Probably our biggest frustrations come from not having our expectations met.

We expect things of ourselves, and then we fail to meet our goals. We expect things of others and then they fail to follow through. We expect things of our churches, our friends, and our families and then people fail to meet the expectations we have. This quickly leads us to feeling disappointment, discouragement, and even at times, depression.

Many of us retort, “I will never let anyone hurt me again.” We vow to no longer expect things of other people and even come to the conclusion that “I’ll never go to church again”, or “all men are pigs”, or we say nothing and just feel numb. We are then tempted to lower the call.

What do I mean by “lower the call?” We say things like, “God doesn’t desire us to be perfect, but to only do our best.” We think that the answer is improvement. We think that if we just do a little better than we did the week before we will be in good shape. But we still end up disappointed, we have this great sense inside us that the world should be better, we should be further along, others shouldn’t drop the ball the way they do.

Jesus seemed to have this dance with the disciples (and with anyone that he walked with) where he would make the call as high as possible. He told people to go and sell all they have and come and follow him. He told people that they should take up their cross and follow him. Jesus told people that they had to be PERFECT and HOLY. He did not lower the call. He left it SKY HIGH. God’s kingdom MUST come on earth as it is in heaven. Your neighborhood should be like heaven. This isn’t a low call. Your workplace should be like heaven. Your marriage should be like the love of Jesus for his bride the church… seriously! That’s impossible.

So Jesus forgave the woman caught in adultery. Told her she was forgiven, FREE, not going to pay for her sin. And then he told her to go and NEVER SIN AGAIN. NEVER. Easy right? I give her until Tuesday.

Jesus told the disciples to take up their crosses, to eat his flesh and drink his blood, and to give up everything to follow him and then he looked around sort of shocked that they were still around. “Oh, you guys are still here? Well… what do you want to do tonight?” “You guys aren’t going to leave too?” They responded with, “where else would we go, you alone have the words of life.”

This is the tension we should walk in when we are discipling people. We are calling others to the kingdom of God, to perfection, to the ways of Jesus, to heavenly living. We MUST, however, expect people to be screwups and sinners (just like us). Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, discipleship 101.. Don’t lower the call. Don’t make it a little bit of improvement. That’s just self-righteousness and moralism in a fancy jacket. We MUST RAISE THE CALL TO AN UNREACHABLE LEVEL. That’s what Jesus did. We shoot for the stars. We call people to live the life that Jesus lived and then expect them to be little devils in need of the grace of God.

Grace is the only card in the deck and we must play it in every hand. So don’t dumb down the call. Don’t make Christianity light and weak. But lower your expectations. People will fall short of perfection every day, 20 times a day and they’ll run back to a God of Grace who will complete the work in them that he started long ago. High Call, Low Expectation… this is the dance of relationships while we live in this tent.