Wrong Expectations — When the Dream You Wanted Isn't the Life You Needed

Most of us carry a picture in our head of what a good life is supposed to look like. The marriage. The kids who turn out right. The career that finally clicks. The bank account that lets us breathe. And somewhere underneath all of it, quietly, we've decided that if God is really good, He'll get us there.

Then life doesn't cooperate. The marriage gets hard. The kid walks away. The job falls through. The diagnosis comes back. And we're left holding a question we don't always say out loud: God, I thought You wanted to bless me. So what is this?

This past Sunday, Paul Reichart walked us through Psalm 16:11 — "You will show me the way of life, granting me the joy of your presence and the pleasures of living with you forever." And he said something worth sitting with: God really does want to bless you. That part is true. We just tend to get the blessing wrong.

Here's the trap. God wants to bless us, and we agree — but then we quietly decide the lesser blessings are the whole point. The comfortable life. The answered prayer. The dream exactly the way we drew it up. Those things aren't bad; God gives good gifts. But when a gift becomes the point, it starts to compete with the Giver. And a God who loves us too much to let us settle will not leave us there.

That's the hard part to hear. In his book Shattered Dreams, Larry Crabb put it this way: sometimes God goes to work by letting our lesser dreams shatter. He lets us hurt and doesn't rush in to fix it — not because He's distant, but because He's leading us somewhere. Down into the center of our own soul, to the place where we finally feel what we were made for. And there, in the ache, we discover a desire we didn't know was buried under all the other wants: a desire for God Himself.

Live enough life and you'll find that's true. Some of the seasons we would never choose again are the exact seasons that made God real to us. Not because the pain was good — it wasn't — but because when everything we were leaning on gave way, He was still standing there. The blessing wasn't the thing we lost. The blessing was Him.

Notice what Psalm 16 actually promises. Not an easy road. It promises joy in His presence and pleasures at His right hand — a blessing that doesn't rise and fall with our circumstances. That's a blessing no shattered dream can touch.

So here's the honest question. What are you holding so tightly that you've quietly made it the point? What dream are you asking God to protect at all costs, when maybe He's trying to give you something better than the dream itself? It's not that He doesn't care about the things you love. He does. It's that He loves you enough not to let a good thing become the best thing.

If you're in a shattered-dream season right now, hear this: you are not being punished, and you are not alone. God is near to the brokenhearted. The pain you're in might be the very doorway to the joy you were actually made for. Don't spend it all trying to get your old dream back — let it lead you to Him. And if life is good right now, thank God and hold it with open hands. Enjoy every bit of it. Just don't build your whole soul on it. The gifts are wonderful. The Giver is better.

One concrete step this week: name the thing. Get honest with God about the dream you've been clinging to, and tell Him you want Him more than you want it. It's a hard prayer. It's also the beginning of the only joy that lasts.

We'd love to have you join us on Sunday.