Expectations
of Christianity
.
by Bob Tedesco
Introduction: Looking Back
I’ve been actively following the Lord since 1970
when I was baptized in the Spirit. We are also
approaching yet another anniversary as a community
in the People of God. As I’ve been giving some
thought to these passages of time, I thought it
might be appropriate to take a look at some of our
expectations for Christianity. It’s worth raising
the question every now and then to consider what
we expect from Christianity, from the Messiah,
from Christ.
Our culture is oriented toward fantasy rather than
reality. It is a good idea to give some thought to
that because we are immersed in a fantasy-oriented
society. We are culturally pre-conditioned by
advertising, so much so that it seems TV could
soon become more commercials than actual
programming! We are preconditioned to prefer
promises and fantasy traps and are attracted to
great claims. For example, the phrase “as seen on
TV” suggests that the product being advertised
must be good and, therefore, we have to have it.
We are more likely to want whatever it is simply
because we saw it on TV. If it’s well packaged and
colorful we buy into it; we believe the claims and
the promises. This is not only true of products,
but it is true of people as well. Politicians, for
example, can be very well packaged. They may be
physically attractive, have a great smile and a
lot of charm, but they may not, in fact, be very
well put together. How often have you bought
a nicely packaged toy for a child or grandchild
and found upon opening it that what you really
paid for was the box? The product itself was a big
disappointment! If it’s well packaged, we want it.
Our cultural preconditioning is being used to
present to us a false Christianity. One place
where this becomes obvious is in Christian
broadcasting. Because of the way the human mind
works we need to be careful what type and how much
Christian radio and TV we listen to or watch. Some
of it is very well packaged, very attractive and
targets what we want. For instance, I may
want the gift of healing. Why? Well, mostly for
selfish reasons. I’d like to heal myself, my
family, my friends, my brothers and sisters. And
when I do, I’ll look great because I’ve got the
gift of healing. If our desire for the gift of
healing was rightly motivated we might actually be
in a better place to get it! We may want the gift
of healing and a well-meaning TV preacher might
suggest how we can go about seeking it. But often
times we are also promised perfect health, perfect
finances and perfect protection; all the things
that appeal to that part of us that wants it all!
More Christian radio and more Christian TV are not
necessarily better. Moving from one program to
another, one preacher to another, or one
scriptural emphasis to another can actually become
quite confusing because of the contradictions
between differing theologies.
Having unrealistic expectations can be a setup for
failure, for disillusionment and disappointment.
They are, in fact, one of the rampant reasons for
divorce. We get in our mind a certain Hollywood or
TV understanding of what marriage is and then
later we’re disappointed that our expectations
were not met. That person turned out not to be the
perfect person that she thought she was or that I
created in my mind. Marriage and raising children
is a lot of work and anyone who presents it
otherwise obviously has never had a wife and
children!
Unrealistic expectations are also one of the
reasons for disbelief and despair. We see this in
the scriptural depiction of Judas. Judas had a
view, an expectation of Christ that was
unrealistic. Jesus didn’t meet that expectation
and Judas despaired. He was overcome by guilt and
shame and went out and hanged himself. We don’t
know if he despaired until the last moment, the
last second, that last breath. We don’t know what
his eternal destiny became. But it was a bad
ending!
Expectations can be unrealistic meaning excessive,
or they can be unreal meaning that they really
don’t line up with reality and are defined as fantasy.
For instance, if we use the gift of healing as an
example we may ask, “Is there a gift of healing?”
We know from scripture that there is and so we can
answer in the affirmative. “Can I heal
everyone?” Our experience would suggest a negative
response. “Can the great healers like Katherine
Kuhlman heal everyone?” Here, too, the answer
would be a clear ‘no’. “Could Jesus heal
everyone?” From what we read in the scriptures we
can say ‘yes’. “Did the disciples heal everyone?”
Certainly not. To be given or to receive the gift
of healing and then to assume you will be able to
heal everyone you pray for is unrealistic. But if
you say, “I have the gift of healing” and you
don’t, then that’s just unreal and fantasy.
Expectations can be either unrealistic or
simply unreal.
We will be disappointed with Christianity if we
misunderstand what it promises. If we create new
promises and suggest that this new mode of
Christianity is the right approach, or if we latch
on to only a certain set of promises, we can
develop unrealistic expectations for Christianity.
Some of us have seen or may even have a ‘promise
box’. It’s a little box containing scripture
promise cards, one for each day of the year. It
can be of some benefit to us as we consider the
promises God has made to us. But we often fail to
see that scripture also has a set of curses, and
I’ll bet no one has ever seen a scripture ‘curse
box’ or a box of verses that says, “If you do this
you’ll get into this kind of trouble!” It wouldn’t
sell very well – even with a really good, colorful
package! Christianity can be disappointing if we
don’t understand what it promises. The same is
true for Christian community. If we make it into
something that it isn’t or exaggerate what it
offers we can become disappointed with it or
simply just give up on it. Sometimes it’s simply
because we have the wrong idea about what
Christian community is or what it’s supposed to
be. In fact, very often, that’s the case.
What Are Our Expectations?
Here and There – John 10:10
There are expectations you can have
of this life and the next, and there are
expectations you can have in the natural and in
the spiritual. For the next life we can expect
eternal life in the presence of God. Here,
in the natural, we tend to expect health,
provision and protection. Those are common
expectations to have. Here, in the spiritual, we
expect to have a relationship with Jesus. We
expect the baptism in the Holy Spirit. We expect
spiritual power for healing and miracles.
As we consider our expectations it would be wise
to avoid an approach that says ‘what’s in it for
me’ versus one which is directed toward living for
God and others. As soon as we take a self-centered
approach, it’s not Christianity that we’re walking
into anymore, especially if it’s primarily ‘what’s
in it for me’. Most of us come into our lives as
Christians through that door. Christianity
offers something good so we can tend to have that
orientation for ourselves. But John 10:10 says,
“… I came that they may have life and have it
abundantly.”
Jesus is saying, “I offer life and I offer life in
abundance.” That is what’s in it for me, and that
is what’s in it for all of us, but it’s important
for us understand what he actually means. If
your expectations of Christianity don’t lead to an
increasingly less self-centered approach then your
expectations will be unreal, your disappointment
will be certain, and somewhere down the road you
will at least incur discipline and may, in fact,
turn and run the other way!
The ‘what’s in it for me’ approach to Christianity
must give way to nobler postures. For example, one
of the sisters in the community recently told me a
story of a man she met whose wife was in a sad
decline suffering from multiple sclerosis. As her
husband, he’d been caring for her through her
illness. While he courageously cared for her
people repeatedly asked him, “Why are you still
with her?” He was rather incredulous because of
his love for his wife, the vows he’d taken and his
understanding of marriage. He was simply
fulfilling his promise to care for his wife in
sickness and in health. But in today’s
culture it strikes people as odd that someone
would consider such a selfless act. Because our
culture is becoming more and more narcissistic and
self-centered, it makes no sense that he would
stay with his wife and continue to care for her.
But he is living the Christian response to the
need of that moment. He’s no longer in a ‘what’s
in it for me’ posture toward his wife, but has
grown past a selfish approach to caring for his
wife and having the right response to what it
means to be married. That’s the ‘living for
others’ growth or evolution that should take
place.
What Our Expectations Should
Be…How to Approach the Question
We can learn something about the kind
of expectations we should have by giving a more
thoughtful look at John 10:10. We can also look at
the Lord’s Prayer. When the disciples approached
the Lord and said, “Teach us to pray”, he gave
them what amounts to a 20 second rote prayer. We
could say that prayer in a matter of seconds, but
if we really stop to look at what’s in it, we
could pray it for an hour! It begins by saying,
“Our Father who art in heaven…thy kingdom come,
thy will be done…” If you start with the kingdom
of God and his will you can then add your
intercessions: give us this day our daily bread,
lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil…
Something to notice about the intercessions is
that they are fairly simple; they’re not
complicated. We’d like our physical need for food
to be met; we’d like the temptations to be kept to
a minimum, and we’d like to be free from the
influence of the devil. Pretty simple
intercessions, but only after the
beginning orientation: “…thy kingdom come, thy
will be done…” If that’s our
orientation, Christianity will work very well for
us. If our orientation is ‘what’s in it for me’
and begin with intercessions while ignoring or
overlooking the kingdom and his will, it won’t
work so well!
We can search the scriptures to learn what to
expect. When we do that, whether it’s with the use
of a ‘promise box’ or by some other means, we need
to learn to see and embrace the difficult
scriptures as well. Jesus did say there would be
persecution and suffering and that some would be
killed. It’s not the kind of thing people normally
sign up for!
Mark 8:29-32a
…Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do men say
that I am?” And they told him, “John the
Baptist; others say Elijah, and others one of
the prophets.”… And he began to teach them
that the Son of man must suffer many things
and be rejected by the elders, the chief
priests and the scribes and be killed, and
after three days rise again. And he said this
plainly.
Jesus was very clear in telling his disciples what
was about to happen to him. Remember that he also
asked Peter, “Who do you say that I am?” (He
also asks that same question of each of us.) Peter
answered him, “You are the Christ…” Peter
had the right answer, but he had the wrong
expectations of what it meant for Jesus to be the
Christ. Like many of the disciples, Peter had a
far more political messiah in mind and his
thoughts were in obvious conflict with the mind
and mission of Jesus. Reading further we see that
Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
In one version it says …and looking at his
disciples, Jesus said, “Get behind me Satan.”
Now, that’s a scary scripture! Nobody wants to be
called Satan by Jesus. But the verse that follows
is even scarier than that! Then Jesus said, “For
you are not on the side of God, but of men.”
Another version says, “Satan, get behind me!
You are looking at this only from a human point
of view…” Still another says, “…you do
not have in mind the things of God but the
things of men. The version I heard most
recently said, “You’re thinking like a man,
not like God.” As a man, I find that verse
scary because the natural default is to think like
a man, reason like a man, act like a man. But as
we consider what our expectations should be, one
of the first things we need to learn is to think
not like a man, but like God. To be a disciple of
Christ is to have a transformation of your mind
(Romans) and to learn to think like God. In fact,
that should be one of the first requirements of a
disciple! Yet, we observe the disciples, who are
being trained by Jesus, walking with him, seeing
miracles and exorcisms, getting in and out of all
sorts of scrapes and seeing tremendous things
happen, and still they don’t get it! They still
don’t think like God at this point.
Again, we’re looking at ‘here’, or our earthly
life, both in the natural realm and the spiritual.
In the natural, we should expect some help with
health, provision and protection. Occasionally, we
should see some miracles, maybe more often than we
do. If we follow the Lord things will actually go
better for us, even in the natural.
When the Lord gave the Ten Commandments he said to
Moses, greatly paraphrased, “The nations around
you will see and say, ‘these people are blessed by
God.’ They will see that you’re doing better than
they are.” A lot of times we take both
Christianity and even the Ten Commandments so
personally that we don’t realize that they were
given to a people. This people will do
better than the nations around them because
they’re following the Ten Commandments. Some
people within that people will still be sick. Some
people within that people will die, in fact, they
will all die. Some people will be poor, some will
be wealthy, but this people will do better. If we
follow the Lord as a people we will do
better. Some of us will be poor, some will be
wealthier. Some will be healthier, some will get
cancer. We don’t get to avoid the human condition,
but when we do face trials and difficulties and
call on the Lord, we may see miracles and cures
and receive answers. Generally, as a people, we
will do better than the other ‘nations’ around us.
John
14:22-23 Judas (not Iscariot) said to
him, “Lord, How is it that you will manifest
yourself to us, and not to the world?” Jesus
answered him, “If a man loves me, he will keep
my word, and my Father will love him, and we
will come to him and make our home with him.
That is the abundant life in a nutshell! It is the
Father and the Son making their home in you and
me; being within us in a way that makes a
difference in how we live. Keeping his word, doing
what he asks of us and obeying his will are of
utmost importance. We love God, we keep his word
and we receive the presence of God.
There is good news in terms of what our
expectations should be. For instance, here in the
spiritual realm we should expect to get the
baptism in the Holy Spirit. It’s the very first
sign given to Peter that the Gentiles could be
saved; that they could be part of the kingdom of
God. It says in Acts 10 that Peter heard them “speaking
in tongues and extolling God.” So the
baptism in the Spirit was the sign that you and I,
as Gentiles, could come into a relationship with
God. That’s good news! The baptism of the Spirit
is real. It’s not some phony TV thing that someone
created on a whim. It’s the most reliable
spiritual effect of anything I’ve witnessed in
Christianity. When we get together to pray for the
baptism in the Spirit, it happens. It’s reliable,
it’s repeatable and I’ve seen it now for over 40
years. When I was baptized in the Spirit back in
Seattle in 1970, I didn’t know very much, but I
was able to receive it and it changed my whole
life!
Also in the spiritual realm we should expect
mystery and sovereignty. Those are two troublesome
words. We need to expect and accept that there
will be things we are just not able to understand
in this life, and may not in the next.
Revelation 6:9-10 …I
saw under the altar the souls of those who had
been slain for the word of God and for the
witness they had borne; they cried out with a
loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true,
how long before you will judge and avenge our
blood on those who dwell on the earth?” Then
they were each given a white robe and told to
rest a little longer…
The Lord said, “Just rest a little longer…” It’s
as if he is saying, “Don’t bother me right now;
that’s not what I’m doing at the moment.” We may
hear a similar word from the Lord when we make a
request of him to relieve our pain or fix a
certain situation. His response to us might be,
“Sit over there for a while; I’m not ready to deal
with that just yet.” But these are the martyrs!
These are the ones who have laid down their lives
for the Lord and he’s saying, “Yeah, but there’s
going to be more joining you so until they all get
here, you’ll have to wait.” He does give them
white robes! But he really doesn’t, at the point
of their request, answer their prayer as though
they can tell him what to do! That is sovereignty!
And that’s mystery! Why doesn’t he answer them?
Because God is sovereign! He can do whatever he
wants, whenever he wants. One of my expectations
for heaven or ‘there’ is that I would not have to
listen to the martyrs crying out from under the
altar. But I would be mistaken.
We may sometimes find ourselves wrestling with
painful circumstances, illnesses and various
trials or nagging spiritual questions that are
difficult to understand. As hard as we might try,
we cannot find answers that satisfy our need to
fit the pieces together in a neat little puzzle.
Well-meaning people might sometimes say,
“Eventually everything will make sense.” I
personally don’t believe that. I don’t think our
minds are big enough for everything to make sense
to us, and I think there are things that we will
never understand. Everything that God knows is far
beyond our knowing. We won’t be able to process
everything that’s ever happened. We don’t have the
capacity now and we might never have that ability.
We can, however, take some comfort in knowing that
he does reveal some things to us and gives us the
opportunity to gain wisdom and understanding of
him and his will as we grow in relationship with
him. But in the face of everything you can find in
scripture and when you think you’ve got
Christianity all figured out, remember that you
were warned to expect mystery and sovereignty.
What To Do? How to Approach
the Question… “we see dimly”
Before you begin to search out what
Christianity really means take a step back. What
did the life of Jesus look like? What did the life
of the apostles look like? What did the life of
the disciples look like? If someone on the radio
is selling you a nicely packaged, colorful version
of Christianity that doesn’t look like the life of
Jesus, or the apostles, or the disciples, be
careful because you might be disappointed upon
opening that box!
For example, Judas the Zealot clung to his
expectation and his criteria for the messiah and
it failed him. The Zealots were the ones who
wanted to drive out the Romans and that’s what
they were expecting the messiah to do. When it
became clear that Jesus had not come for that
purpose Judas attempted to turn up the fire a bit
in order to get the pot to boil. He tried to
change Jesus to fit his expectations. He refused
to adjust when he realized that Jesus’ messiahship
was in conflict with what he expected. That leads
to despair. We conform to his expectations, not
the other way around. That leads to holiness.
Peter was also mistaken as we read in the earlier
scripture from Mark. Like Judas, his understanding
of the role of the messiah was skewed and he
couldn’t accept that Jesus should have to go to
Jerusalem to suffer and die. His understanding of
what the messiah was supposed to be didn’t mesh
with Jesus’ reality. But he grew through that and
he continued to grow. Later, in Acts 10:15, well
after Pentecost, Peter was praying and received a
vision from the Lord telling him to kill and eat
some animals that previously the Lord had deemed
unclean. What does Peter do? He says, “No,
Lord, for I have never eaten anything that is
common or unclean.” And the Lord said, “What
God has cleansed, you must not call common.”
In other words, “Peter, you have your own ideas,
but you’re to follow me, so don’t ever reject
anything that I say is clean.” Following that
vision the Lord sent him to the house of
Cornelius, a Gentile, who was thought by the Jews
to be unclean, and Peter baptized him and his
whole household. Here, Peter comes to understand
the vision and what God was telling him through
it. Shortly thereafter, Peter asked,
“How can we refuse the
baptism of water to these (the Gentiles) who
have already been baptized in the Holy
Spirit?” Act 10:47
From his earliest days while he was living in the
company of Jesus to those well after Jesus had
gone into heaven, Peter was able to grow through
his misunderstandings and continued to adjust his
expectations while Judas, refusing to adjust,
chose rather to despair.
Another example is that of the disciples in Acts 1
after the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
They had been with Jesus before he died and were
witnesses to his Resurrection. The Lord spent 40
days with them, walking with and teaching them.
The scene is at the foot of the mount of the
Ascension where he is about to be taken up into
heaven. When they had come together they asked
him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the
kingdom to Israel?” Again, we see that the
disciples expected the messiah to restore the
kingdom to Israel. To them, that was the
main value – Israel had to be restored. Wrong
expectations got Judas in terminal trouble. They
got Peter in trouble earlier when Jesus rebuked
him referring to him as ‘Satan’. And here, as
Jesus is about to ascend, the disciples are still
unclear about the purposes of Jesus’ coming. It
seems Jesus might be losing patience with them at
this point when he says, “It’s not for you to
know times or seasons which the Father has fixed
by his own authority. But you shall receive
power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you…”
Everything is pointing them in the direction of
Pentecost. Ten days later they are gathered in the
Upper Room and the Holy Spirit fell upon them in
power. From this point on we never hear the
question asked, “Lord, when will you restore the
kingdom of Israel?” Never again do they ask that
question! They are coming to understand a bit more
clearly the purposes of God in sending Jesus.
As the Spirit comes upon us at different times we
can expect purification of our own misplaced
expectations. We can, in fact, expect to look a
little smarter as we move through our life with
the Lord. But we cannot claim things that the
first apostles and disciples could not get to
work. If somebody is trying to teach you that you
can claim something or get something to happen
that the apostles couldn’t get to happen or that
the disciples couldn’t get to happen, you’re
probably not going to be able to get that to work.
Watch out for those kinds of teachings that look
far different from what we see in scripture. It
would be great if we could get to work what the
disciples got to work! But we’re not even there
yet!
We can also ask the question, “What did
Christianity look like for the great Christians of
our own tradition?” Were they ever sick? Did they
die? Were some of them poor? We should learn from
that.
In working our way from the first apostles and
disciples to great Christians throughout history
and finally down to us, we can ask, “What have we
been able to get to work so far, after the years
we’ve spent following the Lord?” Are you
ever sick? Are some of us not very well-off? Do we
ever wrestle with sin and depression? Of course we
do! But the real question should be, “What does
God expect of us?” “What does his word teach us
about his expectations for us as individuals and
as a people?” “What does he require and how should
we respond?”
First, I would strongly encourage us to choose
discipleship. The word ‘Christian’ or ‘Christians’
occurs only 3 times in the whole New Testament.
The words ‘disciple’ or ‘discipleship’ occur 269
times. Somewhere along the line Christianity no
longer expected discipleship. Or the way it gets
described isn’t really discipleship. For many
Christians it has delved into living a good life
and showing up on Sunday...it’s personal rather
than corporate; private, rather than evangelistic.
Discipleship means pursuing the Lord, going after
the Lord for formation and growth; having our
lives centered in and given over to the will of
God.
Second, choose obedience to his will. We know some
things that he really wants us to do. We know that
he really wants us to obey the Great Commission.
Do we wrestle with that? We need to decide as
individuals and/or families to find ways to share
hospitality with others: opening our homes to
hospitality that is Christ-centered; identifying
relationships that could be improved or deepened
to include the Lord, etc.
There was an article recently in the Living
Bulwark by a teacher named Dallas Willard. He has
probably written about 30 books and is probably
most well-known in evangelical circles. He wrote
this:
Non-discipleship costs abiding peace,
a life penetrated throughout by love, faith that
sees everything in God’s overriding governance
for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the
most discouraging circumstances, power to do
what is right and withstand the forces of evil.
In short, it costs exactly the abundance of life
that Jesus said he came to bring.”
So we’ve come full circle back to John 10:10 where
Jesus said he came to bring abundance of life.
Dallas Willard is saying that if you choose
non-discipleship you’ll be choosing something
other than the abundant life.
In Closing
We should take some time to humbly lay down our
expectations of Christianity before the foot of
the Cross and at least try to commit ourselves to
taking on what he has for us, what his
expectations are of Christianity, the life that he
wants to give us, and obedience to that so that
the Father and the Son will come and make their
home with us. Our eternity really could be at
stake. I believe we need to lay it at the
Cross, take up the Cross and follow him.
Expectations
of Christianity (c) 2019 by Bob
Tedesco is featured in his new book, Choosing
Discipleship: Embracing the Call in a Modern
Culture, published by Credo House
Books, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA.
Bob
Tedesco is the founder of the People
of God, a
Sword of the Spirit community in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA where he
served as Senior Coordinator for 26
years. He has been involved in lay
ministry for over forty-five years,
serving in the Sword of the Spirit as
the North American Regional President
and Chairman of the Board of Directors
of the North American Executive
Committee.
Bob is the author of two books, Essays
on Christian Community and Choosing
Discipleship. and forty-one
Christian life articles published in
the Sword of the Spirit international
online magazine, Living Bulwark.
He has a BS in Aerospace Engineering
from the University of Pittsburgh and
worked as a consulting engineer for
twenty years. He and his wife, Bobbie,
have been married for nearly sixty
years. They currently have ten
children, thirty-seven grandchildren,
and eleven great-grandchildren. They
reside in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania,
USA.
Choosing Discipleship
Embracing
the Call in a Modern Culture
by Bob Tedesco
163 pages
Published in 2019 by Credo
House Publishers,Grand Rapids, Michigan,
USA
The
book is available in print at Amazon and Credo
House Publishers.
Choosing Discipleship
is an excellent book and very
helpful for keeping some key issues
before us in a compact way. It is very
useful, easy to ponder, and easy to teach
from. It is a great resource...
personally; I liked the style you used...
it relates to the busyness of our culture.
Bill
Durrant, Founder, People of God’s
Love Community, Columbus, Ohio, USA
Excellent pastoral material and also well
written. It’s a tremendous contribution to
the Sword of the Spirit worldwide and the
wider church as well... Seasoned leaders,
parents, pastoral workers, and community
members need to be refreshed and learn
again (and again) the vision and sound
principles and wisdom you have taught over
the past few decades... It will continue
to be circulated to many communities and
individuals for generations to come.
Don
Schwager, Editor, Living Bulwark,
international online magazine of the Sword
of the Spirit
Typing the manuscript for Choosing
Discipleship over the course
of a summer felt like being on an
extended retreat! My own life of
discipleship and my understanding of what
God is doing in the world today has been
significantly influenced by Bob’s clear
vision, insight, and wisdom... The impact
he has had both as a community builder and
author has stretched across continents,
and I suspect his influence will be felt
for many years to come.
Joanie
Nath, Senior Women’s Leader, People
of God Community, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
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