Filling the Gap: Comparison and the Holidays
In their final episode for the holidays, Fellowship's counseling department looks at dealing with expectations, filling our needs, and turning to God with our desires.
Matt leads Katie, Tara, and Kevin into their discussion of loving family well during the holidays.
Kevin begins by talking about expectations and anxiety. He references how we are told in Scripture that God is the only thing in our life that will never change; He is our constant.
Matt jumps in and shares that we have to be careful to not remove all our hope when we remove some of our expectations. Katie discloses that when we put a lot of expectations on someone, we are putting pressure on that relationship. Kevin points out that Jesus had an expectation that His disciples would help Him in Gethsemane, but when they didn't meet that expectation, He was still able to hope and turn to God for His strength.
Katie transitions into talking about the gap between our ideal self and our actual self. Kevin shares that we put expectations on ourselves that God doesn't even put on us; God expects us to yield to the Spirit, not do everything on our own. Kevin also asserts that we can't let social media or culture set our expectations.
Katie conveys that disappointment shouldn’t be treated as an enemy but as an ally to help us see the better substitute. Kevin implores listeners to take our emotional needs to God because He is big enough for them. Tara chimes in and says it's important to lay our needs and desires at God's feet. She references Revelation 4 as a passage that has provided her comfort and allowed her to reset.
The team wraps up by sharing that we get to chose how we respond to things like disappointment, so we need to look to God to show us how to respond.
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