May God Crush Your Expectations

We were already 40 mins away from home when I realized I had forgotten all my car documents and personal documents, passport, driver’s license, etc.

There was no time to turn around, I had a van load of people and we were on our way to our long-planned church leaders conference in Bila Tserkva, I’d just have to trust that God would take care of me for the next 3-4 hours on the road.

It’s a good thing that God doesn’t tell us everything that’s going to happen. If he did we’d probably shy away from doing a lot of the work God has called us to do.

So guess what, the police didn’t stop me and we all made it to Bila Tserkva safely and on time to the conference!

The evening before the conference started we had a special meal with our guest speaker Dr. Michael Loftis. I didn’t know I was going to be the designated translator for his talk that evening.

I wasn’t really ready and probably wouldn’t have agreed if they asked me earlier, but there I was, so I translated.

I didn’t expect that God would use me in that way but he did and everyone left with a blessing that night.

100 more people showed up that we expected. Thank God for crushing that expectation!

I spoke on discipleship in the context of the family and the importance of focusing on the heart of the child. I didn’t expect for fathers and grandfathers twice my age to come and tell me how helpful my session was.

We made many new contacts for our institute that we hadn’t expected.
I met one of our online students for the first time in real life, I didn’t expect that.
I didn’t expect to hear such heartfelt prayers from men for their families and children.
I didn’t expect Pastor Fedor from Eastern Ukraine war zone set my heart on fire as he shared about the need for prayer and their church’s experience when their city was overtaken by Russian forces.
I didn’t expect many of the blessings God gave during our conference. I’m grateful that he often crushes my expectations and in exchange gives me something better.