"God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus." -Philippians 1:8 (NIV)

Last week, World Team held a Day of Prayer in the Warrington office to pray for the mission.  As an introduction to the day, the first section featured the concept of family.  The concept was meant to inspire unity based on the idea that a family sticks together through thick and thin.  No matter how tough the road, family is always with you.

This was a particularly tough idea for me to deal with considering the struggles going on with my heart.  We put on the facade that we have it all together, but rarely we do.  Some days, holding it together requires all the energy we have.  Other days, we just go through the motions.

I've been blessed.  Between my parents and my in-laws, we're talking 60 years of marriage between them, and counting.  I'll be married seven years come May.  I have two beautiful young daughters.  Yet, my heart grows restless.  I find myself wanting more.

I see happily married couples and I want what they have.  You see them doing everything together, standing by each other and operating as a unit.  This is especially true in missions, where spouses play a key role in assisting each other in ministry.  This dynamic is missing with Melody and I.

Now that I'm in my 30's, I see past mistakes catching up to me.  I'm supposed to be done school by now.  I should be established and working as a CPA.  We should own our home.  Melody shouldn't have to work.  Yet, none of those things are in place.  So, we operate as single parents to get by.  It's everyone for themselves in my household.

What happens when life falls short of the ideals we hold to?  The ideal of the American dream is so prevalent in our culture, but buoyed by real life examples that we see around us.  Yet, the more I talk to people, the more I realize that life is not what it seems.  My perception is based on what I saw from my parents as a kid, but I didn't see the whole story.

The whole story is that we are not perfect and life isn't either.  We are not designed to be the objects of affection which rightfully belongs to God.  That includes the institution of marriage itself.  Submission to God is needed in order to uphold the ideal and align our focus in the right place.  It is through honoring Him that marriage endures.

When I think back through the history of the Israelites in the Old Testament, the tendency to compare to other people caused great restlessness leading to straying from God.  They saw that other nations had kings and they wanted a king to rule them instead of submitting to God as King (Deuteronomy 17, I Samuel 8).  That's just one instance - the golden calf is another (Exodus 32).

As much as I hold out to the ideals that formed the basis of my upbringing, the only ideal that truly holds up is that of Jesus as Lord over all.  The more I see my shortcomings and fallen expectations, the more I realize that the voids in my life are a result of looking to my own selfish desires instead of my fullness in Christ.  He needs to be the object of my affection and the center of all I hold to.  This is especially true in my marriage and my family.  As the head of the house, it is my responsibility to reflect Christ to my wife and kids as well.

Reflecting Christ is a noble task, but one for which I feel woefully inept.  For one, He is God.  He also spoke in parables.  Plus, He submitted His will to the Father and took on undeserved pain to the point of dying on a cross for the sins of others.  That He was willing to do this while possessing the power to stop it doesn't fully register.  As far as our understanding is concerned, Christ's death was a powerless act of humility done out of love.  The power came for us in conquering death and rising from the dead.

For all of the pain inflicted on us in this life, Jesus is the only human being ever to truly not deserve a lick of it.  He is perfect in every way.  No bride is going to come close to the model of what Christ is to His church.  Even when the church fails, Christ is there to redeem His people to Himself.  The family of God is not united by human means, but by His faithfulness.

Life is full of disappointments, but I find myself fighting the tendency to look in the wrong places to fill the void.  Only Christ can fill the voids in our hearts.  When ideals fall short and the objects of our affections fail us, we need to turn them over to Christ. 

He needs to be the Lord over everything in our lives, the object of our affections and the ideal for which we live.  Serving Christ and living for Him does not mean that life is perfect, but it does mean that it is complete.  His whole ministry was based on the fact that we fall short and need a Savior.  He came to fill the void in our hearts.  We must look to Him, even with our fallen expectations and broken ideals.