Expectations

So my fourth day of being in Redding is coming to a close and the reality of what life is like here is starting to settle in.  I've been to the lake, I've seen the mountains, I've gone to the services at Bethel and I've experienced the wonder of $1 movie theaters.  Super 8- INCREDIBLE!  Anyway, now that I'm mostly settled in I can start to focus on the real reason I moved across the country. 

Every person that comes to Bethel comes with a level of expectation.  Bethel truly is an amazing place where miracles, healings, and deliverances are common.  Just today at the sunday night service a man shared his testimony about how he came to Bethel in October of last year with a case of serious dislexia.  Well, he's dislexia free now.  Good news for him being that he's a pastor.  Imagine trying to read a passage of scripture to your congregation with dislexia.  "Jesus wept," and "Wept Jesus," are very different.  Anyway he's free of that burden now which is awesome. 

It's stories like this that feed the expectations of everyone who visits there.  This especially goes for the students of their ministry school.  I feel like we have such high expectations of what we're going to experience while at Bethel simply due to the incredible testimonies that come out of here.  We expect radical encounters with God; we expect to see visions; we expect to have incredible prophetic words spoken over us.  And rightfully so.  Our high expectations don't intimidate God.  He is more than willing and more than able to encounter his children in radical ways. 

What I found though, for myself at least was that my expectations were turning into expectation driven anxiety.  Knowing that encounters are commonplace here, I began thinking... "Ok, when is that going to happen to me?  What kind of encounter am I going to have.  Will it be a dream?  Vision?  Will I be taken up to heaven and experience the throne room of God?  When will it happen?  Probably when I'm not expecting it.  But I can't help thinking about it every time I pray or worship." 

Those are just some of the things that I've pondered since I got here, and it started bugging me.  It was getting pretty annoying actually.  God spoke to me though and what He said really put my mind at ease.  So I figured I'd blog about it because, as of 3 days ago I am obsessed with blogging. 

He said, "Stop trying to write your story.  Let me write it for you." 

Those of you who know me, know that I love to write so you can understand how relevant that word was to me.  By trying to create the conditions of my encounter beforehand I was actually robbing God of his right to write the story of my life.  The right I gave Him when I said, "Lord come dwell in my heart."  God has a way of speaking to you in a way that fits you.  A way that you can relate to.  Moses probably being the exception because I'm sure he had little to no experience with burning bushes.  Although it wasn't a radically new or deep word, the way He worded it really drove the point home.  It's not up to me to ponder the whats and hows and whens of my life.  I may love to write, but my life story is one story that I can't write.  God, my loving Father who knew me before creation already has all my steps planned out.  He's already written my story, and He's got everything under control.  So to everyone who desperately longs to encounter God in an incredible tangible way, I would say just be faithful.  Just do what you have to do.  Pray, read His word, spend time in the secret place, and don't dwell on having the encounter before you have it.  You'll just drive yourself crazy like I have done. 

Instead, just understand that 1) It's ok to want to have an encounter with God, whether it be a vision or getting caught up into Heaven and experiencing the tangible love of God.  It's ok for children to want to encounter the love of their parents.  It's natural in fact.  This blog was just about crossing that line of expectations into expectation driven anxiety.  And 2) God desperately wants you to encounter Him in a tangible way.  He promises that He will satisfy all those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.  Righeousness is a person.  His name is Jesus.  Anyone who hungers to encounter the person of Jesus will be satisfied.  Don't sweat it.