Expectations

Disappointment occurs when our destiny doesn’t line up with our dreams. One of the greatest crises in our faith will take place when our hopes seem to fail, our dreams delay, and we think God is unaware of how terribly hurt we feel. If God can do anything yet doesn’t, we reason, then He must not really care. And if God can’t do anything about our situation, then is He really God at all? As the questions linger, the distance separating us from the Lord widens until we hardly recognize Him anymore.

It’s a dangerous place to be. God warns us against putting our hope in circumstances and in fairy tale endings here on this Earth. Most of us are confused about the Gospel. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not that by getting Jesus, all of our problems are going to be fixed and our dreams will come true. Jesus is not the means to an end toward our version of the American dream. No.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is that we get Him, and by getting Him we get everything, and with Him in our life we can face any circumstance that comes our way, with joy and confidence and the knowledge that He is enough. It is only as our own human expectations are destroyed and radically transplanted by the Truth of Jesus Christ that we will find in Him the answers we are desperately seeking and the joy we long for.

Wrong expectations are common, and they are toxic to the life of the Christian. When God calls us to Himself, He commits to removing those wrong expectations and replacing them with what He knows will bring us freedom.

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Adapted from Still Standing: Following Jesus Even When It Hurts by Lina AbuJamra. Copyright © 2024 by Lina AbuJamra. Reprinted with permission of Moody Publishers. All rights reserved.