The Great Crush

“If you love anything at all in this world more than God, you will crush it under the weight of your expectations, and it will eventually break your heart.” 

Prayer: Experiencing Awe And Intimacy With God, by Tim Keller

What do we love more than we love God? Who or what captivates our greatest expectations? What do we believe is our key source of joy? What do we think about and dream about the most? What do we feel we CANNOT live without??? It does us a world of good to honestly answer these questions because…

…anything or anyone who is more important to us than God—WILL be crushed under the weight of our great expectations.

The first time I read the quote by Tim Keller, God showed me the full weight of my grossly misplaced expectations. In fact, He led me to make a very unexpected apology to the father of my children, whom I’ve been divorced from for many years. I told him that the failure of our marriage was, in large part, my fault, because–I expected him to love me like ONLY God could love me. It was clear to me that my unrealistic expectations had crushed our marriage.

I broke my own heart but—my reaction was to blame him because—it’s what we do when we expect complete love and satisfaction from anyone except God.

My loves were out of order. I expected to find more love from my husband than from my God. But God’s love is enduring, it is supernatural, and there is no experience like it! It is much, much more than the emotional waves which cause us to place crushing burdens upon each other. Of course people fail us! We fail them too! None of us are equipped to love like only God can love. We can’t give away what we, ourselves desperately need! God IS love and HE never fails. No human is capable of loving like God does and yet—somehow we ALL expect it from each other. If we can just be rich enough, accomplished enough, etc., we believe we will be loved enough to meet our great expectations. We’re perpetually caught in this sticky web until we surrender to the redeeming love of God.

When we live in complete surrender to God, we not only have our greatest expectations met, we learn to love others the way we desire to be loved. We can love without running out because we’re getting our greatest love from Him. He satisfies our deepest need for supernatural love.

This realization can be transformational if it causes us to pursue God with all our heart, soul, and mind!

Passionately pursuing God will ALWAYS exceed our expectations and will NEVER break our heart. Why??? Well, we were created to be completely satisfied in God—and this includes love. No one else can ever come close! When we are born again, He becomes our unfailing fountain of satisfaction:

“And the Lord will guide you continually and SATISFY your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.”

Isaiah 58:11

If our expectation for satisfaction is focused on the pursuit of money, relationships, success, family, or—anything LESS than GOD—we are guaranteeing ourselves crushing disappointment. But when our relationship with God is our greatest passion, in other words, we are constantly seeking His plan for our life and to live in His righteousness then…“ALL these things will be added” to us. Matthew 6:33 God never fails; and neither does His love.

By loving God, with ALL our heart, soul, and mind we discover the greatest fountain of life. God’s heart was broken by sin in DEATH; so our heart could have unbroken love in LIFE.

We would love to hear your thoughts about this devotional. Did God speak to you or challenge your daily walk with him? Or is there a topic that you would like Kimberly to cover or expound on? Please share with us in the comments below.

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