shaken expectations

This is an unusual post for me. I have two different tracks running in my walk with Jesus lately. On the one hand, I feel Him calling me to a diligent pursuit of deeper intimacy with Him. The Song of Solomon. "Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His lips."

(The kisses of His lips are the revelations of His love, particularly in His word. That explanation is for those who would get nervous with the kissing language, me being a guy and all.)

On the other hand, I have felt lead to spend a lot of time in the prophets lately. Ezekiel, Amos, Hosea, and Zephaniah most recently. I am freshly aware of the general unhealthiness of the western church.

(I am part of that... not the judge sitting up on my high horse.)

The worldliness and compromise so common in the western church today is seen as normal, and to be expected. The prophets called it spiritual adultery. They were generally sent to the people of God with a warning of divine judgment aimed at bringing the people to repentance. The purpose was to bring restored relationship with the Lord. The promise of blessing following the word of judgment is always rich and beautiful. As it says in Hebrews 12, He disciplines those He loves.

Well, this morning I was reading in Zephaniah, and the Holy Spirit told me to go take a nap, because He wanted to speak to me in a dream. Odd. Especially for me. He doesn't often speak to me that way. I can count on one hand the number of spiritual dreams I have had in thirty years. So, I went and laid down, and sure enough, had a dream. I won't go into the details, but at the end of the dream I was picturing a situation in my mind, and how I thought the Lord was going to handle that situation, and suddenly He took that image and shook it. It broke into hundreds of little pieces, and I clearly heard the phrase, "Shaken expectations."

And then I woke up. I believe this could be, and probably is, a word for me, but I feel like it is also a word for the church. (That sounds so pretentious, but I just can't escape it.) We think He is going to do things a certain way. We have promises from His word upon which we base our expectations. And we begin to formulate a vision in our mind of what that is going to look like. That's where we make our mistake. And that is where we set ourselves up for disappointment and offense toward God. Offense toward God is extremely dangerous. We must guard our hearts carefully against it. We must put our hope in His goodness and faithfulness, and not our vision of what that looks like when it is manifested. He is good. He is faithful. He will do what is best according to His perfect wisdom. Those are the truths that we put our trust in.

Lord, help us keep our eyes on You.