Expect Great Things

As a child I would love to go to town with my mother. I wasn’t very interested in shopping, but was utterly fascinated with the people I saw walking down the street. I wanted to know who they were. What did their faces tell me? What about the way they walked?  What did their eyes reveal about the kind of person they were?  What kind of mood were they in?  What story lay beyond the externals of their appearance? 

Early on, my explorations revealed an understanding that expectations greatly affected people’s relationships and how they chose to act.  Those expectations also affected the way they ultimately presented themselves to others…sweet and lovely, or sour and cantankerous.  Their attitudes determined by perceived and unfulfilled expectations were evident even as they walked down the street.

I have a saying I often use — expect great things — driven by a firm belief that God is pleased when we come to Him expecting great things.  This expectation we have for God’s goodness is quite the opposite of the pressure we place on our human relationships.  Grand expectations from spouses or friends will result in unfair demands or strained relationships because of failed expectations.  What we expect from each other can be unfair or insensitive or unbalanced because every one has experienced a different life story that has shaped their limitations or ability to give of themselves.  But our God is different.  His story is written in the Bible for all to read.  His gifts; His abilities; His limitations; He’s an open book.  

I envision a smile across the face of God when we trust Him completely with the greatest of all of our desires. Webster says that to expect is “to think something will certainly happen.”  When I pray to my God, I certainly expect Him to act.  And because He is faithful, He always acts.  No matter what we’re praying about, He will move, for our good and for humanity’s good.

Now comes the consummate question: Do we expect God to work as we expect, or as He understands that we need? You can see that the earlier definition of “expect” gives us the answer. “To expect is to think something will certainly happen.”  It doesn’t say that we should expect a specific thing to take place, but simply something.  God is working toward answering our prayer for help, not toward giving us whatever we want or demand.  

With human relationships, if we are not receiving what we feel is what we deserve, we are tempted to walk away from that relationship and maybe never return.  If we treat God in the same way — by walking away for good — we end up robbing ourselves of a great blessing.  We will never know what our Lord had in store for us, something better than what we were expecting because He knows what will ultimately make us happy. Yes, there are scenarios that would seem to belie what I just said, such as the loss of a child.  But we cannot see the end from the beginning as Jesus can.  We do not see what lies just around the corner that would be far more devastating if we only knew. 

We cannot always expect people to satisfy our every need, but we can always expect our Savior and Friend to satisfy our every need! 

Expectations.  What a complex word. Or is it?