Expectancy and a Taste of Thailand
Thai food was my absolute favourite food, until I got to Thailand. The first dish of Pad Thai I ate tasted like fish. No amount of sugar, spice or hot sauce could mask the fishy-fishness in my mouth; it was supposed to taste like chicken.
A few days later I ordered a red curry dish with great anticipation of experiencing the authentic flavours of coconut, bamboo, basil and spice. Not only were my taste buds confused again but my eyes couldn’t get past the massive chunks of liver and other unidentifiable pieces of meat in my bowl.
Though I did find some delicious food in Thailand, it wasn’t at all what I expected. As it turns out, ‘expectations’ was about to emerge as a theme for the month and it all came together for me the morning I was invited to lead a 25 minute teaching with two other team leaders as part of Leadership Development Weekend (LDW). Here’s what came out.
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“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own [expectations]” Proverbs 3:5
Living with expectations almost always leads to disappointment; we’ve all experienced this, whether it be living by the perceived expectations of other people or by the expectations we place on ourselves and project onto others or even by the expectations we have of God. The problem is, we often can’t identify expectations until they go unmet and we are left in a state of brokenness.
[Brokenness, by the way, is an integral part of this whole World Race adventure, not only because of unknown expectations but because abandonment of all we thought we knew leads to brokenness and brokenness ultimately leads to the vulnerable yet beautiful place of dependance, on God and on each other. This same process is true for life in the Kingdom, regardless of where we call home, the World Race just happens to create the necessary combination of circumstances where life lessons appear before you, all over the map].
When expectations go unmet, this literally creates a gap between us and other people, which, if not closed through repentance and forgiveness, can quickly lead to a break in trust, which leads to broken relationship. The same is true with God; actually, it is especially true with God. When we establish and live out of our own expectations for the way life should be and then life fails to meet those expectations, we somehow equate that to an aspect of God and His lack of character. We doubt the measure of His Love when in fact, His goodness is what allowed our expectations to fail.
In Thailand, I injured my back hauling bamboo at a construction site, which left me flat on the floor of my room for 6 days. During that time, I had a few conversations with the Lord that sounded like this:
Me: “Lord, you failed me …”
God: “No, my daughter, I failed to meet your expectations …”
This began a beautiful healing process where physical healing in my back came after 6 days of soaking in the Father’s Love and learning to trade my limited carnal expectations for the powerful Promise of expectancy. There is a huge difference.
Scripture says that when we put our trust in the Lord, we will not be put to shame (see Isaiah 49:23, Romans 9:23, Romans 5:3-5). Shame is the place where the enemy attacks our identity and leaves us feeling uncovered and vulnerable. Living in expectancy requires trust. But trust – deep, vulnerable, ruthless trust – is tough because the reality is we don’t trust that God is who He says he is and therefore, we don’t really believe that we are who He says we are; sons and daughters.
When we don’t know who we are, we build walls to self-protect from God and others out of fear of experiencing the humiliation, embarrassment, disappointment, etc. that shame brings when we are set up to fail. In shame, the enemy attacks our identity. In fear, he robs our faith (our trust). Fear leads to a need for control, which we do by creating expectations. That way, pride is justified because “I know best” and instead of facing the mystery of the unknown, we settle for the safety of our own predictable set of circumstances. In this, we put ourselves, God and others in a box built by the bricks of our own brokenness.
When God fails to meet these constructed expectations, we say that he has abandoned us. But when He exceeds them, when he operates outside of our little brick walls, we call it a miracle. When the Truth is, He is simply operating out of the reality of His character. He longs for us to join Him in the mystery of His Kingdom instead of trying to master it. In this place, the entitlement of pride is replaced with a childlike faith and we move from being a slave to our own expectations to the joy of expectancy.
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There’s so much more to share! I am in Laos, writing about Thailand and have a feeling this lag will continue throughout the race. Though it is nearly impossible to keep up in real time, I am grateful for your desire to enter into these moments with me, whether in real time or kairos time. Thanks for your emails, Facebook messages and comments. I love hearing from you!
While I continue to put words to Thailand, I wanted to leave you with this “taste of Thailand”, an awesome video created by my teammate, Graham. He did such a great job at capturing candid Mountain Mover moments this month. Enjoy!
Much Love,
Steph
