An Incorrect Assumption
“My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”
Isaiah 55:8-9 (NKJV)
Are there things in your life that you assumed would be easy because you believed the Lord commissioned them? Perhaps He has released a vision to you or put a certain idea on your mind or placed you where it was obvious you were being purposely and providentially planted, As a result, your assumption was that the right doors would easily swing open, and the people connected to where you needed to go were just going to make things simple for you and get out of the way, and there would be an open platform and pathway for you.
But it doesn’t always happen that way.
It becomes confusing, doesn’t it, to be right in the center of God’s will, and yet things are not going smoothly in your attempts to do what He’s told you to do. It’s not progressing fast and easy. People are not falling in line quickly enough. Recovery is taking longer than you thought it would.
What makes it more theologically frustrating is when these have less to do with the enemy trying to oppose or confuse things and more about the Lord's timing and His will, providence, desire, or movements in your life.
In those times, can you set aside your expectations and trust God?
I'll confess, I carry many expectations for my life: things that I know God can do and believe He will do in my life. But when these things don’t happen, I think, “What’s up with this, God? You have always responded and intervened before. So what's up with this late arrival or this locked door? I don't get it.”
The Lord has challenged me on these occasions that His part (the timing and the work and the power) is easy. The difficulty revolves around my part: the need for me to grow.
Be careful not to make your expectation an idol. Don't start making your expectation a god and then expect the Lord to bow to it. Don’t let your expectation become bigger than your trust in God or your surrender to His will.
Why Philip?
When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?” He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do. Philip answered him, “It would take more than half a year’s wages to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!”
John 6:5-7 (NIV)
Any of us who have been in church for any length of time have heard the story of the feeding of the five thousand. It is purposely angled to reveal the power of God, to reveal the compassion of God, to reveal the goodness of God and the abundance of His blessing. It is also intended to reveal the human temptation to think too small.
In reading this account again recently, something else caught my attention. I wondered, Why Philip?
Why did Jesus specifically ask Philip about where to get bread for the people?
He engaged Philip in particular because of something rather incidental. Philip, of all the disciples, knew the area best. He was from a little fishing village, Bethsaida, on the northeast shore of lake Galilee—near to where they were. Philip knew the survey of the land, the access to provisions, and the places where bread might be available.
Philip knew that this size crowd would be unable to find sufficient bread in the few local bakeries of the small neighboring villages. This incidental knowledge that Philip possessed of the area where is why Jesus asked him and not any of the others.
Philip’s knowledgeable response removes all doubt, for both the disciples who were listening and for the readers today, that there was no possible way, humanly speaking, that they could feed a crowd so large.
Jesus knew that Philip would offer the response, “We don't have enough money to purchase bread for all of these people.” And Jesus knew that from that response, He would then work a miracle that would amaze some, convict others, and convince many that He was, in fact, the Son of God.
How can your knowledge, your expertise, your words be used to point people to Jesus?
Be Real
Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found Him of whom Moses in the law, and also the prophets, wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” And Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
John 1:45-54 (NKJV)
If there’s one thing we can see from Nathanael’s blunt response, it was that he did not sugarcoat things just to make them palatable for others. Nathanael was real.
Nathanael chose not to be politically correct or culturally accommodating or socially acceptable. He chose to nurture in his life what might not make him hugely popular, but what surely made Jesus impressed. And that was: Nathanael chose to live real.
In my estimation, living real provides ideal soil conditions for the seed of the Word of God. It saves so much time when it comes to editing and sharpening opinions and impressions. It makes conversations so much more robust and productive, substantive and constructive.
Nathanael had chosen to be real and he nurtured it. No matter what the topic was, Nathanael approached it by just being real.
I want to develop a character that matches what Jesus said about Nathanael. I want to trust that I am, if nothing else, at least being my real me. I want to steward a character that would be described by the Lord in a way that reflects I've learned to be safe being the real me. It’s been said, “Be yourself, not your idea of what you think somebody else's idea of yourself should be.”
I suspect that all of us have at times given up the real us for some adjusted, scripted, altered version of ourselves that has us managing exchanges that are awkward, painful, uncomfortable, stressful, and that feel oppressive and restrictive. These times can make you start disliking yourself for having given in to a lesser version of yourself. But our text teaches that all Jesus wants for and from your life is that you become comfortable living real.
We all need to honor God's presence in our lives by living committed to discovering, owning, and nurturing the real us.
Who Are You Becoming?
Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.
Philippians 1:6 (NKJV)
Your relationship with Christ means that every day you wake up, you are surrendering to becoming the person He is shaping you to be.
Who are you becoming?
What influences—both internal and external, natural and spiritual—are the influences that are shaping you? Who are you becoming after all of the
- hurts and mistakes
- setbacks and pains
- heartbreaks and disappointments
- betrayals and missed appointments
- poor choices and failed attempts?
Who are you becoming with dreams altered, goals adjusted, successes and failures experienced, and after so many detours?
If Jesus is shaping the person you are becoming, it's going to have an impact on your perspective and your interpretation of experiences. You'll learn how to absorb heavy blows differently. You'll learn to investigate pain with a different set of lenses. You’ll appropriate joy and blessing in a way that shapes deep thanksgiving and gratitude. It will hammer out your perspectives in life and give you a different embrace of lived experiences—until you're able to stand up and say, “When I'm weak, I'm strong.”
If Jesus is managing the shaping of who you are becoming—and I pray that He is—you'll envision your life differently. You'll chase things differently. You’ll search for meaning in things differently.
We are all becoming something. And I'm asking you, who are you becoming?
Stewarding Our Expectations
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
John 11:17-34 (NIV)
Both Mary and Martha said the same thing to Jesus when He arrived after the death of their brother Lazarus. “Lord, if You had been here, he would not have died.” You can hear the unmet expectation in their words: We expected you to be here earlier.
Jesus checks their expectation so compassionately and skillfully, essentially saying, “Lazarus will rise again. You all only saw Me as a miracle worker, but now you will be able to see me as the resurrection and the life. You've watched me operate only on this side of the veil in temporality, where life is being lived, but now I'm going to show you the reach and length and height and depth of my power and authority, as I reach past the veil into death itself.”
Here's what I want you to consider today: Faith is not a license to ignore the need to steward your expectations.
You can believe Jesus for anything, believe Him for everything, make all of your requests known to Him. But the story of these sisters teaches us that faith has to be stewarded by us to consider Jesus's fulfillment of prophecy and His obedience to God's will, not just our personal desires and passions.
Faith is the license to believe God-size things, but it has to be stewarded by us to ensure that we don't let our personal expectations become bigger than God's will in our lives. You can believe God for big things, but it has to be stewarded enough that your expectations don’t make you forget that God is sovereign.
Faith is not a license to let our expectations run wild and unchecked with no filter, no strainer, no auditing, no accountability. You have the right to ask for whatever you want and believe God for it, but that does not give you the license to think your expectations should always be met.
Jesus does not have to treat your expectations as an eternal urgency, because sometimes His sovereignty trumps your expectations.
What expectations do you need to steward today in light of God’s bigger plan?
