Embrace the Partial

(From John Eldredge's Hope in the Coming Kingdom CDs:)

"I am sick of goodbye.  I hate it.  I really hate it.  It's absolutely brutal how your life can change with one goodbye.

 Jesus says, 'I've come to heal the broken heart.'  The Kingdom heals.  

And yet, that's the temptation when you're in it with disappointment, loss, unrealized dreams - to shut part of your heart down and pack it away...

We give up on relationship because it is partial.

We give up on friendship because it is partial.

We give up on work or on our calling because it is partial."

He talks a lot in this CD about "embracing the partial" ...to understand that this life is partial and incomplete, and no earthly thing can fully satisfy our hearts.  That is big for me, because I tend to be an all or nothing person, but there is no reason to give up on something good just because it is not perfect or everything I hoped it would be... (including myself and my life, friendships, family, life dreams, etc.  Nothing here will ever be perfection, and if I embrace that, I'll have a lot more joy and rest and grace for what is happening in the present!)  It really helps me to acknowledge that, but it would be completely disheartening without the belief that full restoration is coming later!

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In day-to-day life, what are you hoping for these days??

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Most of the things we hope for here are good but very temporal.  But we can take all of our hopes and put them in a larger context through faith, knowing that God is faithful and He is planning a wonderful future and hope for us -- and if we don't see the fulfillment of our God-given desires here, we will see them in heaven!

"Set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed."  ~1 Peter 1:13

"When you lose any real sense of anticipation of the Kingdom coming, you go looking for something to ease that ache... all of your attachments and addictions are narcotics for the Kingdom heart.  Mostly what we do is we go to survival mode, striving and indulging.  Your survival mode is extraordinarily damaging, whatever it is - it is godless - it is literally how we do life without God.  It typically looks like shutting down most of your desires, shrinking them to a size that something in this world can fill, and scrambling to try to keep control of your life.

The Kingdom is calling to you through all these other things, and that's what allows you to hold them with an open hand.

We live in a brutal world, but we have to get our hearts back and we have to get our hope back!  And in order to get there, you have to be honest about where you've gone and where you're camped right now...  

Paul says in Romans 15:13, "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit."  This is not about bucking up or generating some hope for ourselves.  It's just that we need to come to Jesus with these things and break the agreements we've been making, to give our Kingdom hearts back to Him and take them away from the idols and narcotics we've set up."
~John Eldredge

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Have you tried to fit in by shutting down your heart or shrinking your desires?

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Ask Jesus to show you the "agreements" you've made about His Kingdom... about hope.  (And as He shows you, break them.)