What Are You Expecting?
As I have reflected on what God wanted to speak to me about #50daysto50 posting, I had a hard time narrowing down to three key points that I was thinking about. So I’m choosing expectations because that is what is strongest and what I want to share how our expectations reveal themselves in our lives. Also, if you been missing these reflections, you can go to wendytwine.com/50daysto50 to read others.
First of all we all start early in life having expectations. As a baby we learn real quick if we are hungry and cry long enough that someone will come and feed us. As we grow older we begin to expect other things like new clothes every year when school starts because of how we out grew the clothes from the year before, etc.
Well what about expectations as we grow into adulthood and we may have major crisis or challenges on our hands and we want a good out come? Do we get what we expect? I believe so. We get what we are expecting knowingly or unknowingly.
You may wish and not really be expecting. Let me give some examples out of my own life. In my husband and I’s second year of marriage we had our first child at 24 weeks of gestation. For those of you who know how long it takes to make a baby know this is to soon. It takes 40 weeks to make a baby to be fully developed and healthy.
This was a very dramatic experience for both my husband and myself. Our son was in the hospital for four months and we had good days and bad days. We were always praying and asking God to heal our baby and make him whole. I knew very little about the power of expectation and how to apply it also to prayer.
Long and short of this story, is our son went to be with his Heavenly Father. I was mad, angry, bitter, etc. towards God for a long time because I expected him to heal our son and let him grow up and live a long life. The reality is I was double minded many times when I prayed and also when I talked.
There were days I would agree with what God’s word would say about healing (what little I knew) and other days I would agree with what the doctors were telling us and/or our family and friends.
There is a scripture in the bible, James 1:8 NIV,6-8 But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. 7 Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8 Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do.”
Since that time I have learned more and more over the years that we get what we expect. Who are we agreeing with? What our friends, family and the world is telling us or what God’s word says? As my agreement with God’s word and my speech line up as well, I am receiving what I expect.
You may not see what you expect in a day, week, a year or even years. But if you and I stand in faith and believe that this is an area that God wants for us to prosper in, just like the woman who had a blood disorder for twelve years in the Bible, she finally was healed; because she believed and expected God to heal her if she just touched the hem of his garment. You can find the story in Luke 8:43-48.
What are you expecting? If you aren’t getting much of what you are expecting, who is your loyalty to? Your feelings, the world, or God? Please share below.
