In his book, “A Resilient Life”, Gordon MacDonald recounts his desire to run track for the Stony Brook School. The demanding coach, Marvin Goldberg, was not impressed with Gordon’s great natural talent as it was undisciplined and untested. Gordon waited for weeks for his name to be posted on the bulletin board as one selected for the team and then one day he heard his name called. Not Gordon but Gordie.

‍“Upon hearing my new name, I headed in Goldberg’s direction. He was standing next to the white bulletin board. When I reached him, Goldberg put his hand on my shoulder and began to speak. As best as I can recall his words after all these years, he said,“Gordie, I’ve been watching you carefully. I think you have the potential to be an excellent runner. You have a runner’s body and a natural stride. And you are fast. But you have much to learn. If you are to compete for Stony Brook, you’re going to have to work hard. You’ll have to learn to discipline yourself, and it will mean that you have to trust me and follow my instructions. Every day you will have to come to this track and complete the workouts that will be listed on this board. Now, Gordie (the coach repeated one’s name often), don’t commit to this if you are not willing to give it everything you have.” And then he posed this question, “Gordie, are you willing to pay the price it takes to become a Stony Brook trackman?”

The Apostle Paul was a demanding coach as well. Not only on the new believers but for himself even moreso. In several places he describes the pressure that is on him to bring them to maturity for presenting them to Christ as holy. It’s painfully clear that Paul’s sense of the ultimate worth of his life’s work depends on his doing just that. His hopes and expectations for the churches are bound up with his evaluation of himself as an apostle.

‍“Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may be blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life. And then I will be able to boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor in vain.”

Paul walked a fine line between putting too much pressure on the churches to be perfect, flawless, without spot and be, as he puts it, like virgins, but at the same time giving them grace and patience. I have no doubt he did it, especially when he would stay and live with them. Still, I think how anxious I would have become reading letters from him knowing that his expectations of me were so tied up with his expectations of his own ministry. It was a heavy load for Paul and the churches to bear.

‍It’s Not Inspiration 

On the other hand, too many of us have substituted inspiration for expectation. We look to Scripture, teaching, preaching and other sources for encouragement, comfort and uplift but not to be saddled with genuine expectations. Sometimes we come to church or turn to Scripture for release from expectations and want inspiration alone. To live with only inspiration and no expectation is to be shallow and dependent on the next boost of often out of context quotes or cherry picked verses. Clearly, Paul was not as interested in the momentary relief of inspiration as he was in expectations.

Someone who inspires you is different from the one creating expectations for you. We can be inspired by stories, articles in the paper, biographies of courageous men and women, and a host of other sources we come across. But expectations are different. They are deeper and have a way of setting the course of our lives. Those who assign expectations in our earliest years have a disproportionate influence on the kind of people we turn out to be. Expectations create the sense of being accountable to someone while inspiration is a spirit rousing example or a gust of enthusiasm. Those who create healthy expectations in our lives do not raise the bar so high we can never vault it or make us feel we are failures if we are not always winners. They are like Marvin Goldberg in reaching into some part of our life and leaving an imprint with a word, an act or a picture of who we might be if we are willing to pay the price. You are indeed fortunate if there is someone to whom you can point and say, “That person did more than inspire me. They created an expectation that I have wanted to live up to somehow. They helped shape me.”