The Freedom of Disappointment

On August 18, 2014December 10, 2016 By happyreignIn Heather, Reflections & Musings

In case you are in an emotional experience of being hard on yourself or not seeing a way out of your own lack of excellent performance in your current circumstances, this blog is for you. Unfortunately perfectionism and performance based identity pervade the church. It’s unfortunateness is that it keeps individuals from experiencing heaven in just their living breathing daily life. It’s common enough, or a safe enough problem to have because it’s not against the law, it can get you ahead in approval seeking ambition or the inner disappointment you carry inside of yourself doesn’t interrupt daily living too much.

In Christ we are no longer under the law; he fulfilled the spirit of the law, and therefore it’s requirements completely. The law works itself out in some sneaky ways. Responsibility and expectations are some common forms of control in relationships, even in the relationship we hold with ourselves. You view yourself as the way you should be, or how you should act, or what you should be getting done. Even when achieving small goals or completing tasks or being helpful, we can still carry the feeling of failure if any of those things were less than, later than, or not quite up to our own expectations. Cue disappointment.

This is a wonderful way to miss the joy of existence. Without knowing it, we may embark on a journey, a project, or a relationship with preconceived expectations in our mind of how that experience or interaction should or would play out. Things may even start off smashing and go according to plan at first. It shouldn’t surprise us anymore but then bumps come in the road, at least bumps according to our expectations. And then what do we do?

How do you crawl out of a pit of the feeling of other people’s disappointment with you? How do you escape from the feeling of your own disappointment with yourself? Couldn’t I have handled situations differently? Couldn’t I have made different choices and avoided the circumstances I see around me? Can’t I manipulate and control things now and get things back to the way I had wanted them, the way I always saw them? Can’t I fix things and get them unbroken? Then I wouldn’t have to feel this way. Then I wouldn’t have to be this way.

Expectations over our own lives, and expectations other carry over us–whether intentionally or not–only carry with them the power to accuse. When expectations are the foundations of relationship they are the fuel for guilt, shame, and condemnation. Cue performance and perfectionism. If you continue to hold onto those images of unmet expectation over your own life as a source of fuel for your own judgment of your value now, you will never experience the heaven that was purchased for you by Christ, that is meant to be a free gift for your fullness of being alive right now.

Even in subtle forms or not so subtle forms we tell ourselves that those expectations came from God; they are what God originally designed or gave us vision for in the past, or these expectations come by what I obviously should be doing by looking around at others (not recommended). All of these leave a nice big hole in our heart not filled by Christ, but by our own accusations of performance-based failure.

God died to deliver you from the prison and cage of living a life of obligation, requirements, musts, duties, and have to’s. His relationship with you has never been based on your performance. Sometimes the reminder feels like a slap in the face but its the glorious good news: you cannot earn your right standing with God. Your own assessment of yourself through your own eyes or the eyes of others will never measure up to any humanistic ruler of behaviors and choices–religious or unreligious–whatever that means.

You are not a disappointment to God. Who you are, right now, is not a disappointment. God knows this but do you? In this cycle of performance we sit upon our own assessments of our lives compared to perceived expectations and continually come out lacking. If god has given us a directive and we didn’t listen or failed, then we can participate in relationship and tell him that and experience forgiveness through Christ. We must remove ourselves from our high seats of self-judgment by LETTING GO (let it gooo, let it gooo) of the expectations we have created, that God is not holding on to, because until we do, we will continue to believe the familiar lie that our value or our worth is according to our own assessments. While often ours is not, his perspective is the perfection of Christ.

Anything less and we wake up in the morning to feelings of disappointment, we experience awesome things all-the-while sitting next our companion of disappointment, and then tomorrow–again, we will not have hope because now our expectation (of God or of ourselves) is to be a disappointment (to others or to ourselves). To the degree that you resort to assessing your value or worth based on your own expectations of performance is the degree to which you haven’t experienced Christ in your identity. In order for love to cast out fear, even in your relationship with yourself in your own mind, it must not be based on your performance.

“God grant me the SERENITY to accept the things that I cannot change”…or don’t need to be and the wisdom to enjoy life.

Or what do we do when we’re really disappointed with God and holding it over him in our relationship with him? Is your relationship with him, your intimacy with him, based your own ideas of who he should be or should have been…to you? He’s okay with disappointing you because its not his obligation to meet your expectations of himself. He knows who he is. He is way better than any of us have given him credit for. It’s the unmet expectation over him you’re being invited to let go of so that you can experience once again the exchange of love with him without conditions on either one of you. This requires trust. Trust can be scary, but is a fruit of love. God disappointed everyone by dying on a cross at the age of 33 rather than delivering his people from the tyranny of Rome. He’s okay with being misunderstood and accused of failure. He’s got a different perspective and its far better than ours I assure you.

Your value, and God’s affections for you, are undiminashable. I want to encourage you today. In your rest, God can bring about all he has gloriously planned for you to experience in this life. Maybe even lay down the process of making expectations over yourself and discover the wonder and beauty of your life as he reveals its glory to you.

His Rest Was Never At Risk

On June 7, 2014June 7, 2014 By happyreignIn Joel1 Comment

His rest celebrates perfection. His work is complete; the fall of humanity did not flaw its perfection. (Heb. 4:3 the Mirror Translation)

Each day I am more convinced in the totality and perfection of not only what Christ did but in WHO he is. He has always been the Lamb slain before the foundations of the world. The solution was there before the problem, our forgiveness came way before our repentance. There is this Capon quote that I absolutely love. It reads: Creation is just as miraculous now as it was at the beginning, because redemption is present at every moment and every place throughout every part of creation. The creation and redemption are one act, not two. In the moment Adam and Eve eat of the fruit of the tree, they are redeemed. Not by that act but by him who made them. And therefore everything that happens after that is a proclamation of the gospel. Francois du Toit says: God saw more than his perfect image in Adam, he also saw the Lamb and his perfect work of redemption! I mean wow!!!

Growing up in the Church I always heard what God was about to do or was going to do but few rarely boasted in what He had done already. Religion always seems to put the good things of God in a far distant future. It thrives on distance and delay. Somehow Religion has made boasting through a language of lack as being “spiritual.” I am really excited about seeing how many have been waking up to the blissful reality of what Christ accomplished! Many when hearing the Good News feel life jumping inside of them. The truth is that the Good News is not a Message of something that they haven’t heard but it’s something that Religion tried to cover up. True Faith recognizes what has ALREADY taken place! In the beauty of this growing revelation we are not only finding who Christ is but we are also finding who we have always been… accepted and chosen in the Beloved before time!

Obscurity, Identity, Value and Thankfulness

On June 6, 2014June 6, 2014 By happyreignIn Joel2 Comments

Often there is a sense of wasted time or the looming fear of obscurity. We find ourselves with all these desires and dreams that God Himself has placed in us and we feel a million miles away from them. Was thinking of Jesus and him being a simple carpenter before his Ministry was made public. Here is the Saviour of the world and he is working on wood. Here is the creator of all covered in saw dust and splinters in his hands. I wonder if it was a setup from the beginning? The Christ who would be put to death on the Cross working with wood. The Divine has such a good sense of humor. So Jesus spent his years as a carpenter and the funny thing he wasn’t even known for being the best carpenter. When he came on the scene healing and teaching the people weren’t like,”Jesus the best carpenter of the land healed that cripple.” Do you think that Jesus ever thought those years as being wasted? Do you think that just being a son to Mary and Joseph was just filler? Or do you think he valued everything that Joseph taught him and that he cherished every meal that was prepared for him by Mary? That every day he rose and thought what will I learn today, who can I make smile today, who can I be a friend to? I absolutely love that in the moment when Jesus was baptized the Heavens opened up and God the Father declared,”This is my Son in whom I am well pleased.” If you think about it from the Ministry perspective Jesus hadn’t done anything yet. He hadn’t healed anyone or performed any miracles and here we see God declaring His affection, acceptance and that He is pleased with His Son not because of what he had done but because of who he was. Jesus’ identity didn’t depend on performance but it rested on whose He was.

Your identity is not wrapped up in your calling, or what you do. It is wrapped up in and solely relies on who your Daddy is! You are His! Whether you feel like it or not! Your value does not come from what you do. My wife loves to paint and she is amazing at it but for me to say she is just a painter would be to negate all these other amazing qualities and gifts that she has. Even farther still she is much more than her gifts! You are much more than what you can do or can’t do. You have value. I believe that each one of us is a unique expression of God on the earth, that it is not only we experiencing Christ on the earth but also that Christ is experiencing the earth again through us! I remember one day I was thinking of the Mystics of Old and God whispered in my ear,” If people met them today they would be marveled not by how supernatural they were but by how normal they were.” There is a lot of glory in everyday life but we fail to see it. There is something so powerful in sharing a smile or a hug but we have been so captivated by the smoke and mirrors that we have failed to see the glory in the mundane. Let us be marveled with love, friendships and family. Let us be caught up in awe with thankfulness because we got out of bed in the morning. I am supremely thankful for my wife who is my biggest blessing and everything else is sprinkles on the cake. Love you guys!

-Joel

Relationship

On June 4, 2014June 4, 2014 By happyreignIn Heather

Ya know how sometimes you listen to wisdom and it benefits you, and then there are other times when you don’t and you end up going down a mutli-year journey of not listening to wisdom only to find out that that truth is still true but now its burned into your heart through experience, and hopefully you won’t be too dense to forget it too quickly anytime soon? This is a story of one of those.

I think sometimes the most vulnerable times in my mind are sometimes when I spend time with the Lord. Looking back I think over the course of some years I grew calloused in my personal interaction with the holy spirit in hopes to avoid some pit of confusion or condemnation, both of course concerning religious thoughts even, for example, theological uncertainty amidst opposing schools of thought in my mind such as, personal doubt based on insecurities in my performance before God, or contrarily my arrogance in entirely ignoring my spiritual performance before God believing only on that of his son not opening up myself for dialogue about it to protect myself from the afore mentioned accusations, along with the lack of spiritual aperture to be able to keep it all afoot in my mind, casting blame towards myself in that if I was really spiritual and tight with God I wouldn’t be having any of these intellectual roundabouts.

Unfortunately the affect of this disclarity and self-accusation was an almost removed protection in my prayer times with the Lord. I came to take great comfort in the work of Christ and the declaration of his goodness over all of humanity because that gave peace to my soul and confidence before God. I know this might sound peculiar and odd to some but it was almost as if I was positioning myself in comfort with a theological viewpoint rather than in God himself.

I took safety in my relating to someone else’s conceptual soundness of God’s nature and that worked for me for a time. But as time passed I could feel unrest in the heart of me and I would think it’s because I’ve forgotten the truth: the truth about who God is, the truth about who I am, and I would once again almost methodically remind myself of these truths to bring comfort. While this is good, for me, it was still lacking. It was as if I had lost relationship with God and positioned myself hiding behind the concept of his goodness for protection, which worked…but didn’t. I was still missing out on the reason I was created. Let me continue.

As time passed I grew in the freedom of these truths I was learning, both in identity and experience but my one on one relational interaction with the Lord had somehow faded. I was no longer surviving on a tough mission field wrestling against principalities–because he called me to rest from that–and afterwards I guess there was recovering time to be had in my relationship with the Lord after what I had made our interaction out to be and the pendulum swung the opposite way. If God wasn’t breaking strongholds and releasing strong prophetic acts in the earth and ministering powerful words through me to people and I needed a break from all that, what was left of he and I? On the other side of that, if I’m at complete rest and nothing depends on me because he’s all sovereign and powerful and in control and I can completely rest in him in retirement what purpose remains left in the exchange? To what purposes have I reduced our intimacy to?

And so with this ominous void of recreational communication in our relationship, the doubt about ‘us’ would come around all the while I knew with certainty my unshakeable position that Christ had obtained for me. It was almost as if I always knew we were legally married but had lost intimacy of our enjoyment of one another as people and the shared experience of this life together, except as silent shipmates or something. Don’t get me wrong, the gratefulness was always there, the wisdom was sometimes there, the comfort was there, but face time was still missing. As I continue to live this life, more and more I’m discovering God relentless and unconditional goodness despite my end of participation in this relationship.

And so in this season in my relationship with him, his abounding goodness continued in full force. It continued to confirm to my mind who he was, but it was almost as if there was a lack of connection of the heart. And in this, life continues. Can anybody relate to this? I know I’ve heard at least one person say to me, ‘I remember what it felt like when I was experiencing the Lord more back then…what happened?’

Another contributing factor to this felt internal distance was pride on my part, even though I could see it was there. Where the directions you keep looking lie to you and make you feel like you well off with God. I already knew I knew nothing, I already comprehend my comparative nothingness in light of everything that it generous and extravagant being God himself. I at least I thought I was well off enough in that line of thought.

Turns out God doesn’t care if I know right answers, even though he taught us them. God doesn’t care if we think we know right answers when we obviously haven’t even barely begun to know anything really. Although God continually relates to me as my teacher, and the disciples never graduated from being disciples, he doesn’t care that about my accumulated experiences with him. He doesn’t care if I’m still being faithful and loving people well and whether I’m using the giftings he’s trained me to use. All of this means nothing to him.

He continues to be good, he continues to be faithful, he continues to show up on my behalf, but there’s so much more that what I’ve made it. There so much less that matters when it comes to his heart than we seemingly radical believing empowered christains have made it out to be.

Relationships are just humility and dependency. Independence–which is a reactionary weakness of mine that finds it way into my relationship with God is a false form of protection and comfort. Thankfully he’s ballsy enough in our relationship to shake that for me. Because our experience has taught us such, so often we try so hard for so long to do things on our own; even when it comes to our relationship with God, our interaction with him, and our expectations of ourselves as well as of him. Sometimes this creates some aspects of a relationship with God that has become sterile, formal, ritualistic, or stale, even in the midst of powerful corporate experiences.

Interacting with God is not about work. Let me say that one more time. Interacting with God is not about work. Relationship is just being yourself with someone. Giving them enough credit to be honest with them without any pretense or predisposed concept of who they really are without giving them a chance to show you or tell you who they are. God is really good at interacting with us as adults even when we’re acting like children.

Humility involves recognition of need. I think its one thing in your mind when you know that you could absolutely do nothing without God and then its another thing when humility is walked out in the way in which you dialogue with the Lord himself. Spending time with him, being vulnerable, listening, communicating need, asking questions, being teachable, discussing the painful stuff and actually listening rather than reacting out of emotion–all these things flow naturally out of humility before God.

After my brief years of doing life with God I think I’ve come to appreciate a hearty dose of perseverance and steadfastness and resolve in protecting connectivity with the Lord regardless of anything; not letting discouragement or accusation or confusion or distraction keep me from coming and being with him. He has always been and will always be for me. Always.

Let’s move fears out of the equation. Your relationship with God is not looming and threatening to end resulting in eternal destruction. He’s not going to reject you. He is good and will continue to be good. There’s no whirlwind of justifications, excuses, memories or enemies. But the wonderful part I’ve discovered about our existence in this journey of mine is that I was created to experience love.

I was not created to know of it, I was not created to experience it at one time, I was not create for a one time event of salvation, I am created with a need to experience the ongoing relationship with a living God that expresses love for me and towards me in an active and ever present way and reality. Nothing less will do in this life. It’s okay to need to be loved. He wants to spend time with me. He wants it. I still have things to be taught, I still have things to learn. But even the purpose of learning is not about obtaining the answer, which is good, its about the experience of exchange. For in the giving, is the receiving of love.

The most vital thing you can give someone your in relationship with is your attention. Withholding it simply not doing relationship. Relationships require time and space for them to happen.

I get to participate in union. I get to choose it. At one point God referred to Psalm 81:9 with me, ” You must never have a foreign God; you must not bow down before a false God.” I asked him to clarify his point to me at the time and he said that’s when you ‘run to someone or somewhere else for comfort other than me.’ He’s so good at being our everything, he wants us to experience nothing disappointingly less than himself.

And so, his mercy’s are new every morning. This was one of my journey’s that took too long to be reminded of but have found solace in his relentless pursuit of reminding me of what he and I are all about. He’s loves loving me and it’s not some concept in order to form a workable theology around. He enjoys relationship with me and his best for me is my daily face to face experience of that with himself. It’s what I’ve been made for, its what I’ve been saved for, and it’s the joy of my waking reality. My only strength is found in him. Peace.