TQJ: Part 1: What to do when you expected something different.

Heart

Who here has had life go unexpectedly?

Who here, if we are being honest, is having life go unexpectedly right now?

It happens to all of us, and at some point you are going to look at God and C’mon, what is the deal here?

And if by some chance you are the anomaly and everything in your life has gone exactly to plan, then there is someone in your life right now who needs to hear this message.

So, for everyone following along in a Bible which you all should, either open it or turn it on to Mark 1

Title

The title of this message is the What to do when you expected something different.

WIFFM

You are going to understand the Character of our Father in the midst of the unexpected

Instruction

Now as we are talking about expectations we have to understand that expectations can be built by almost anything (experiences, tv, childhood, etc) and often are built without us knowing it or thinking too much about it.

Expectations are our imagination on how we think something is going to happen.

These are not always accurate. Amen!?

Let me give you an example:

When I was a young Christian, I thought and had the expectation,... that as a Christian, …you know, loved by God...things would just always swing my way.

It might be at the 11th hour, but ultimately things would always just swing my way, you know ...if I had enough faith. RIght.

Now I have story that I will share a little later on but I think you can already tell that I no longer believe that... in that way anymore.

Or said another way, my imagination on how my expectations work is different.

Who hear has ever had expectations that were left unmet?

Great you are going to find yourself right at home with the First Century Jews.

So we have to remember that the New Testament and the whole Bible was written

by real people

to real people

in a real time

dealing with real issues.

So some quick history to set the stage, history by the way, is usually the story underneath the story that helps the whole story make sense.

The year is 516 BC and the Jews have returned from Exile in Babylon, this period of time is called the Second Temple Period, why because of the Second Temple, first one was destroyed by the Babylonians and now they have gone home and built a new one.

Now during this time, the books of the Old Testament are written and are being compiled into the final shape that we have them now.

In them there are many many promises of the Day of the Lord, in the books of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Joel, Zephaniah, Zechariah, Daniel and you have this Messiah figure who is going to be the one to establish God’s Kingdom on Earth.

This was especially important because during this time, Israel could not stop getting conquered by foreign nations:

First it was Persia, Then Greece (under Alexander the Great), then Egypt, then Syria who had a guy named Antiochus Epiphanes, and He erected an idol statue to Zeus in the Most Holy Place and slaughtered Pigs on it and defiled the whole temple…basically the worst thing you could do to a Jew,

so then something cool happened a guy named Judas Maccabaeus (a jew) fought back and actually beat Antiochus and restored the temple. Dude was a hero, he was the reason, so many males were named Judas in Jesus’ day, He is the reason the Jews celebrate Hanukah today. That guy. To be fair, they thought he was going to be the messiah, like that the kingdom was about to come…but it didn’t. He died and the Jews got conquered by Rome.

Now remember how we were talking about expectations? So if for the last 500 years all you have known is how to be conquered apart from a small window of time, you are going to build an expectation around that. Your expectation if someone says king, kingdom, messiah, you are going to think of your last hero, Judas Maccabaeus a revolutionary.

In the book of Daniel there were prophesies of when this Messiah figure was meant to come, and many came claiming to be “the messiah” came, most of the revolutionaries, and all of them killed, but in the popular imagination…one of these guys is going to succeed…that guy will be the real messiah.

This is the situation we find at the time of Jesus. Does this make sense? Remember real people at a real time with real expectations that are not unreasonable.

Like many of our expectations they are usually not fully unreasonable.

So here comes Jesus on the scene as we see in Mark 1.14 - 15

Mark 1:14–15 NIV

14 After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. 15 “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”

What would people of that day noticed that wasn’t there?

I would think a sword, an army and frankly a better recruitment speech, repent and believe doesn’t really scream take up arms and lets do this, but people are willing to deal with this because He is doing other things like healing people, driving out demons and upsetting all the other teachers and leaders.

This expectation actually stayed around the whole time through Jesus’ ministry, we know this because in the book of Acts 1.6 it says this. Now Jesus has come back from the dead at this point and people are getting a little anxious.

Acts 1:6 NIV

6 Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

I think it is really at this time, that the disciples had to adopt a new imagination around what it meant about the kingdom coming…i mean Jesus just left, like is no longer literally here anymore…yep I don’t think we are defeating Rome today.

See I think this is good time to stop and reflect.

The people of the day, the Christians themselves had some very clear expectations about God and it kind of seems like He didn’t deliver. I mean He had clearly done so much…but they still asked…so umm we doing this now?

How true is this in our own lives?

How often has God done some seriously amazing things in our lives, but at the time we were so fixated on our expectation that we either missed it or almost missed it?

See in this instance what did Jesus actually do?

The people were focused on Rome, defeating Rome and having an earthly kingdom.

Our Father was focused on defeating Satan, Sin and Death and establishing a kingdom that unifies all people under a common banner and Name, that being the name of the King Jesus.

See let’s just say for example, Jesus (the man) had led an army and defeated Rome by the sword and thats all He did, He just did what the people expected…

thats great…

One notable problem...what is your plan for dealing with death…the common enemy of us all. Or dealing with Satan and Sin, the powers behind the evil that we see in the world…if Jesus had only done what we expected, Rome might have fallen earlier but as a world we would be in a way worse place both personally and corporately.

A full disclaimer, Jesus had a plan for Rome too, He used the most violent and oppressive nation that has ever existed to be the launch pad for a kingdom that now has over 2.6 billion people in it the world over, which frankly is way better than just taking them over by the sword.

See our Father always has something more amazing planned for us and the whole world, way better than we can imagine on our best days.

When we are experiencing that feeling that comes from unmet expectations and we are looking at God saying, Hey whats the deal…we have to remember that our Father is not withholding any good thing from us, in fact, He has our absolute best in mind ALWAYS.

That is what it means when it says that God is Love, He is never holding back from us…now, full honesty, it is not always sunshine and rainbows, and it is not because God doesn’t love us or we didn’t have enough faith.

God knows that our best often involves walking through hard times or even not giving us what we want or even better not meeting our expectations.

Story

Remember that story that I said I would share, well now is the time. Remember how I said that I always thought that things would always swing my way.

I played a lot of Gridiron and I was decently good at it, I was a record setting starter at a Division 1 high school, problem, I leveraged my anger and hate to play, I became Christian and I no longer had that well to tap into and I no longer wanted to hurt people as a motivation to play, so I quit. In America, that made me a outcast immediately, lost all my friends, people would egg and vandalise my car on the daily, teachers wouldn’t speak to me…however I had church friends and that swung my way, I found a deeper relationship with God

As I became more Christian my relationship with my family fell apart and fully dissolved when I quit Gridiron, I was effectively disowned and my dad just left me, really terrible, but I started living with my Youth Pastor where we could just Bible nerd out together and I could be at every single church event to my hearts content…swung my way

Get enrolled into Bible College going to become a Pastor, God provided a way for me to take my University Exams late, He provided money for deposits for rooms, He gave me favour with the admission board, came time for final payments and boom God shut the door. No place to live, working construction lifting Granite into hotel rooms in the California Summer. Granite, by the way, is the worst combination of all things awful, it is heavy, awkwardly shaped, sharp and extremely fragile, and when you are carrying it into Hotels during construction…there are no elevators, it is just super dicey scaffolding and planks many stories up…that was not my definition of swinging my way. I was hurt, angry, depressed and everything in between.

Here is what I didn’t know, God was using that time to make me strong, to help me stand on my own two feet with Him alone, what I didn’t know, is that because I was at church all the time, I hadn’t actually developed any personal discipleship habits, I didn’t know what I am sharing with you all now. That God often uses those times and that we should trust in the Character of our loving Father.

See at the time, I thought and felt like I was not even a Christian, I thought God didn’t love me, because my experience thus far was,... things swung my way meant God loved me.

That became my expectation.

See with no personal discipleship skills like studying scripture to know truth or praying (specifically spiritual warfare). I didn’t have a defense.

Now this was extremely important because, not too long later I would be in the Navy serving as one of my duties as a Chaplain…in an extremely secular and negative environment…by that time I had learned my lesson and God used me to be a light in a dark place to a lot of people.

See on the Submarine where I stood watch, it was kind of a remote place, but people would come down and spend hours talking to me, why? Because I was the one person on board who could speak life. People would often leave in tears and there would be a que for a Decker Counselling Session.

Why was that, because God didn’t meet my expectations, He exceeded them in every possible way that I could never imagine.

I mean not to point out the obvious, but when I was 15 I didn’t think God would send me to Australia to be sharing all this with you today as your Family Leader…but I am so thankful that He didn’t meet my expectations..just like I know those disciples are so glad that Jesus didn’t meet their expectations.

See our Father, who loves us, always has something better planned, what we can not do is let our expectations of what WE think God is supposed to do, blind us from what He is really doing, because what He is really doing is meant for your good!

Title

See what we are meant to do in the midst of the unexpected is to seek God, ask Him to re-orient our thinking and expectations. Make us aware of what He is doing.

WIFFM

As we can see, the Character of our Father is ALWAYS loving, no matter the circumstance or the expectations we have and we have seen that sometimes what we think is God’s love may grow and sharpen.

Action

So for those of us here, that I mentioned before, those whose lives aren’t going as they expected and potentially you are feeling negatively about that. Here is what I want you to do:

First Pray: Ask God for clarity before jumping to conclusions. I listened to lies first before trusting in our Fathers Character and that did not work well for me.

Second Engage with others: We as a community are not individuals doing life alone. We are part of a Kingdom called by the one Name in Christ, we are brothers and Sisters here to serve and love one another. Engage with others so that no one has to feel like they are on an island when life isn’t swinging their way.

Thirdly Get into Scripture: The more you know your Father, the more you have available to put your hope and trust into.

When you see God for the fortress that He is, you won’t fear any attack,

When you see Him as the Father who runs to the prodigal Son and hugs Him so tight, you will never wonder if you are loved.

When you see Jesus on the Cross, you will know that God is never holding any good thing back from you.

When you see the empty tomb, you will know that no earthly situation, regardless of how dark it looks, will ever get the last word and say in your life.

Close

So as we close today, there may be some in this room who might say that life isn’t swinging their way, maybe life hasn’t been swinging your way for a while. Maybe you have never made a personal commitment to following Jesus. You might be thinking I need help, I cant seem to navigate this life, I am just going from one bad thing to another and I need that cycle to end. Well now is your chance.

Altar Call