So I have been doing a lot of studying in the book of Revelation lately. I would be curious to know how many readers have read the book. It’s a book of the Bible that causes a lot of debate and questions and head scratching, to be honest. I have studied this book a few times before and I learn and glean something new every time. This time, in particular, I have been listening to a set of lectures from a professor of New Testament studies at Ozark Christian College. For those of you who are stressed out right now, please don’t worry, I’m not going to go into an explanation of the book of Revelation. But, in one of his lectures, he does ask a very pointed question that has had me thinking a lot about the truth of God. His question was this:
Will you be disappointed if you get to heaven and the streets aren’t made of gold?
His statement was that the streets of gold may not be the reality of what we see, but rather a descriptive way of explaining this point -- the things that we put so much value in here on Earth will only be worth the dirt in Heaven because it’s that awesome. He described it like when we say, “I’m on cloud 9.” That’s not the reality of where we are, but rather just a figure of speech to help make our point. John doesn’t have the words to really describe everything he’s seeing, so he just uses what he knows. That really got me thinking, what if what we expect of God isn’t the truth of God at all?
I believe that our expectations can often put God in a box. We think he will work in our lives in a particular way and when he doesn’t we question where He is and why He would allow our lives to look the way that they do.
We do this to God all the time. We pray for a spouse or a job or a child, but we are praying with our own ideas of what that will look like. When our spouse isn’t who we thought they would be or the job isn’t the one we hoped for or parenthood isn’t what we imagined, we question God. We wonder why it’s not what we dreamed. It’s not that our dreams are wrong or that God isn’t good. I would venture to guess that we had our expectations of who God was and how he would act upside down.
I love Laura Story’s song Blessings. It is beautiful. It asks the listener, what if you are looking in the wrong places for your blessings? She says what if blessings come through raindrops, what if healing comes through tears. That’s a powerful question all by itself, but it takes on a whole new life when you know a little about her life. I was at a conference and heard Laura Story tell her story. She wrote blessings in a time when it was hard to see God’s hand at work in her life. Her husband, after having been married about a year, had a brain tumor. She said that there were points where they were not sure he would survive. He went through treatment and is doing well. However, he still struggles with his memory. But, she knows what it means to look for God’s blessings when they aren’t what you expect them to be. I certainly did not do her story justice in so small a space. Check out her bio here.
Romans 8:17 says,
“Now if we are God’s children, then we are heirs -- heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”
Honestly, a lot of times people will reference this verse and stop with us being joint heirs with Christ. However, if you really read it in context from verse 13 through verse 21 you’ll see that it’s not just external suffering that Paul is talking about. That’s what we all expect when we read these verses I think, that the world will hate us and discard us. But, it starts with reference to OUR sinful nature and putting that to death.
That is suffering. And don’t for a minute think that Jesus didn’t suffer like this. He was fully man and fully God. He had to put his human nature to death. He begged God to take this cup from him when he had to walk to the cross and die. He had to choose God’s will over his desire. That’s suffering. He had to be about God’s work and will when His mother and father were frantic looking for him. His decision to follow God caused them pain, and that must have hurt him. He had to wait while his friend Lazarus died so that he could reveal God’s power through him to raise the dead. That was suffering. He had to put the will of the father above his own desires. That is hard.
But, God says that if you do that. If you live past what you expect and do what God desires, then you can call yourself a child of God. If you follow him no matter the cost, then you will be a co-heir with the glory of Jesus. What a promise!
I don’t know what your expectations have been. I know that one of my biggest sinful human temptations is food, and that is where my greatest wrong expectation has been as well. I struggle with putting the will of the Father before my own desires. He demands that we take care of this body that he has given us. I desire to fill it full of junk and not exercise it. See the gap there? My expectation has been that if I can get it right for a while then I won’t have to deal with food as a sin or temptation in my life anymore. But, I am now coming to believe that my expectation has been so far off. I believe that God is going to allow this temptation to continue in my life for the rest of my life to continue to point me to Him. To continue to teach me to die to my own desires and expectations to follow His will.
Whatever your expectations have been, that maybe haven’t worked out like you thought God would work them out, take heart that He has a plan in all of it. He works all things for the good of those would love him and are called according to his purpose. The real question, if we will go back to where I started this post, is this:
Will you be disappointed if what you expected of God isn’t the truth of God at all?
If God says, stay in this job you don’t like because he has a plan, will you be disappointed? If he says work harder at being a good wife to a husband who doesn’t really see your value, will you be disappointed? If God says, there will be no(or no more) biological children, will you be disappointed? If God says, die to yourself every day for the rest of your life, will you be disappointed? I hope that when we get to see Heaven that we will not be disappointed if there aren’t streets of gold, because God is so much more than that. And, I pray that we will see the truth of God before our expectations, today.
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