We are molehills begging to be made into mountains. We want more than what we have right now. We want to be more than what we are right now. And when God calls us to something greater, something that will begin to push the tectonic plates of our lives together and cause us to grow into a mountain, we shrink back. Our view of the mountain from the molehill was really just a large hill and anything bigger than that, like a real mountain, is too big for us to imagine.
C.S. Lewis said it like this (and he was taking it from another guy), "Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”
-Mere Christianity
I think this ties back into the whole being made in the image of God thing. We want to be better than we are right now because we know that we're imperfect people. We long for the perfection that God created us for. And in our pursuit of this perfection we get to the point where we consider ourselves slightly above average and stop there, thinking that this is the best we can do. Then God in his perfect love sees us, and says "This is great! You're growing! Come let's get you growing further into my plans for you."
I heard a guy say once that God is easy to please but hard to satisfy. That's because he loves our little human accomplishments, our blundering around our temptations instead of simply stepping over them as once would a gap in the sidewalk. God can do this but we can't, not just yet. God wants perfection for us, and not just our smaller version but his perfection, in all of his godliness. He doesn't just want us to be a decent little cottage with small dreams, a small life and only following him to the point where we're "slightly above average". No, he wants a palace in which our choices and prayers impact the nations. He wants us to dream big and then stretch those dreams out so that we can love more, help more, and chase after God with all that we have regardless of how everyone else appears to be doing it. God wants more for you and me than anything we could have ever imagined, and it won't be easy, and it definitely won't be painless, but I believe that these 'renovations' will be worth it.
