WHEN REALITY AND EXPECTATIONS COLLIDE
1. SET MY EXPECTATIONS ABOUT LIFE. LIFE IS DIFFICULT.
“Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.” Psalm 90:10
2. SET MY EXPECTATIONS ABOUT GOD. INCOMPREHENSIBLE STORMS WILL COME.
“Everyone who hears my words and does not ·obey [act on; practice] them is like a ·foolish [stupid] man who built his house on sand. It rained hard, the ·floods came [rivers rose], and the winds blew and ·hit [beat; slammed against] that house, and it ·fell [collapsed] with a big crash.” Matthew 7:26-27
“I don’t think the way you think. The way you work isn’t the way I work.” God’s Decree.
“For as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think.” Isaiah 55:8-9
GOD IS OTHER.
3. BE ANCHORED IN REALITY.
“Among men it is customary to swear by something greater than themselves. And if a statement is confirmed by an oath, that is the end of all quibbling. So in this matter, God, wishing to show beyond doubt that his plan was unchangeable, confirmed it with an oath. So that by two utterly immutable things, the word of God and the oath of God, who cannot lie, we who are refugees from this dying world might have a source of strength, and might grasp the hope that he holds out to us.” Hebrews 6:16-18
That hope is real and true, an anchor to steady our restless souls, a hope that leads us back behind the curtain to where God is (as the high priests did in the days when reconciliation flowed from sacrifices in the temple) and back into the place where Jesus, who went ahead on our behalf, has entered since He has become a High Priest forever...” Hebrews 6:19-20
“For as the rain and snow come down from heaven, And do not return there without watering the earth, Making it bear and sprout, And providing seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so will My word be which goes out of My mouth; It will not return to Me void (useless, without result), Without accomplishing what I desire, And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.” Isaiah 55:10-11
“If racing against mere men makes you tired, how will you race against horses?” Jeremiah 12:5a
“Therefore we do not become discouraged (utterly spiritless, exhausted, and wearied out through fear). Though our outer man is [progressively] decaying and wasting away, yet our inner self is being [progressively] renewed day after day. For our light, momentary affliction (this slight distress of the passing hour) is ever more and more abundantly preparing and producing and achieving for us an everlasting weight of glory [beyond all measure, excessively surpassing all comparisons and all calculations, a vast and transcendent glory and blessedness never to cease!], Since we consider and look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are visible are temporal (brief and fleeting), but the things that are invisible are deathless and everlasting.” 2 Corinthians 4:16-18
