Failed Expectations

A few years ago, during some very tumultuous times for our family, I found it rather easy to rely on the Lord and believe that He was working all things out for our good. Daily, I would beg Him to show me what He wanted me to learn from all we were going through. I can honestly say I never felt closer to Him than during those times. However, once the greater part of the burden wad lifted, and at first it looked like our family could get the spiritual help to heal from what we’d been through, that didn’t happen and I was crushed. My faith faltered severely for a few years, but then I realized that I had built up some false expectations.

I expected the Lord to fix in weeks and months, wounds caused over many years. Reality check! So much of what we had been through was now woven into who we are and what we believed. Like Moses who spent 40 years in the backside of the wilderness to cleanse his mind from the 40 years of the pollutions of Egypt, it would take time to weed out what God wanted us too weed out, and keep that which makes us more like the Lord Jesus Christ.

Too many think the Christian life is for wimps, but it is not an easy road. We are called to face the challenges that God gives us, not run from them. A spiritual battle is just as exhausting as a physical battlefield, maybe more so. Just ask a soldier suffering from PTSD. Many a soldier endured the hardships of the physical battlefield, only to fall in the aftermath as a new, invisible war now raged on in their mind and spirit.

As Christians though, we are given the weapons we need to fight this battle for the mind and spirit. (Ephesians 6:10-18) That’s not the aspect that this devotional is about though, but rather, my faltering faith.

Regaining my faith was the same solution as most other things in a Christian’s life: Confessing my sin of my lack of faith and changing my perspective and expectations from what I thought I needed to what God knew I needed. Where I couldn’t yet see His will clearly, I needed to focus on putting my faith in Him, again, that He would change me in His timing, not mine.

Too often, we want the circumstances to change, when it is us God seeks to change. Like His promises and mercy which are new each morning I must renew my focus by looking again to Him.

Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us , and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, [2] Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12:1-2 KJV

This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. [22] It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. [23] They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. [24] The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him. [25] The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. [26] It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord . Lamentations 3:21-26 KJV