And my expectations of God could
be described with two words: convenience and predictability.
Convenience. I’ve become accustomed to the incessant convenience
and stimuli present around us. I group
convenience and stimuli together because they both perpetuate my consistent
state of expediency and excitement. I
remain inundated with new information.
It’s not that technological stimuli
or convenience is inherently bad. It’s
that my relationship with God has been shaped by the unending and often
overwhelming availability of almost every resource I could ever want.
My description of earthly stimuli
and resources became my expectation of God: convenient, predictable, quick, handy,
stimulating, pleasing, thrilling, and fleeting.
I waited for the Lord to speak to me.
I waited to experience the Lord on a deeper level. The Lord is always near, but my expectations thwarted my experience of the Lord’s presence.
I fear I’m failing to adequately
communicate this concept. Who I expect
and know God is and how I expect God to move are vastly different ideas. We can
always expect God to be who God says God is. We can always expect God to speak to us.
For instance, our Lord is always present,
constant, reliable, and powerful. But how God speaks to and manifests that presence, constancy,
reliability and power in us may vary.
If my expectations of God’s
movement do not change, I will experience less of God in my life. When I expect God to speak to or move in me
in a specific manner, I limit my communion with God.
Predictability. And sometimes my expectations of the Lord are
limited by my prior experiences with the Lord.
Maybe instead of confining God to convenience, we have confined God to
predictability. It makes no sense that I
could fathom, determine, or have already experienced the only ways God will
speak to me. But this is exactly what I do when I expect God to speak the same way God spoke to me yesterday. I become so fixated on recreating God’s last
movement that I miss the powerful movement of God in this very moment.
I do not want to miss the
splendor of God in my life because I’m clinging to how God last
moved in me. And I absolutely do not want this for you.
Whatever the limitation I’ve placed on God's movement, I must surrender it. I implore you to do the same. And it’s been a struggle for me lately
because my expectations of God feel safe.
I trust that we cannot begin to
comprehend God’s movement in our lives when we become open to whatever form
that movement may take. I pray God
opens you and me to Christ’s unbridled movement. I pray we experience God's voice in marvelous ways that far exceed our understanding.
“Listen! Listen to the roar of
his voice, to the rumbling that comes from his mouth. He unleashes his lightning beneath the whole
heaven and sends it to the ends of the earth.
After that comes the sound of his roar; he thunders with his majestic
voice. When his voice resounds, he holds
nothing back. God’s voice thunders in
marvelous ways; he does great things beyond our understanding.” Job 37:2-5.
‘“For my thoughts are not your
thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord.” Isaiah 55:8.
“Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered
the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord
was not in the wind. After the wind
there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the
earthquake. After
the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the
fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.” 1 Kings 19:11-12.
Speaking of marvelous. Don't mind if I do.
Much love to you,
Paige
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