Transcript
It probably will make sense to anyone the minute I say it that unrealistic expectations will worsen your suffering. Unrealistic expectations of yourself -- there's a lot of spiritual pride that I carried into my suffering. I'm the gospel guy. I'm a theologian so I'm thinking, "Man, I'm going to be fine no matter what," and that self-reliance and self-sufficiency is unrealistic. I'm a package of weaknesses held together by divine grace. That's what I actually am. And you start showing me how weak I actually am and panic sets in.
Unrealistic Expectations About Life
Unrealistic expectations about the nature of life. I don't think that we take seriously the drama of the fallenness of our world, that that fallenness will enter your door. If you're not suffering now, you're near somebody who is; and if you're not suffering now, you will someday. And the expectation that suffering will be part of my experience, I don't think is regular for people.
I think our expectation is tomorrow will be just the same as today was. But this world is not operating the way God intended for it to operate and there are things that are going to happen in relationships, in communities, in the economy, in my physical body that are the natural outcomes of the brokenness of this world.
And then unrealistic expectations of God, of what God has promised. God has not promised me a comfortable life. He's promised me Himself and to think that if God's faithful, my life will be comfortable is dramatically unrealistic. What happens in suffering is you will then mourn the death of what you thought you could depend on, what you thought was true. Actually, those things weren't true and that's what is being proven in your suffering.
