The Enemy of Experience.

How expectations rob our ability to experience God each day.

Hey Friends!

Before you jump into this week’s article, I just wanted to make sure that you were aware that The Lighthouse is a podcast too. Each week I record and post this same article, because I know some people prefer to listen rather than read. If that’s you, subscribe to The Lighthouse Podcast wherever you listen. For sake of ease, you can find links to subscribe on Spotify and Apple Podcasts below. I hope it’s helpful!

- Ryan

Years ago, I went through an assessment process for church planting. Over the course of a couple of days, my relationship with God, my marriage, my theology, and my fitness for leadership were all poked and prodded. It was an uncomfortable but necessary test. I was a 27-year-old with lots of energy but limited experience.

As part of the process, we had dinner with those who would be overseeing our assessments. These men and women had already planted churches. As a result, they had firsthand knowledge of what lay ahead for us. As we ate, I asked questions to glean all the insight I could in the time we had. I remember asking one of the guys next to me what general advice he would offer a new planter. I’ll never forget his answer. He said:

“Prepare for it to be different than you expect.”

I remember that because planting our first church was in fact filled with the unexpected.

• I never expected to lose our first rental space to a lobby fire.

• I never expected someone to offer us a free building.

• I never expected to then have that very building stolen out from under us.

• I never expected abuse from the same network that assessed us.

• I never expected to transition the leadership of that church and start another.

The truth is, that experience was different than I expected on almost every front.

One thing I’d bet we can agree on is that life has a way of not meeting our expectations. This has to be one reason why James, the half-brother of Jesus, wrote these words:

“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit.’ Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring—what your life will be! For you are like vapor that appears for a little while, then vanishes” (James 4:13-14).

Expecting something to happen, doesn’t guarantee it actually will. More often than not, our expectations and our actual experiences are different.

This can be a painful experience. Our expectations can lead to disappointment and frustration when reality doesn’t match what we’ve anticipated. Expectations can also create pressure and stress, as we try to force them into fruition. Additionally, expectations can limit our ability to enjoy the present moment and adapt to unexpected changes.

The problem of expectations has everything to do with our relationship with God. I would argue that, expectations are the enemy of experiencing God each day.

Every week, I meet with people who tell me about their spiritual journey. Often I hear that despite their best attempts, they don’t feel that they experience God in their daily lives. As we explore this together, we often find the same piece of information. When they spend time with God, they bring a specific set of expectations. The truth is, we all do. We expect to see Him, hear Him, and feel Him in particular and specific ways. The problem is, when those expectations are unmet, it feels like He isn't there. It feels like He must not care about us. It feels like we’re in some dark night of the soul.

But what if we’re missing how God is actually meeting us because we’re so fixated on how we expect Him to? Our expectations surrounding how God should meet with us rob our ability to enjoy the experience of how He actually is. Expectations are the enemy of experience.

To be clear, it’s important to come to God expectantly. Psalm 5:3 says, “In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly.” But there is a difference between saddling God with our rigid expectations and waiting on Him expectantly. Expectations are an attempt to control. But expectancy is an act of hope-filled faith. It trusts that God will meet with us but makes no attempt to control how. This is the surrender of expectancy that opens us up to the movement of God within our lives.

Let’s get more practical. How can we move toward expectancy? To start, we need to expand our understanding of the many ways in which God is prone to meet with us when we sit with Him. Often we’re prone to box in our experience of God. We have a narrow understanding of how God meets with us. So let me highlight five common ways God longs for us to experience Him:

An Encouraging, Comforting, or Convicting Word.

I have rarely opened the Scriptures and not experienced one of these three things. Recently, God encouraged me through Psalm 121:3. He reminded me that He was my Protector and would not allow my foot to slip. He comforted me through Psalm 120:1. The Psalmist wrote, “In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me." Last week, He convicted me while teaching James 4. James says, “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6).

Now here’s the key. When something in Scripture catches my attention, I choose to receive it as the direction of God’s Spirit. When I’m encouraged, I receive that encouragement as from God. When I’m comforted, I receive that comfort as coming from God. When I’m convicted, I receive that conviction as coming from God. It isn’t just my brain choosing to rest on certain things. The Spirit of God is meeting me in and through His word. So notice how God encourages, comforts, or convicts you through the Scriptures.

A Felt Sense of Peace.

I wish that every time I sat with God, I heard Him out loud. I wish I could see Him. I wish I could feel His embrace. Instead, I’m trying to learn to be content with the felt sense of peace I often experience sitting in His presence. Over and over I bring anxiety and stress into my time with Him and feel it slowly fall away as I offer it to Him. To be clear, the problems don’t go away. The uncomfortable emotions don’t subside forever. But that sense of peace is the byproduct of His own presence with me. So, I don’t want to miss what is offered by demanding what isn’t.

In the same way, you're invited each day to bring Him whatever is inside you. Tell Him about it. Invite Him to invade it with His peace. Choose to embrace that experience of peace as an expression of His presence with you.

An Insight.

Often, God invites us to experience a fresh insight as we sit with Him. We again experience this as we meditate on Scripture. Sometimes we notice something for the first time in a passage. We may have read it hundreds of times before, but this time it's different. That isn’t coincidence, and it isn’t happenstance. That is the Holy Spirit doing the illuminating work that He promises to do. Each time you experience this miracle, you’ve experienced God! And the compounding effect of this over a lifetime is transformative. So embrace every insight as an experience of God’s own presence.

A Moment of Clarity.

In James 1:5, we're promised that God gives wisdom “generously and ungrudgingly” when we ask for it in faith. I have brought some area of confusion to God more times than I can count. And I can’t think of a time in which He has not been faithful to provide me with His clarifying wisdom. That’s not to say that I walk away without lingering anxiety and even some degree of uncertainty. But I have also seen His faithfulness to at least clarify my next step. Each time this happens, I choose to believe I have experienced God holding true to His promise.

So try it. Open up a journal and pour out all your confusion, questions, and uncertainty. Talk to Him about the options and paths open in front of you. Process the feelings that come with all you’re facing. Ask Him to help you experience the wisdom for what to do next.

A Humble Spirit of Gratitude.

As I sit here writing, I just finished meeting with my own spiritual director. We spent our session today reflecting on and celebrating all God has done in my life over the past few months. As we talked and prayed, I was struck with a quiet and reverent spirit of gratitude. It wasn’t overwhelmed with emotion. I didn’t hear any life-altering prophetic word. I simply saw clear evidence of God at work in me. And I was grateful.

This is why some daily gratitude practice is so impactful. The problem is never that God isn’t present and at work in our lives. The problem is, we often fail to recognize it. One of the most powerful ways we can experience God's presence each day is to reflect on every expression of His goodness.

As we wrap up, my goal isn’t to saddle you with even more rigid expectations meant to box in your experience of God. My point is that God longs to meet with us in a variety of ways. So let’s not rob our experience of His presence by holding to rigid expectations. Instead, let’s sit with Him expectantly. Let’s remain open to any way, large or small, that He longs for us to experience Him today.