Better Than Expected

Once upon a time, someone I didn’t know contacted me for information about our church. He said he was thinking about visiting—”But,” he warned me, “don’t get your hopes up.” Well, he ended up stopping by and apparently found us to be better than expected, for he has been with us ever since. He too has exceeded my expectations in every way (which wasn’t too difficult since I heeded the prophetical warning and got my hopes down as low as humanly possible).

One of Satan’s tricks to keep us from believing the gospel is to lie about what it’s really like to be a Christian. “Sure, you can be forgiven and have eternal life, but then you’ll have to live the…(insert scary music)…Christian life.” How lamely he paints it, how goodie-goodie and boring it must be, how agonizing to leave behind our sinful pleasures and submit to that grumpy God in the sky. But oh how our expectations were exceeded when we tasted and saw that the Lord is good!

He plays the same trick on us after we become believers. “Don’t get your hopes up too much about God’s new creation in the life to come,” he says. And so we focus on the here and now, we fear what’s to come, and we lose sight of the mind-blowing realities that await us in Christ. Let’s clap back by getting our hopes up as high as we can about the good things God has in store for all who hope in him. Not to worry, they will be way better than ever expected.