God-Sized Expectations of God, Human-Sized Expectations of Humans
What are you expecting from this article? To prepare you for the content, I encourage you to frame your reading with human-sized expectations of this human author’s writing.
The longer I spend in this beautiful and messy community we call the church, the more I see the power of expectations. Much of what I’ve seen go wrong (and that I’ve done wrong) in the church is rooted in unwise or confused expectations. Foolish, confused expectations create much of the conflict, friction, frustration, hurt, disagreement, and disappointment that surfaces in the body of Christ.
The Problem
This expectation problem is simple, but you must be alert enough to detect the complexities in your heart that contribute to this simple problem. The problem is confusing God and humans. Church is the supernatural meeting place of God and humans—where the living God and a bunch of limited humans gather together. Somewhere, somehow in this constant shoulder rubbing of God and people, your expectations got mixed up. You started expecting God-things from humans, and you started expecting human-things from God.
Two lines of expectations shoot out of your heart—one line stretches out to God, the other line stretches out to other humans. You mixed up your lines and attached them to the wrong object. The expectation line that you are supposed to attach to God, you attached to some middle-aged guy or gal in jeans with good intentions and lots of temptations who didn’t quite get eight hours of sleep last night. In other words, you began expecting more from humans than humans can deliver, and, with that other line crossed, you began expecting small things from our big God.
The Solution
I’ll keep my words sparse. The solution is to un-mix your two lines of expectation and connect them to their proper object. This is the solution: Have God-sized expectations of God, and human-sized expectations of humans.
“Great things happen when we expect more from God, and when we expect human-sized outcomes from talented and maturing (but imperfect and moody) humans.”
If you can absorb this principle, then the Bible will make more sense to you, your church (and all other relationships) will make more sense to you, and you will make more sense to you. You’ll discover fresh freedom, and increasingly become a leader whose presence, prayers, dreams, decisions, and sobered disappointments bring new Life and growth to your church and city. You’ll find yourself enjoying God more, enjoying humans more, enjoying yourself more. Great things happen when we expect more from God, and when we expect human-sized outcomes from talented and maturing (but imperfect and moody) humans. Watch me speak a bit more about this in this sermon about the human-ness of the church: Walk.
The Next Step
What’s your next step here? It seems wise to start by apologizing to God and to some humans for the ways in which you’ve gotten your expectation lines mixed up. Then, prayer seems in order. Big prayer. Go to God with your God-sized expectations of him. Soak yourself in Ephesians 3:20 until you believe it with all your heart. Never stop doing this. While you never stop doing this, also go to humans. Rub shoulders with them. Enjoy them. Dream and pray together with those humans, and together have God-sized expectations of God and human-sized expectations of one another. And repeat these steps, live this, for the rest of your life. Set God-sized expectations for God and human-sized expectations for humans, and never confuse the two.
PS.
A word to Lead Pastors:
Perhaps the human in the church for which this article is most important is the Lead Pastor. Lead Pastor (that’s me), you are guilty of crossing these lines—much of your angst is rooted in your faulty expectations. You expect from your church, from humans, what only God can give. You’ll enjoy your calling much more when you remember that your job is to care for humans (from which you may expect a slow, beautiful mess of increasing sanctification), while expecting and asking God-sized things from God. This would suggest your main business ought to be prayer.
A word to church members:
And, everybody else in the church (that’s you), you are guilty of crossing these lines—much of your angst is rooted in your inflated expectations of the merely 17% sanctified human God put in the pew next to you or put in place to run point in caring for your church. You’ll enjoy that human church member or Lead Pastor, and your church, much more when you give that burdened leader permission to be human, while expecting God to continue to do what he’s always done: God-sized things in and through human-sized people.
This article originally appeared in Justin Buzzard’s blog.