Day 31: You Can't Expect Too Much of God.

As I'm living through this season in my life, I am learning much more about myself. I have a friend who jokes that by spending so much time reading, praying, and talking with my counselor, I am becoming an expert in me. I know, sounds like a lame self help book or a cheesy bumper sticker. But silly or not, I really am digging deeper into my own issues and mistakes in hopes that I will be able to avoid watching my history repeat itself.

One thing I have always faulted my self for is my idealistic nature. I have a tendency to see things, and people, the way I want them to be rather than the way they truly are. This is dangerous when I'm establishing relationships with people who are, just like the rest of us, flawed human beings living in a fallen world. So I need to learn to lower my expectations of people to coincide with the reality that there is not one of them who can rescue me. No person on this earth can really make it all better, save me from myself, or meet my deepest needs. I know that this is a mistake I made in my marriage when I expected that ex-Husband could change enough to fix all of our problems. I, of course, never would have admitted that I was asking him to fill the role that I knew in my mind only God was qualified for. I didn't even realize that I was asking God to do something in his heart that still wouldn't have made it all better. Because none of us can be made truly holy and whole until the day we meet our maker face to face.

I am right to be able to fully grasp, for the first time in my existence, that no matter how heroic a person is, there is not one out there who can fill me and love me the way I need. The down side to this realization, however, is that somewhere along this desert pilgrimage I began to believe I needed to lower my expectations of God as well. I felt like I had asked for too much, and that the Lord never promised us a long, happy life filled with perfect marriages and cookie cutter homes. He never said we would be healthy or wealthy if we followed Him with total devotion. So, what did He say? What can we expect from this God who rules the world we're trapped in for our human lifetimes?

YOU CAN'T EXPECT TOO MUCH OF GOD.

"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." John 10:10
--Jesus tells us why He came. The reason He left His place in the throne room of heaven, put on the flesh and the burdens of our world, and hung on that cross is simple. He wanted us to have full lives. Does a life of abundance always look like it's full to the outside world? Do the possessions, the people and the career create the fullness that Jesus described? I think we all know the answer to these questions, but it tends to lead us only to asking another. "OK, God, if the things so sought after and adored by our society don't make our lives full, then what does abundance really look like?"

I think we are supposed to ask this question. I actually think that we should be on our faces before the God of the universe, begging Him to show us that abundance. And we should expect that He will. As we ask Him to fill our lives with the "real thing" we must also believe that He will do just that.


"Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised." Romans 4:20-21
--In this passage, Paul is describing the faith of Abraham. He was not in a situation that made any sense, but it says he didn't waver. He knew God would deliver on His promise. Jesus promised that He could give us life to the full, so let's clothe ourselves in the faith of father Abraham, and begin to expect exactly that.