The one thing on which everyone seems to agree regarding pregnancy, labor, delivery, and motherhood is that it is different for everyone. As someone who values uniqueness, I appreciate this; but as someone who loves answers for difficulties, I find this maddening.
What I CAN say seems to lie underneath this simultaneously comforting and frustrating paradox is a person's relationship with Unknown (and his cousins Out-of-my-control and Uncertain). The real challenge then becomes a kind of "re-centering" on what CAN be known, controlled and certain. Here, then, is my working yet pretty definitively functional list of good and right expectations. Funny enough, they have little to do with this particular "season" of life and far more to do with the bigger picture. It is almost as if they have an eternal quality about them. 1. I do not have within myself the strength to survive each day. Therefore, there is no point in looking inward to find it. It MUST come from something more powerful than my best efforts have evidenced. I KNOW it comes from Someone Whose strength is unlimited and from Someone Who understands my weakness because He Himself experienced it in the flesh. Jesus ALONE has sufficient power--as the One who conquered even the death on a cross--to sustain me in my perpetually weakened stated. He ALONE carried the burden of my sin and is able to bear all my present woes. I can depend upon Him to faithfully and graciously keep me persevering. Dare I say, He might even help me have JOY as a measure of His strength at work within me? Because of Christ, I can expect God to sustain and strengthen me every day at any moment. 2. I am not dynamic or interesting enough to combat threats of loneliness. Therefore, I will get bored, feel lost, and have ridiculously unrealistic expectations of others to fulfill that for me. Only Someone Who is infinitely interesting and immanently present can manage to keep this girl company. His presence ASSURES me that fear has no place in the walls of my heart. He allows me to laugh at the days ahead and delight not in all the temporal, fickle nature of this world, but in the richness of His abundant and steadfast love. I do not have to yield to the lies of loneliness because of three simple truths. First, He came all the way down to earth to show how serious He was about being reunited with me after sin tried to permanently keep us apart. Second, He went back up so that I could enjoy the Spirit of Christ abiding in me, continuing the saving work that Christ had begun. Third, He surrounded me with the rest of His people, the Church, to be His tangible hands and feet, so that spiritual and practical needs could be met. Because of Christ, I can expect God to be with me and for me every day at any moment. 3. I know very little about anything. Fifth-graders and trivia players prove this to me regularly. And with such a small knowledge comes even more miniscule application; therefore, wisdom is as elusive as ever. Only Someone Who is all-knowing and defines wisdom (not just speaks it from His mouth) can grant it to me. He wanted me to have everything I need for life and godliness, including the wisdom I lack, so He has given it to me by the divine power of the Son of God. He wants me asking for wisdom because it is asking for more of Him. I KNOW He will supply this great need of mine because He has given me Himself. Because of Christ, I can expect Him to be and supply the wisdom I need every day at any moment. And yes, I am adamantly loved, a knowledge I would not have were it not for the truest demonstration of it in Christ. Hallelujah, I am intimately known by God, a relationship I would not have had were it not for the revelation of it in Christ. Praise the Savior, I am permanently safe to live the authentic life to which He has called me because of a Savior who showed me how. It relieves me to know that apart from Him, I can do nothing because it allows me the privilege of enjoying that He can do everything. I am IN Him, and I now have access to an abundance of certainty, freedom and delight found in the One Who corrects, redeems and exceeds every expectation I could ever or will ever have. Paradox resolved.
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I am sick and tired of watching the Church get pulverized by the giant bully of Expectation. Its members have been guilty of encouraging this bully, the world certainly has taunted him, and, shamefully, I have too.
What makes me sick is when Expectation grunts that the Church should already be free of imperfections. She is supposed to be sinless, as though her sanctification were complete, as though we were already in glory. After all, is not holiness the standard to which She is held? I expect this line of thinking from the world. They are still in darkness which means we get to have more grace for their ignorance. When the world's particular breed of bully swings his jabs, he foolishly confuses lies and truth about the Church. The world does not know what righteous assumptions are about this so-called Bride of Christ. All they see are a bunch of moral failures and hypocritical holier-than-thous. Honest believers are not surprised by how they arrived at those conclusions considering our incessant inward strife, half-hearted reconciliations and inability to receive the reproof, rebuke, correction and training that the Bible declares is useful for us (2 Timothy 3:16). I hate how Expectation has sucker punched its way into Church members' mentality. Sometimes we are just as guilty as the world, and yet, I would argue, likely more so. Those who hold a biblical perspective are able to agree that individuals are sinners, and yet some still maintain that the Church as a whole should never be found guilty of mistreating its members. Folks, the Church is still in process. And while patience and grace should define those of us who love Her, Expectation squeezes the life out of that spiritual fruit. When ruled by Expectation, we grip the throat of leadership, demanding they bow to our desires and asserting whatever dominance we can over the Church's trajectory. Members who serve this bully threaten to leave if things are not corrected, ignoring that they are under the thumb of another enemy, Pride. I am also really tired of self-serving ideas of submission. Have we spat on the privilege it is to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ (Ephesians 5:21)? Are we seriously so unwilling to submit to the leaders God has put in place because our preferences are more important? When did submitting become so dishonorable and deplorable? Probably around the time we decided we hated suffering any inconvenience and disassociated a woman's dignity from God's image. Then there is the moment when Expectation bullies us into thinking we do not need to be part of the Church in order to have a relationship with God. God LOVES the Church, so much so that He died for her and fully intends to wed Her, what makes us think we should attempt to divorce ourselves from Her and carry on separate lives? This current trend exhausts me because it is a complete and utter lie from the Biggest of Bullies Himself, the Devil. It wearies me to watch deconstruction after deconstruction of faith take place, where the Holy Word of God is maligned, distrusted and slandered all because people decided truth should be defined subjectively or where their wrongful ideas about the Church victimized them. Of course there are terrible, horrible people among the Church of God who take advantage, who should be removed from a position of leadership, whose only right response is to humbly repent of their sin against someone. But to use that awful abuse as a valid reason to assign a faulty label on the Church as a whole or worse still, the God of heaven, is infuriating. He is NOTHING like that. He has been misrepresented and I am so sorry that you did not take the time to learn how much better He actually is. Thankfully, despite how brief time is, this God is having mercy on your soul right now. He is letting you rethink your decision to leave Him. I know this because you are still alive. You can still learn who God is by looking at His Son Jesus. He is the One Who is refining His Church so that She will be ready for Him one day. He loves Her, and He wants you to be part of Her because it means one day He will finally be with you. Jesus is perfect, but frankly, His Bride is not there yet. We can have godly standards for the Church because the objective Truth Himself has given them, but they should not go beyond what He has established. So can we just agree to stop letting Expectation bully us into serving him? What would it look like if we let the gospel of Christ and the fullness of Scripture dictate how we perceive and exist within the Church? It might not be a perfect Church, but it would be a progressively sanctifying one. |
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