{"id":379,"date":"2018-12-05T09:46:23","date_gmt":"2018-12-05T17:46:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/migrate.bettersermons.org\/?p=379"},"modified":"2020-06-01T11:39:32","modified_gmt":"2020-06-01T18:39:32","slug":"not-surprised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/not-surprised\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Surprised"},"content":{"rendered":"
Not Surprised<\/span><\/div>\n

\".\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
“God expects more failure from us than we do from ourselves because God knows who we are. We are not the righteous person who occasionally sins, we are the sinful person who occasionally–by God’s grace–gets it right. When we start\u00a0 from this perspective we are released from the bondage of perfectionism and are able\u00a0 to forgive ourselves once and for all.”<\/p>\n

–James Bryan Smith
\n<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

In other words, God isn’t surprised by our failures. He wants us to grow through them so that we learn from our mistakes, but they are not our identity any more than we identify our children by their mistakes. We are Christians in the making, half-baked and unfinished. God is in the finishing business. If we let Him, in His time and way He will “work in us to will and to do His good pleasure.”
\n________________________________________
\n
\nComments by Rich DuBose.\u00a0BetterSermons \u00a9 2009. All rights reserved. Use of this material is subject tousage guidelines<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0View main index<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not Surprised “God expects more failure from us than we do from ourselves because God knows who we are. We are not the righteous person who occasionally sins, we are …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":380,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions\/380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}