What’s Up Wednesdays

What’s Up Wednesdays

What’s up with thinking that every time you crack open the Bible or pray, God’s going to move mountains?

I mean, does anyone else struggle with unrealistic expectations about what will happen if you have ‘quiet time’? Last week my small group of girls were talking about performance anxiety when it comes to quiet time. Like it’s gotta be this big deal, and we’d better hear the voice of God, or:

1. we are disappointed in ourselves for generally sucking, which is unhelpful considering we probably were having quiet time ’cause we already felt crappy.

2. we are disappointed in God for letting us down.

But here’s the deal: God doesn’t seem to make a pattern of speaking incessently & relentlessly to his people. I was studying 1 samuel this week and I was amazed that King Saul ruled for 40 years. In my head, I thought he messed up, found David, got jealous of David, hated David, tried to kill David, and then got wounded in battle and killed himself.

That is all true, but my version was more like the length of a Grey’s Anatomy season, not an entire lifetime. I guess the fact that forty years was crammed into four or so chapters of the bible made it seem–well, action-packed.

So what’s up with that? Are we doing ourselves a disservice by expecting too much of God? Do you struggle with big assumptions of what your ‘quiet time’ should look like, be like, feel like?