Release from the Bondage of Expectation

Release from the Bondage of Expectation

by John Hobbs

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

I was thinking, as Carol was singing, that part of my praise to the Lord is for the process that He set up for us as His people, as His children, to grow. It’s neat that He’s determined that we’re going to come back to Him holy and blameless. But it’s also neat that while He does the work, we get to participate in the process of becoming those folk that He’s created, to come back to Him holy and blameless in every way, looking like Him. And I find that when I reflect a little bit on the process, there are several things that sort of get me excited about it. Because you remember when I started talking with you the first opportunity I had, I was talking about the intimate personal love relationship that we’ve been delivered into in this thing with Jesus. And that’s not so much a matter of what we’ve been delivered from, even though it’s kind of neat to miss hell, because it’s probably not the kind of place you’d like to want to stay. But to know that you’ve been delivered into something that is alive and vital and dynamic. And that it’s a process as you walk through this realm. And that God uses everything about us, including people, to work in that process.

And when you, for example, if you read Paul’s words when he says something about mortifying the deeds of the flesh, or if you read something like, “Work out your salvation in fear and trembling, for it’s God who works in you both to will and to do.” Sometimes you read those scriptures, it really doesn’t seem all that exciting, you know? But if you put it in the right context, this thing that we’ve got with Jesus in terms of relationship is incredibly exciting. For example, mortify the deeds of the flesh really becomes wherever there is a place of death in you. If you will yield that to the Holy Spirit, not only will it be laid off, but resurrection power and life will replace it. There’s something exciting about knowing that this process that God’s working in us is a matter of death being removed and resurrection life coming forth. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t have to go very far to find death. Most any church, you can find it on the same pew with you. It’s not a matter of having to look very far for it, but to find life is another matter. But to understand that there’s got to be a dying before there can be a resurrection is a pretty critical issue, isn’t it?

So this process that God’s given us of dying and being raised is a lifelong thing in certain areas of our lives. So when we talked last night, you know, about removing stones and having the place of death really filled with His resurrection life and power, we’re not talking about something that’s laborious. We’re not talking about something that has to be terribly tragic or dramatic. We’re talking about something that is simply part of the process of growth that God has for us. And it is an exciting adventure to be able to do that sort of thing. And as I was reflecting a little bit on what I had to share with you last night, I found myself thinking in terms of sharing with you this morning something that I have shared for years in men’s groups and from time to time in CFO gatherings. And really in the flesh, found myself a little reluctant to share it. It’s sort of like sometimes when you have a singer who sings the same song. If you’re the singer, you get tired of singing the same song. Even when it’s the Lord saying, “Sing the song,” you keep saying, “I’ve sung it.” Do you ever deal with that? Uh-huh. And so I found myself over the years sort of getting locked in to certain things that are very important to me.

But yet having shared them so many times, you say, “I’m not sure I want to do that.” But in light of the direction that it seems to me that God is working in our lives here, and in the healing process and the growth process, I really believe it’s taking place in some of our lives, I’m going to go ahead and do it, even though I’m somewhat reluctant to do it. And the area that I’m talking about is another facet of helping us grow, particularly in light of the family and what it means to be the family. And the right perspective that we should have on one another so that we can become strong as the family of God. And so please see this not as an effort to say you and I need to get beat upon, but to look at it in terms of the joy that is ours to grow in Christ as the family, to better reflect the nature of our Father. And the thing that I’m talking about is this issue of what cripples us so often in relationships. See, I’m really persuaded that Jesus sort of made a deal with us. He said, “Look, I’m going to take your humanity and I’m going to get before the Father and represent you with all of your mess.

“But I want you to take my Spirit in you and represent me in the world. And I want you to do that with power and with love.” And at the same time, He said, “Look, this is the deal. I’ve made you right with the Father and I’ve put you right with yourself and I’ve put you right with everyone else. At least for one millisecond in your life, I’ve done that. When you came to know me, in that instant, I put you right with the Father, right with yourself and right with other people. Now, I want you by the power of my Spirit to go and live in right relationships. I want you to maintain a right relationship with my Father. I want you to be right with yourself. And I want you to be right with your brothers and sisters in the family. I’m not asking you to do something you can’t do because I have equipped you by my Spirit to do it. And I want you to do it. Because there’s life in it.” Now, one of the things that I have found that hinders those relationships, being and becoming, all that God wants them to be and become, is an issue of expectations. The expectations that we have of one another, the expectations that people have of us, and the expectations that we have of ourselves.

That sometimes these expectations are totally out of whack. They’re not realistic, they’re unfair, and we end up putting one another under bondage. We put ourselves under bondage, even to the point of being debilitated because we don’t live up to our expectations of ourselves. That folks around us disappoint us because they don’t live up to ours. We disappoint them because we don’t live up to theirs. And all of a sudden, we’re separated and divided, and we’re not growing together. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that we’re just disappointed in one another. I don’t know how you are. Do you think you’ve ever disappointed anybody? I mean, look at me. When I get up in the morning and look in the mirror, you know, I gotta see this. I say, “Johnny, you never have become what I thought you’d be, you good looking thing.” I mean, you stand there and you say to yourself, “Don’t die. You’re too good to die. Look at you.” And then all of a sudden you really see what you’re looking at in the mirror and you say, “My God.”

I am not really living forever. Look at me. My body’s decaying. I mean, you sort of get disappointed even in yourself. You do not. And you have other people who never lived up to your expectation. You ever have any people like that? You didn’t mean to do it. You know what I mean? You just sort of had higher hopes for them than they had for themselves. Or even maybe they had the capacity of rising too, but that’s just what you had. And when they didn’t, you got disappointed, right? Have you ever had children in your own family sort of look at you and feel like you had disappointed them? That they had expected and you somehow didn’t deliver? And you knew in the heart of hearts they were disappointed? Happens, doesn’t it? Truth of the matter is, it’s going to happen, period. The bottom line is, the best we can do is to try to get our expectations in line with what’s fair.

Because it’s not wrong to have expectations, it’s wrong to have unfair expectations. One of the things I’ve had to repent of in recent days, having been touched in my heart of hearts with the sickness of my wife’s cat. I’ve had to repent because anybody who knows me for any length of time knows I don’t like cats. And having had to live with two in my house has just been a major achievement for me. Particularly with my wife’s cat, who at best is neurotic, but on her best days is just Pentecostal. But we find on some occasions that she’s just flat out a weird cat. And she understands that I don’t like her much. And I know she’s quite relieved to find me on the floor with her the other night, looking at her at 9 and praying for her at 2.45 in the morning. But the truth of the matter is, you know, I live in a house where I’ve had major revelations about cats. Because all my life, I’ve had people tell me, you know, you can live in a house with cats, have a clean house. And I know for the truth that that is a lie straight out of the pit of hell. You cannot have a house that’s clean if you have cats in it.

And I don’t, you know, old ears have tried not to defend anybody with this kind of theology. But the truth of the matter is, whenever you live in a house with cats, there are certain things you cannot do. And for example, when you bring people to your house and you feed them dinner and they’re expecting to eat off a clean table. You cannot have a cat in your house to have a clean table. Because the truth of the matter is, no matter how you wipe that table off, when you wipe it with a damp cloth, the fur just goes up in the air. And when you leave it just settles right back down. And you got these people in your house eating asparagus and kind of gagging on it. And they think it’s asparagus and it’s really a hairball.

And there’s truth. And so somehow, there is a need to understand that it’s okay not to like cats. And one of the stories I’ve repeated often about my wife’s cat is that her cat sleeps in the bed with us. And one of her great needs is to get down underneath the covers in between the two of us. And this is a kinky cat. I mean, in the middle of the night, you feel something weird happening down your back and you think, “Whoa.” But it’s really the cat just sort of doing whatever it is she does.

And every now and then this cat would make a mistake of getting on top of the covers and I’d pop it like that. A cat go up against the wall. And I feel sort of delivered for a moment or two. But the cat’s wise enough not to make that mistake very often. And when we lived down at Sneads Ferry, North Carolina, we lived in a tri-level house. And our bedroom was up on the third floor and down in the middle floor was where the kitchen was. And every morning the cat would get up early. And my wife is not a lady who likes to get up early. If you talk to Betty Jo before 10 in the morning, you are risking a lot of stuff. And she will stay up all night, but early in the morning is not a good time to talk. So that means we have a cat who belongs to her, but who gets up early, having slept in my bed. So that cat would get up early in the morning and go to the door, and make these unintelligible sounds, and expect somebody to come and open the door. Well, the cat in the process of the sounds that she was making would claw the carpet. So you know you can’t leave her there long or you have bought carpet.

But I also know the woman I’m sleeping with is not going to get up. So that if anybody is going to deal with the cat, it has to be me. And I don’t like the cat. Not early in the morning especially. But I got this gift of interpretation. And I know that what the cat is saying at the door is, “Somebody needs to get up and feed me.” Well, I don’t give a rip about whether the cat eats or not. To tell you the truth. But since it’s important to my wife, I’m willing to do whatever is necessary. Because she is important to me. So I get up and I let the cat out the door. And so while I’m up, I’m going to go downstairs to the Mr. Coffee and make me some coffee. But all the while I’m walking down the steps, the cat’s thinking, “He is going to feed me.” And I’m thinking, “Wrong.”

So when we get downstairs and walk past the pantry, the food for the cat, the Friskies Ocean Fish flavor, in the little baggie, it’s in there. I’m on my way to the Mr. Coffee. When we go past the pantry, the cat takes a left into the pantry. I keep going to the Mr. Coffee. Next thing I know, the cat has jumped up on the shelf and has grabbed the Ocean Fish flavor Friskies in her teeth and snatched it off the shelf and pulled it into the floor and is on it just gnawing away. Now what the cat is doing is that she’s saying, “I am disappointed in you. I was hungry and you fed me not. I expected and you didn’t produce.” And I’m saying, “Produce. Not on your bag.” But the truth is, the cat’s disappointed in me. So I learned very quickly that if I can’t keep my cat happy that belongs to my wife, I ain’t about to keep people happy. Understand? So my disappointing people really doesn’t bother me a whole lot. I would rather they didn’t get disappointed. But I have come to accept the reality that they’re going to be. Did you find that that’s true? Now I want to read some scripture for you just to prove to you I can read.

And, but it’s a passage that I honestly believe that the Lord gives us, that teaches us how to deal with people who disappoint us. Who do not live up to our expectations. I think biblically there are some principles that will allow us in the body to come in line in right relationships where we can deal better with people who disappoint us, deal with ourselves when we know we’ve disappointed other people, and deal with ourselves when we’ve disappointed ourselves. So that we can get expectations in line, so that we can be healthier and our relationships can be healthier. So that’s essentially what I’m going to do in the time I have to talk with you this morning. In a positive vein, right? Okay. Alright. Now, I have selected a passage of scripture here.

I always like to do this. They never let me read much in the church. They wouldn’t let me sing much either. They thought that I had limitations. Y’all relax. It ain’t that serious. Okay. Chapter one of Philippians. Now, when you read this, you need to read this with a sense of humor. I think we’d be a whole lot better off if we would take ourselves less seriously and Jesus more seriously. It would probably be a better world. And verse three, chapter one, Philippians. Now, when you see my wife, you tell her Johnny can read. But my Bible won’t hold together on me. You ever get a Bible that does that to you? Okay. This is Paul now. He’s writing to the church at Philippi. And having pastored churches, I just find this one absolutely remarkable passage of scripture. Writing to the church now. “I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.” Now, let me help you, honey. Now, isn’t that incredible? Now, isn’t that incredible? Do you hear that? Listen. He’s talking to a church, and I have pastored churches. And he’s saying, “I thank my God every time I remember you.”

“In all of my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.” Now, let me help you, honey. There are some pills in the body of Christ. There are some folks that irritate the pudding out of you before breakfast. There are folks that you go to church with every Sunday. You would just soon be in another part of the county. When Paul talks about the unpresentable parts deserving more honor, and talking about the different parts of the body being placed in the bodies that pleases the Father, you’re saying, “Uh-huh, let it please You, Father, but would You please put them in a part of the body that I cannot see, that I really don’t have to look at.” If we’re honest with one another, we’ve got to deal with the fact that there are people in our fellowships that we flat out don’t care for, whose behavior is out of the pit, whose attitudes stink to high heaven. Do y’all? Does that ever happen to you?

And the first time I read that I said, “Paul, you’re lying to me.” But what you discover if you read that passage is that Paul had settled down the path of God. He told something in his spirit that it would help us to settle if we’re going to deal with folk in the body and press in the right relationships and deal with expectations. He goes on to say, “I have this confidence that the one who began the good work in you, He will bring that work to completion.” Now people, that is an absolutely critical issue when we start dealing with the expectations that we have of other people. To understand that that person that we’re looking at, regardless of their personality, disposition, or behavior, that that person is not our project. To realize that the results of that person’s life and growth, their productivity in the kingdom, their fruitfulness to God, all of that is not our business.

We have a confidence. We didn’t begin the good work in them, and we ain’t gonna complete the good work in them. Now if they’re unsaved, our role is to pray and believe that the good work will be begun. With the understanding that when it’s begun, they are their Father’s project, not ours. And I don’t know about you, I’ve had enough people in the body of Christ treat me as their project. I ain’t really thrilled about it. And I don’t really feel the need to make anybody else my project. That doesn’t mean I don’t love them, don’t care for them, don’t pray for them, don’t do all I can do to enable them to become everything God created them to be. But it ain’t my job to make it so. You understand? Let me help you relax a little bit here. That husband you’ve been living with, he may be everything you see him as, but it ain’t your job to make him into anything else. It’s your job to love him and loose him, and let God do the work in him that needs to be done. Y’all still with me? Just a tad. Uh-huh. My wife, you don’t know the years I spent trying to say, “Get your hips out of bed.

“Don’t sleep late in the morning. Go to bed at night, baby. If you can’t get up in the morning, it’s obvious you’re missing sleep. Go to bed.” Till finally I have to say, “Excuse me, this is draining my relationship. All I’m doing is stirring a hornet. This is not going to help me.” Finally I have to come in line and say, “Hey, it’s all right, baby. I’ll go to bed late with you. Because I don’t mind getting up early. But when I get tired, I’m going to bed without you, or I’m going to go to bed and just read, or whatever, you do what you’re going to do, but I’m going to loose you, because whatever it is in you that makes you like this, I can’t fix it. So if you don’t mind, I’m going to turn you over to the one who made you, because He’s the only one that knows the purposes for which He made you, and He’s the only one that can bring you in line with Him. So if you don’t mind, I’m going to loose you. You are no longer my project.”

Now, one of the critical issues in this thing is reversing some of the bad stuff that we picked up in our Christian growth. And I’m going to submit this to you, and I don’t want you to be offended with me. And if you don’t agree with me, please understand, you’re not by yourself. The other folks that don’t agree with me. So I set you free just to be an absolute defiant disagreement, if you like. But let me submit this to you. One of the reasons that we have such difficulty dealing with this passage, and in practicality, living this passage out when we’re dealing with the expectations that we have of other people, is because we have bought into the lie that I’m persuaded came straight out of the pit of hell, that tolerance is a Christian virtue. I want you to understand tolerance is not a Christian virtue.

You were never called by God to put up with me. And I was never called by God to put up with you. I was called by God to accept you as you are. And you were called by God to accept me as I am. Tolerance, defined, is that distance between two pieces of metal that allows them to stay away from one another, not cause friction.

You alright? Now if the objective in the body of Christ is harmony, then just learning to stay away from one another just so far that we don’t cause friction with one another, is not bringing harmony. It’s allowing the enemy to have enough difference between us that he can get in there and cause disruptiveness in the body. You alright? Help me now.

Did I say you were a bad person because you’ve grown up saying tolerance is a good thing? I didn’t even say tolerance is a bad thing. I just said it ain’t a Christian virtue. Acceptance is a Christian virtue. We alright?

You’d be in bad shape if God just looked at you and said, “You’re a mess but I’m just going to put up with you.” And that’s how we deal with people in the body of Christ. “That’s just Sally, man. She gets that way about every three months. Leave her alone, she’ll get over it.” No, that ain’t alright. Let’s accept Sally as she is as a person, but let’s understand that there are things in Sally that need to be dealt with so she won’t be like that every three months. But understand that we’re not the ones that can deal with it, but if we’ll pray for Sally and submit her to the Lord and begin to love her as she is, we might discover that God can use us as an instrument to set her free. You alright?

I’ll tell you all I’m excited about this. The aspect of dealing with folks who have disappointed us is getting a handle on the fact that we cannot fix people. And one of the problems that I came up with growing as I did without a father was that I grew with such a need to please my father that by the time I had children, one of the greatest objectives that I had in life was to be a good father. And one of the greatest fears I had was that I would fail as a father. And when you come into a family like Betty Jo and mine, she’s an only child. Grew up in a family where there was very little affection. Great people, but just didn’t know how to communicate that emotionally to her. She’s an only child. I grew up as an only child. My father leaves my mom and is killed. I don’t get to know him. Mama doesn’t remarry, so I never have a daddy in the household. And all of a sudden, we’re married and we have a baby. And you look at that thing laying in the crib and you say, “My God, what is that?”

I mean, it spits at you. It screams and hollers in weird hours of the night. John had this kidney colic or whatever and projectile spitting. And you would feed that sucker and you could be all the way across the room and he’d get you. And if he’s wet, he screams. If the pin’s loose and sticking him, he screams. If he’s messy, he screams. If he’s hungry, he screams. All he does is scream. And I’m looking at it thinking, “I ain’t never seen nothing like this.” And I’m wondering, do you fix it just by slapping it up against the wall? What do you do with this thing? And I got a wife who ain’t about to get up at 2 in the morning. 3 in the morning. 4 in the morning. So the person who ends up having to get up 2, 3, 4 in the morning is Johnny. And I didn’t even have that thing.

Got to where in our relationship I’m saying, “Boy, you really fixed me. You dunk this little sucker on me and here you go off to sleep.” I had expected that she would be a mama instantly when that baby came. And I’m quite sure that she expected that I would be a father. And the truth was, neither one of us knew what that was.

So working with John was an experiment, you know what I mean? But what we have had to learn from God through that boy all of our lives has probably been, if not the most significant thing God has taught us, certainly has been one of the most significant things that God has taught us. God has taught us through John over and over and over again. You cannot fix people.

But wanting to be a good father, my concept finally of a good father was a good father fixes everything. I’m not quite sure whether it was my daughter or my wife who finally looked me in the eye one day after I was going absolutely bonkers trying to pastor a church and said, “Johnny, you are not the father of the world. You cannot fix all of these people.” But in my mind, being a father meant, “Make it okay. Fix it.” But through John, very painfully, I had to learn, I can’t, I really can’t do it. This is the same boy that after, you know, seven years of his sabbatical from his brain, when he had done what he was going to do and had moved in with a young lady within a block and a house, a block and a half of my house, where we were getting the gist of the fact that he wanted to make sure that nobody confused him with his evangelist daddy.

That we had done all we could do to try to bring him back to the kingdom, done all we could do to right the behavior in his life, done all we could do to drag him away from this Philistine woman and to get him away from this grip that he was tied into in terms of immorality. That finally one night we’re over there where he is in the house with this woman, a house in which I had gone on several occasions and drug him bodily out of. That we’re over there on that particular night, middle of the night, walking around the house seven times, and standing out in the middle of the street, me and my little conservative wife, just screaming, “Hallelujah!”

“Thank You, Jesus! Glory to God! Hallelujah!” Had the local mounted police been around, would have locked us up. And finally standing there in the middle of the street, I’m looking at Betty Jo, she’s looking at me, and I finally say to Betty Jo, “Betty Jo, we really can’t fix him. We have to let him go. We really do have to release John.” And we stood there gripped hands, looked at one another, I prayed the hardest prayer I ever prayed in my life, when I said, “Lord, it really is not important that John come home to us. We would like him to, but if he never does, the important issue, Lord, is that we want You to bring him home to Yourself. Whatever You have to do, You do. Just don’t kill him.”

And we released him. And in our own lives that night, it was like we finally understood we can’t fix John. The one who started the good work in him at the age of 10, He will be faithful. It was a matter of trusting again. It was a matter of letting go again. It was a matter of acknowledging that God’s word is true. And so we did. We released him. Two weeks later, he did come home. He was emotionally broken, physically broken, but he came home.

And within two weeks, he came back to the Lord. And within three months, he received the baptism in the Holy Spirit. And three months after that, he was overseeing a youth group. And then when that youth group he took in November, began to grow by January of that following year, he had 120 some kids in a youth group. And today he’s in Bible college in New York.

But it has to do with us understanding that despite the pain of the disappointment, and despite the brokenness that had to come in us and watching him disappoint us really, not because we would stop loving him or because he could keep us from wanting the best for him, but because it hurt to watch him have less than what we knew God wanted him to have. And to be less than what we knew he could be in the Lord. But in the process, we did have to understand there were expectations that we individually had of him that were not fair. Where I had really tried to mold him into some things that I really, if you had said to me, “You’ve done that,” I would have said, “No, I didn’t.”

But despite all of that, when we finally did understand we can’t fix him, and we released him to the one who began the good work in him, He then began the completion of that work in an incredible way. So what I’m submitting to you is, we cannot fix people. There is great pain when they disappoint us. But I want to tell you something. Your major role as a parent or a grandparent or a brother or a sister in the body is to do all you know to do to get out of the way so that that one that you really care for can meet the one who created them, and then release them to the one who created them that He then can do the good work in them that needs to be done. You have a role to play, to pray for them, to intercede, to be loving, to be there. You also have a role to play when there is a need for accountability. We did a lot of things wrong with John. One of the things that we did do right with John was that we held him accountable for his actions. Wasn’t pleasant all the time. Didn’t make him feel that he was loved all the time. But bottom line, we could not allow him to skate free from being accountable.

You understand what I’m saying? That doesn’t have to be trying to fix them. That just is a responsibility you have. You alright? The wife who is dealing with an alcoholic who calls his hand when he lies to her is not necessarily trying to fix him. She’s just holding him accountable. She doesn’t have to get wrapped up in trying to fix him. She can just say, “Excuse me, that’s a lie. That’s not true.” Now you can deal with it that way if you want to, but bottom line is, that’s not true. Just accountability. You alright?

Okay. Can I move on to the next part now? Some of you think I should have a few minutes ago. Okay. What do we do with ourselves when we know we disappoint people? How do we deal with that? And how do we deal with the folks who are really disappointed in us? How do we do that? I think there’s a simple way to do it. I think it’s very critical that we take a look at that because truth of the matter is, you and I are never going to measure up. Not to the expectations of our children even at times, or even our parents. There are lots of people in the body of Christ today who are still absolutely debilitated because they never became what their parents expected them to become. I have an uncle today. One of my sons is named after him. Won’t even talk with me because I never became what he thought ought to be. I think that’s tragic. But I have to deal with that. I have to deal with the fact that somebody that I love deeply, enough even to name one of my sons after, will not even speak with me. I have to deal with that. And I know that they’re disappointed. And it’s painful. That is not without pain.

But there’s a way biblically to deal with that. And I want to submit to you that one of the passages that helps us comes out of Matthew 11. And it has to do with the time that Jesus is being confronted by disciples of John who have been sent by John while John is in prison, that John has been locked up.

Jesus’ fame throughout the land is spreading. And folks are excited about the miracles that He’s working. And His name is being lifted up. But John is in prison. This is the same John that stood there and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God takes away the sins of the world.” It’s the same John who loved Jesus with such passion that in John 3 when he’s told that Jesus is baptizing more folks than he’s baptizing and the people are looking at John and saying, “What’s he going to do about that?” John says, “My joy is made complete just to hear His voice. I don’t have to be in the front lines. I don’t even have to be in the bridal party. I just want to be a friend of the bridegroom.” He had a love for Jesus that was absolutely incredible. And they had a wedding together in the spirit realm that was straight from the heart of God. He was anointed from his mama’s womb with the Holy Ghost. He was a powerful man of the spirit. But here’s John in prison sending his disciples to Jesus saying, “Will you ask Him if He’s the one that He says He is? If He’s the one we’re looking for? Or do we need to look for somebody else?”

Now what John is saying to Jesus is, “I am disappointed in You. I’m in prison and You ain’t even been to see me. You out there doing Your stuff. I’m in here locked up. I got no way to do anything.” John is in a six by eight prison cell and John is depressed. And John is disappointed in Jesus. You alright? Let me help you. If somebody is disappointed in you, you in good company.

You cannot live up to the expectations of people around you. The only person who has the right to expect all things of you is the one who made you. And the reason that He can expect all things from you is because He never requires anything of you that He doesn’t first give you.

That if He expects righteousness out of you, He gives it to you in the person of Christ Jesus. If He expects holiness, He not only deposits it in you, but He by His Spirit will cause it to live through you. He can expect anything He wants to from you because He can supply it for you.

But anybody less than Him cannot do that. Y’all alright? Is it too early for this? Y’all working with me? I’m going to quit in a minute, but please hear me. When they come to Jesus with these words of John, and say, “John? I mean, Jesus, John wants to know.” And I would imagine they probably said, “It ain’t us. This is not our question. This is John’s question. John wants to know. Are You the one? Or does he need to look for somebody else?” And it’s interesting to watch what Jesus does with this. Now here’s somebody that Jesus deeply loves. Has tremendous respect for. Was His forerunner. Was His cousin, if you will. This is somebody He cares about. His response is, “You guys go back and tell John what you see.” Remember that, that word to see meaning apprehend, lay hold of, take unto yourself is real. He said, “You go back and tell John the reality.”

“Tell John that the lame are walking, that the blind are recovering their sight, that the lepers are being cleansed. You go back and tell John that the good news is being preached to the poor.” And then He says, one of the most incredible statements that you find anywhere in the whole of the Old and New Testaments, when He says, “Blessed is the man who does not stumble on account of me.”

That is an incredible statement. But it’s wrapped up in how Jesus was dealing with the disappointment of somebody that He loved who was greatly disturbed by what Jesus did not do. Jesus was simply saying to John, “John, I am exactly who I told you I was. Because I am about the business of doing what my Father has sent me to do. And John, it would be good for you if you would get your eyes off of John and get your eyes back on the reality of who I am.” Critical now. The thing that Jesus did in order to handle the disappointment of somebody who loved Him was Jesus was secure in His own identity. And Jesus knew that in order to be His Father’s Son He had to be about His Father’s business.

That His identity was wrapped up in doing what He was sent to do. If you will, it was wrapped up in being who He was as His Father’s Son. Now people, this may not seem like the most significant thing in the world to you this morning. Please hear me.

What tears at us are the opinions of people. The expectations of people. What we often long for are the praises of people. The affirmation of people. But you got to understand, our identity is never derived from who people say we are. It’s never derived from what people expect us to do. It’s never even derived from what we do. What we do comes out of who we are. Our identity comes out of the knowledge that through the blood of the Lamb we have been justified before the Father. We have been born from above. We’re not of this world. We are of the kingdom of God. And we bottom line are our Father’s children.

And our identity then is coming from who we are in Christ Jesus. Jesus always defined Himself by who He was, not by what He had. Jesus never says, “I got a little resurrection, won’t you come get some? I got a little healing, come get some.” Jesus says, “I am resurrection. I am the light of the world. I am the life. I am the truth. I am the way. That’s who I am. I am my Father’s Son. And these things I do, I only do because I saw my Father do them. They’re His works. The words I speak aren’t mine, they’re His. My meat is to do the will of the one who sent me. My identity is, I am my Father’s Son, and what I do comes out of who I am. Take a look, John. See what I’m doing.”

Now that might appear to be insensitive to John’s plight. But let me tell you something. Jesus understood that ultimately John’s very existence depended on Him, Jesus, being who He was. And being about His Father’s business. Do you understand?

And what I’m submitting to you is this. If you get your identity rooted and grounded in who you are as a child of God, take that identity from who Jesus says you are, and then set out to be about your Father’s business, there will always be people, even those who are closest to you, who will be disappointed that you didn’t do this or do that.

But if doing this or doing that requires you to stop being your Father’s son or your Father’s daughter, then you have really cheated the person. Are you all still listening to me? Because the salvation of the body in terms of right relationships is to be found in each one of us and you’ll be robbed of your identity if you’re listening to your own expectations of yourself. What you are looking for is what is it that pleases your Father? And what must you do to get in line with that?

I find it absolutely hilarious for myself at times trying to maintain what my Father wants me to do. Because I find myself, for example, in charismatic circles where I’m not spiritual enough. I find myself in mainline churches where I’m too spiritual. I find myself with people who want me to flop on the floor and grin and giggle and holler. I find folks over here get offended if I snicker. And the truth of the matter is I just want to do what my Father wants me to do. Y’all alright with me? Just a little bit? And if I gotta live between their expectations, honey, I am in a world of trouble. You talking about being schizophrenic, man.

The hardest walk is to understand that truth is never liberal nor conservative. Truth is just truth. Truth is never charismatic. Truth is never fundamentalist. Truth is just truth. Bottom line, truth is Jesus. And it is in Him we take our identity and our responsibility is not get terribly disappointed in ourselves. Not be terribly frustrated if folks get disappointed in us. And not to be bound up by being disappointed in other people. But to hear our Father’s voice come in line with who He’s called us to be as His children. And the best we know, be obedient to what we hear. And I promise you people, you gonna make some folks glad, you gonna make some folks sad. Some folk gonna make you glad, some folk gonna make you sad. You gonna be pleased with yourself time, sometimes, and sometimes you not gonna be pleased with yourself. I’m sure you’ve experienced this. There are times when I know that my Father has had me do things that disappointed me because I had higher hopes for me than He did.

You understand? But His thoughts, they’re not mine. Except when, by the Spirit, I get the mind of Christ. And His ways, they’re different from mine, because somehow His thoughts are higher, and His ways then turn out to be different. But bottom line is, if I can maintain the identity that I have in Him, then I can deal with the fact that others are disappointed, and even, at times, that I’m disappointed in myself, because I know that the world didn’t give me this identity, and they can’t take it away. I know I didn’t give it to me. I know He did. We all right? Neat thing.

“Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.” One of the greatest difficulties that we have in the Christian community is that sometimes we’re being absolutely obedient to our Father, and people that we love most do not understand.

And oftentimes will say to us that we are a stumbling block to them. They don’t mean to be ugly. They just don’t understand. And I really think that the greatest pain that my Lord had as He walked His land was folks just didn’t understand. That His motivations were questioned. They just didn’t understand. You all right?

Expectations. It’s okay to have them. Just try to make them fair. And when folks don’t measure up, you don’t measure up, or you don’t measure up with yourself, please understand, there is a way to understand it ain’t your job to fix folks. It ain’t your job to make them over anything. They’re not your project. Truth of the matter is, you’re not even your project.

You’re not yours anymore. You belong to your Father. You’ve been bought with a price. You are His project. And I thank You, Jesus, that a lot of people I know in the body do not have the final word on me.

And I am thankful that I haven’t been my own project because I would have turned out quite differently if I’d have been able to do with myself what I wanted to do with me. Does that make sense to you? You’re all the wonderful people. Well, listen, I could stand up here and beat this around for a long time, but I think I’ve said to you what I want to say to you. And I appreciate you hearing it. Y’all are neat people. And Sharon, you did good, darling. I am so proud of you. You hung in there, baby.

I had assured her if I put her to sleep, I’d wake her up. So I kept watching her to make sure that she’s hanging in there. She did good. I want y’all to know that. It got close. I saw you a couple times. I knew I was going to have to go down like that, but I did good. Don’t feel bad, baby. I promise you, it’s okay. But she did good. I’m through. What do we do?

You’re dismissed. We’re going to rhythms. And this is the first sentence.