Expect God to show up.
I have always been the kind of person who loves visiting the same place over and over again.
Don’t get me wrong, I love traveling to new places, but there is something unique about going to a familiar place with a new group of people. You get to watch them experience what you have experienced. In watching them experience the place, you feel as though you are reliving that first trip all over again.
Exponential has been that kind of experience for me. My first trip to the church planting conference of 5000+ church planters was in 2017. I was discerning my next career move, and God used a conference full of strangers to plant a seed and call me into church planting. In 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2022 (we missed 2021 due to the pandemic), the trips were not quite as life-altering. Our team had been in the thick of church planting by that point; but every year, God always spoke to me in a message, a song, a word from a friend, or a quiet moment just with Him.
But, this year felt different.
Over the past several years, I have been up close and personal to sadness, grief, and despair in the lives of many. Simultaneously, I’ve been wrestling with God in some of my own challenges. The older we get, the more exposure to brokenness we see. In seeing and experiencing the brokenness, without even realizing it, I have wanted to, in some ways, expect less of God. Maybe then I wouldn’t be so disappointed. Frankly, He was not showing up in the ways I wanted him to. He wasn’t giving me the kind of answers I was hoping for. Working in pastoral ministry, this is hard to admit. I know the theological answers to suffering, but my heart was unsatisfied. But, I felt the Holy Spirit nudging me with a phrase – Expect God to show up.
In our last session of Exponential, Albert Tate spoke about the woman at the well. He shared how easy it is in ministry (and in life) to “take your heart out” of the abundant life God has for you. And, then he shared this quote from the great theologian, C.S. Lewis -
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable … The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers … of love is Hell.
Hell is the only place outside of Heaven where you can be safe from getting your heart broken.
In that moment, I knew the Lord was sharing with me that my fear of my heart getting broken was leading me to expect less of God.
The woman at the well surely did not expect Jesus, a Jewish man, to speak to her, a Samaritan woman. In her shame and isolation, she went to gather her water on her own so no one would see her. Yet, Jesus met her right there at that same, familiar place, and He provided her Living Water.
As C.S. Lewis teaches us, expecting less of God only leads to hellish hopelessness.
God does not always show up in the way we want him to. At times, He can even feel distant. In these moments, I am learning to ask Him to give me a fresh encounter at the well. Every single one of us need not another explanation – we need an experience of the living God. The Psalmist David writes,
In the morning, oh Lord, you hear my voice. I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation. - Psalm 5:3
As we wait on God to show up, may we wait in expectation, knowing He hears our prayers and is waiting at that same well, ready to give us Living Water.
