The Blog

This past year has been a year of firsts...at least, the past couple months have been a couple months of firsts: my first time in Oregon, the first time I saw the ocean, my first trip to California, first fundraiser - it sounds like I’m a baby all over again, except that instead of first word, first tooth, it’s first time running carnival rides and first time this long and far away from home by myself. Anyway, all that to say this: last weekend Crossfire MC took our first ministry trip of the year to Washington. It was also my first ministry/missions trip ever. I wasn’t sure what to expect since I’d never been on a missions trip or anything, and what happened, though within my expectations, was outside them as well.

What did I expect, then? I’m not even sure myself. In my head I had a picture of a huge church filled to overflowing with excited people, and, at the end of the service, a flooded altar. Instead, we arrived at a smaller church, where we were greeted by several people from the church and youth group. Though I’d overestimated the size of the physical building of the church, the people within it exceeded my expectations with their generosity and caring.

Many times our expectations are misleading. Have you ever looked through a cup or bottle of water? The world you see through the water is hazy and skewed. Our expectations are like the water. The expectations I had when I came to Crossfire MC were radically off; in my mind I’d formed pictures of Crossfire MC that were distorted and not based on fact; they were skewed.

Jesus didn’t come like the Jews expected. The Jews of Jesus’ time expected the Messiah to come as a conqueror and deliverer and set up his kingdom. They expected a restoration of David’s kingdom, where Israel would be at peace with the nations around her. What they didn’t expect was for Jesus to come to die, which is what he did.

People, even Christians, can have misguided and incorrect expectations of who Jesus is. Many people today see Him as simply a good teacher or a good man, a religious scholar, or even a prophet. Within the church, God is often portrayed as a Father, which He is, or an older, kindly gentleman sitting up in the sky, which He most definitely is not. Any of these ideas of God create the wrong expectations about Him. Yes, God is our Father, but He is also our Judge. Our Friend, but also the one who sees into our hearts and weighs our motives. He’s the God of deliverance, but also the God of wrath. Job 36:26 says, “How great is our God - beyond our understanding! The number of His years is past finding out.” Just as God is beyond our understanding, He is above and beyond our expectations; we will never be able to expect anything big enough of Him.

~ Kaitlin Pederson~