disappoint us.

So, tomorrow morning, or even tonight if you are up for it, during our quiet time, I’m asking you to write a letter to God, or you can write in a list, or whatever form works for you, but I want you to write out the top three things that you’re currently praying about/for (or just dwelling on!). A job, a house, a child, a loved one, a health issue, a desire. Something real, the thing you spend your time thinking about when you lie awake at night.  Make a list. And then put next to it what you are expecting. If God were to “answer your prayer” what would that look like?  Please try to be honest.  The reality of it is the right now we’re praying for a job, and my expectation and hope is that-surprise!-God gives us a job. I’m not ashamed or embarrassed to say that. We must be honest with God about this.  There are no “right answers”.  The right answer is the honest one.

Secondly, please take some time to write down what stick out in your mind as disappointments.  You can list them or write about them, just write them down and consider how God has allowed disappointments in your life.  We’ll talk more about both of these things tomorrow.

And thirdly (I know I’m giving you a ton of homework), please read through John 11.

As you’re well aware, this exercise is not for God.  It’s a way for us to be honest with God and ourselves about our expectations and the ways we’ve been disappointed. Please, please, please hear me in this. This is a process!  Don’t try to shortcut to the end because you want to be super spiritual.  We have to go through the process.  And as we worship, ask God to give you an honest heart, and identify those things He wants to show us.  Let’s pray.

As this posts I am driving down to Applegate to speak at a women’s retreat for the weekend.  I’ll be enjoying the beautiful Mountaintop Retreat Center, so I’ll be unplugged Fri-Sun.  This is the longest time I’ve ever been away from Dutch, so I’m sad just thinking about it, but excited to see how God will move in the lives of these women and in my own life as well.  We’ll be talking about (surprise!) Expectancy without Expectation.  Just like last time, I’ll post the notes (4 sessions, one session at a time) on the blog if any of you are interested, and for the ladies from the retreat.

Whew what a week–Tuesday night/Wednesday I apparently had a 24-hour bug of some sort so while I thought I’d be finishing up my notes I was throwing up and shivering under a blanket pleading with Dutch to quit throwing toys and crawling on the coffee table because I was too weak to discipline him.  What a day.  Thank goodness it was short-lived though, and my incredible parents once again blessed my socks off by coming over Thursday morning, taking Dutch out and playing all morning in the yard so I could finish my notes, then trimming all the hedges so the house looked ship-shape, then taking Dutch and me out to lunch so I wouldn’t have to cook.  Can you say “amazing parents”?  Yeah. I’m blessed.

So earlier this week Jeff sent me a cool blog post from LifeHacker about how to get the most out of your new town.  The essence of it is about refusing to stay in a little isolated bubble, and choosing to live life in a missional way, getting to know the world around you.  As you know, just weeks ago Jeff and I moved to a new town (a big city compared to where we lived before!), and so this obviously applies to us. But whether you’ve lived in your town 2 days or 2 decades, there’s still plenty to be gained by employing these ideas and learning to live Missional.

Missional living is really just a buzzword for what we should already be doing but probably aren’t.  To live missionally means understanding that the Great Commission isn’t just for foreign missionaries, it is for all believers, because we’re all called to be salt and light, letting the world see Jesus in all that we do.  Where we’re tempted toward the Sacred/Secular duality of life, Missional Living reminds us that all of life is a mission, that we are on mission with God, and that everything we do should serve that mission–to see every tribe, tongue, and nation glorify God as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Writing this challenge is indeed a challenge, because this isn’t easy for me. I could very easily go through my little life in the confines of my little house and yard and dutch and Jeff and the internet and never see another person except my family and close friends.  But God wants us to go out in the world, rub shoulders and get a little dirty.  I already see this at work by taking Dutch to the playground.  He loves the playground, and occasionally other kids will come and inevitably they have mommies.  It’s easiest to just remain engrossed in our own kids and ignore the other mommies, but the other day I went through the pulling of teeth that it is and actually began talking to the other mom.  Winds up she is a believer, homeschooling, but discouraged and struggling, and in need of encouragement!  Wahlah!  Hello! I was homeschooled and I’m a pretty normal, socially adjusted, educated adult. Just talking to her was the coolest thing, and I walked away marveling at God’s little divine appointments.  I would never have had the experience if I would have a) insisted on staying home all the time or b) been too shy to talk to her.  Now I’m an infant at this, so you won’t find me striking up conversations on the sidewalk, but I’m praying that more and more God would give me supernatural boldness to just be friendly, to care about people, to be willing to engage with them no matter where they are, not with an agenda of my own, but for the genuine purpose of hearing, listening, caring, and prayerfully showing them the love of Christ as God would provide opportunity.

We don’t have to be in a new neighborhood to put this into practice.  Go to the park.  Take a class.  Let your kids take a class.  Sit at a coffee shop.  Look for ways to engage in the community that God has sovereignly placed you in, and ask Him for creative ways to make a difference where you are.  Living missional is just a fancy way of saying Care about People.  It’s so much easier to just stay at home and dust the furniture.  But God has placed His glorious message in the hands of silly little mommies and daddies and students and kids like us.  Let’s get out there and shine around a little bit.  Perhaps He’ll light up a path in an unexpected place.

I am today overwhelmed by realizing how privileged Jeff and I are.  He just called from school, elated because he passed his Greek exam, but even more elated by the Seminary Chapel he attended this morning.  As commuter students, we’ve rarely had the opportunity to attend Seminary Chapel on Tuesday mornings, but now Jeff has made a commitment to attend this term.  They someone dwindled in recent years, but apparently there is a new resurgence of God’s Spirit taking place.  For the five or six chapels of the semester, each one will embrace and a different worship style, expressing the variety of ways that God’s people can worship Him through song, scripture, and response. This mornings was a more liturgical style, which some students have likely not been exposed to.  They sand responsively and read scripture responsively, and were blessed by how God’s Spirit moved over them, even while in this more “constrained” style of worship.  Jeff loves the idea of demonstrating different styles–helping students realize that there isn’t “one right way” to hold a worship service.

FOr the message, each chapel will have a different professor share.  The topics? They are asked to share what is their one message, if this was the last thing they were ever able to share with students before they die, what would it be.  Wow. Powerful.  These are men and women of God who have loved and labored with Christ for 20, 30, 40, 50+ years (Dr. Reeve is 92 and just retired after teaching at Multnomah for more than 40 years.  She has served Christ as a single woman her entire life.)  These men and women have wells of knowledge, wisdom, and grace to impart to us as students.  And the amazing thing is that they don’t just love to teach, they love us.

So today Dr. Blom shared a story, which I’d heard before.  He explained that is was through his mentors that he learned the most about loving Christ.  When he was a young pastor, he’d finished preaching a message and many people around him were telling him how good the message was, etc.  He was beaming, of course, and exclaimed, “I love preaching!”  His mentor responded, “‘Tis good to love to preach. ‘Tis better to love the people.”  Dr. Blom hadn’t done anything wrong, but this was a powerful reminder that we can fall in love with what we do more than who we serve.  “Tis good that I love to write.  “Tis better that I love the people I write for.  ‘Tis good that I love to speak at retreats.  ‘Tis better I love the people at the retreats.  ‘Tis good to love to minister and serve and do good deeds.  ‘Tis better to love the people, all of them: nice, grumpy, young, old, sweet, smelly.  ‘Tis better to love the people

Jeff and I are so privilege to be at a school where professors truly do love the people.  My mentor, the professor I mentioned earlier in “Being Believed In” amazes me about how she always makes the aim of our time to serve me.  I am her intern, which means that I will do anything she asks me to do, but she continually returns to what would be best for me, as her follower.  She loves what she does as teacher, scholar, researcher, but most of all she pours her life out for me, the person.  I’m so thankful for the men and women at Multnomah.  Jeff and I are privileged indeed.

So my prayer is that whatever we love to do, that most of all we would love the people.  ‘Tis good to love to _____, ‘Tis better to love the people.

Today I’m at school all day, which means that it is Daddy Day at home.  I hate leaving the house, realizing I’ll miss the precious moment when Dutch gets up in the morning, the smell of his breath (I know weird, I love the way he smells in the morning), kissing his round little cheeks, and the way he runs across the room when Jeff puts him down and jumps into my arms.  I love the “day off” that Mondays provide me.  School is a breeze compared to Mommyhood :-).  But most of all, I love that Dutch gets a special Daddy day.

Mid-morning Jeff emailed me to say that he and Dutch had been on a long bike ride (Jeff has a baby bike-seat on his bike and Dutch LOVES riding in it), and to the park, and then had stopped to share a large french fry at Burgerville (yes, my son loves french fries, who doesn’t?).  Dutch ate most of the fries and then made the sign for “please more.”  Fortunately they stopped at one large fry.  But all in all they were having a special day, and I had to smile and thank God for letting Jeff have these precious little moments with Dutch.  I know enough to know that Dad matters.

That’s one of the most significant things I’ve learned in all of my Family classes here at Multnomah.  In Conflicted Families we learned that 75% of adult disorders and emotional problems can be traced back to the person’s relationship with their father.  75%!  It’s also pretty well-known that when children are taken to church by their father growing up, they are significantly more likely to continue attending church into adulthood, whereas those who are taken by their mother have a far less chance of continuing attendance into adulthood.

It’s sad that we’ve diminished the role of the father in the home today.  Yes, there are natural, biological reasons that moms spend the majority of the time with the children, but amazingly enough, even thought the majority of hours are invested by the moms, dads play perhaps an even greater role in the developmental health of his kids.  In an age where an increasing number of dads are deadbeat, disconnected, or addicted to work, we more than ever need to encourage our men to invest in the home.  Children are hungry for their daddies.

I am so thankful to have had a childhood full of my father.  As a school teacher, he was home summers and most afternoons.  Even when he refereed many evenings, my amazing mother toted us along to colleges across the state, settling for late-night dinners at Burger King so that we could be together as a family.  I vividly remember running to the door each day shouting, “Daddy’s home, Daddy’s home!”  So I guess my call is for men to recognize their irreplaceable role as dads.  You are so important. So valuable. You don’t have to do the parenting thing perfect, but do it!  And moms, encourage your husbands.  Don’t nag them for letting the kids get dirty (or feeding them french fries) or letting the house get dirty.  Cheer them on in their devotion to the family.  All it takes is a little cheering and encouragement.

So thanks, hon, for making Daddy Day so special for Dutch.  Although I wish you would have saved me some Fries.

So for the past week our garbage disposal hasn’t worked (don’t panic Landlords, it’s fixed now!).  In fact, it only worked once when we moved in and then quit working.  Because I am deathly afraid of sticking my hand down garbage disposals, I refused to do too much rooting around down there myself, and just threw scraps of food into the trash. But the tricky thing was that then it quit draining.  So when I did dishes, the sink would fill up with this greasy, grimy water, which took hours to drain.  Then it left that oily scum all around the sink, so I was consantly scrubbing the sink too.  Needless to say, this was getting old.  So finally, today, Jeff, being the fearless warrior husband that he is, rolled up his sleeves (ok he was actually in short-sleeves because it’s super hot but it’s just an expression), and plunged his arm down into the disposal.  He soon discovered that the disposal had just kicked itself off (as a safety feature) because there was something caught down there.  Of all things–a rock. I have no idea how on earth a rock got into the disposal because I guarantee I have not been washing out any rock-filled dishes, but somehow a rock was in there and it was smashed to smithereens and then caused the thing to turn off.  Within minutes, Jeff had retrieved the rock remnants, reset the disposal, and Wahlah!–it was fixed.  Now I can wash dishes to my heart’s content with no nasty full sink of water.  Now the water rushes right down the drain, and everything is clean and shiny and good as new.  Yay!

So maybe it’s cheesy, but it made me think of Psalm 32, David’s testimony of the sorrow that comes from unconfessed sin. He writes,

“When I kept silent, my bones grew old, through my groaning all the day long.  For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was turned into the drought of summer.”

Sometimes we don’t even know the cause, but we know there’s something down there–something lurking down there in the disposal of our heart, and it’s too dark and scary to reach down our arm and get it out.  We fear what it might be, or that it might be too painful if the blasted thing turns on and turns our hand to hamburger (ok, the metaphor breaks down there).  But really, unless we are attentive, always attentive to keeping a short account with God and with others, we can get some pretty nasty buildup in our hearts, and before we know it, nothing is flowing. All is backed up, our joy is sapped, and there’s nasty greasy water all over our life.

I felt a little like that this week.  I didn’t even know if it was sin, but there was something weighing on me, and it was “heavy upon me”.  In situations like that, it almost doesn’t do any good to argue with yourself “is it sin or not?”  There’s no use sitting around talking about the disposal, like “Do you think it’s a rock? No, I think it’s a potato peel.  No, I think it’s a piece of glass. No…”  blah blah blah.  It doesn’t matter! The right thing is just to stick your darn hand down there and get it out whatever it is!  Well that’s what I finally did and it turned out to be nothing more than a harmless little rock, but I tell you what–I can feel the difference.  Things are flowing, my joy is back, the water’s running right down the drain and my sink is sparkly clean.

So the challenge this week is just to roll up your sleeve, plunge in your hand, and dig out the rock, whatever it may be. Maybe there’s nothing, praise God, but chances are there will be something soon enough.  Maybe a frustration with your spouse, an unresolved issue with a friend, something you said that you realize was gossip that you need to confess. Maybe it’s just an attitude, a way in which you were just a teeny tiny bit dishonest.  Whatever it is, it’s so not worth letting it clog up the drain!  Reach in, confess it, make it right.  Everything will flow so much better.  Believe me.