How does this apply to our situation?

[Anonymous]

this is why i make no goals, have no expectations, and don’t seek for anything out of the church and its promises.

[Anonymous]

I make goals – but am willing to change or scrap them if life gives me different outcomes.

I have no expectations – except effort, and even that can’t be judged perfectly.

I don’t seek anything from the Church except a place for me to gather and commune. Everything else is gravy – and the primary responsibility for everything rests with me.

I try to live my life with a clear recognition that “I am” – so I deal with “this is” and trust life/God to lead me to what will be. An important part of what is for me occurs as a result of my church membership, and a huge part of who I am is a result of the paradigm I learned growing up in the Church – but, as I’ve said more than once, I have been an oddball since as long as I can remember, so not fitting in isn’t an issue for me. I am who I am, and I can testify of how liberating and empowering that is. I am not defined by others, including not being defined by opposition to others.

I simply am.

[Anonymous]

I like Ray’s point on changing goals if they don’t happen. I believe that’s it good to find a balance between just being happy with the way things are and setting goals. I believe that’s what Christ did.

[Anonymous]

Making goals can be a way to organize a group (or family) towards something shared, and can be motivating. But it is a double edged sword, since the outcomes are not entirely in our control, and therefore you need to have managed expectations on being OK with the outcomes, even if it isn’t success.

As Brian put it, it is being happy with what you get. But it does not need to be passive.

Some say that the outcome is God’s will. Wayfarer might say the outcome is the way or the flow. And we can learn to accept the way things happen, without trying to force things to our way in order to be happy.

[Anonymous]

The outcome is God’s will (or, as cwald would say, the gods’ will), if we accept that we are gods and that the kingdom of God can be among us.

[Anonymous]

Ilovechrist77 wrote:

That’s hard to do because so much of what we’re taught to do in church is to have faith for certain outcomes.

I like to make the distinction that some people in the church would promote what they themsleves believe — that we should look for particular outcomes as a result of our faith. Nobody knows the mind of God, even if we receive authentic revelation our interpretation of that revelation will always be limited by our human comprehension. Another way to say this is:

Quote:

In church we never have to limit ourselves by what other people think.

[Author]

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