The home of the two disciples was just over 12 kilometres away; the dusty road they traversed led them to their hometown of Emmaus. On the way, they talked about their hopes that had been dashed. Their discouragement was palpable, both brimming over with discouragement, being downcast and staggered by the recent events in Jerusalem. Their hope for Israel had been brutally murdered at the hands of evil men. They had expected so much more of Jesus, yet nothing had turned out how they had hoped.
This is an all-too-common scenario for those who have grown up with expectations of God that do not, in actual fact, correspond to spiritual reality. We have held to the belief that God will never let us down or disappoint us. Well, this may sound like it contradicts those beliefs and even borders on heretical thinking, but living in the deeper realities of spiritual life does not always correspond with our long-held beliefs moulded from the clay of our own wishful thinking.
God is not made in our image. That is a spiritual reality we must come to terms with. If Scripture is true, ‘God made man in His image’. Maybe we have some learning to do related to being conformed to the image of the Son. Maybe, just maybe, there are some things we have yet to learn that we have no idea about. Could that really be true of us?
Someone once said, If you follow Jesus long enough, He will disappoint you. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus are commonly featured when expectations with God are disappointed. So many disappointments, ‘What we had hoped for was so much more. Things don’t seem to be going the way I had hoped. My life does not look like it should. I think I am losing my faith. I think God has abandoned me. I am forgotten and left, and all my hopes and dreams have evaporated. That should not have happened. If only I had done this, and if only that had happened’, etc. The list of dashed expectations and disappointments could go on.
In our deepening walk with God, our expectations of Him at some stage are addressed by Him. We think He is one way, and He shows up in another. Suddenly, our ill conceptions of Him are disappointed. He does not show up in the way we have experienced of Him in the past (these past experiences corresponding with God’s grace and the stage of our faith at that time). We find we want God to be the way we have found Him in the past. We have built an expectation that has become crystallised within our historical experience of Him. This needs to be shattered.
God’s only confinements exist within the limitations of our understanding, knowledge and experience of Him. Otherwise, we are in complete agreement with Scripture where Jesus says,
‘With God all things are possible’ (Matthew 19:26).
We, most times, depend on and trust in our immediate knowledge and understanding of God rather than having a firm faith in Him. When the time comes where the Lord wants us to know Him in a deeper way, He will lead us down a path where all that is familiar to us begins to evaporate. Our conceptions of who we have known Him to be all begin to disappear. We may even begin to feel like we are dead spiritually, or we have somehow ‘left the Way’ due to the lack of desire towards God, the Bible, prayer, etc. Given our walk with God remains faithful and we have not been led away from Him to other things of this world, the flesh or the devil, then these times can be very disconcerting.
These times allow us to discover the different ways God will test us. He does this because He wants us to know Him, but is all according to His means of knowing Him, not ours. He has to unravel the trust we attach to our way of learning, and living. Part of this process calls for letting go our long-held dependence upon feelings and emotions or knowledge and understanding, all the things we place our trust in. Of course these are not made redundant, but they are not the main source for knowing God. This process repeats and deepens over the years so we can grow up into sonship. These times remove dependencies upon everything else except God Himself.
He is teaching us to be sons through times of re-educating and testing us. He teaches us to depend upon Him and not our expectations or previous history with Him and or our experiences with Him. He also shows Himself in new ways that align more with a walk of faith and not one relating to our senses. This is a walk in Spirit, and this life is a life lived by faith.
In my book Wanted Workers for the Work of God, I discuss the lessons of the wilderness and say, ‘The God you thought you knew will become the God you’re now getting to know.’ Someone once said, ‘If God has never disappointed you, give Him time, and He will.’ Part of God’s plan for us is to get to know Him in different and deeper ways through these times.
King David knew these times very well and cried out to God, knowing He had nowhere else to go. He was honest with God during these times, but David’s heart was also found faithful, as He had a heart after God.
How long, O LORD? Will You forget me forever?
How long will You hide Your face from me?
How long shall I take counsel in my soul, Having sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long will my enemy be exalted over me?
Consider and answer me, O LORD my God; Enlighten my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death,
And my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” And my adversaries will rejoice when I am shaken.
But I have trusted in Your lovingkindness; My heart shall rejoice in Your salvation.
I will sing to the LORD, Because He has dealt bountifully with me. (Psalm 13:1-6 NASB)
Jesus eventually came alongside the two disciples on their walk home. He did more than listen to their disappointments and disheartening stories, like David’s in the above Psalm. He entered in and enjoined Himself with them quietly. The ‘did not our hearts burn within us?’, was only realised after He had left, and they then found they had been given new hope and an unshakable faith. He not only walked home with them, something so ordinary, but He lifted their downcast hearts and restored their courage, giving them an unspoiled hope, one unfading and imperishable!
This is the God we are getting to know, unshackling us from previous hardened views and releasing us into the broader vista of this all-encompassing Christ!
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. (1 Peter 1:3)