It happens that someone very close to me actually claims to live by the idea expressed in the above image. And I get it; where it involves dealings with human beings, that is. People inevitably disappoint their own selves; how much more do they tend to disappoint others. But in this post I want to look at "expectation" in a different context, namely: the relationship of expectation to faith.
In His Word God said that "without faith it is impossible to please Him" (Hebrews 11:6). Those are some very serious words from the Lord Himself: "...impossible to please Him." Why is it impossible to please God? "Without faith" -- it is impossible. So, what is faith?
That same chapter in Hebrews begins with these words: "[F]aith is the substance of things HOPED FOR, the evidence of things not [yet] seen" (v. 1). In other words, faith is always looking forward with expectation to receive something that has not yet manifested. So that in the absence of real expectation, there is no real faith.
A lot of church-going folk talk a lot about faith. Why is it, then, that there are so very few manifestations of miracle-working power in the churches and amongst professing Christians, generally? Where is that flow of divine healing, deliverance and salvation that is so abundantly reported in the Bible, as having been the common experience of early Christians? It certainly is not the case with the contemporary Church, as it was in the early Church. I reckon that is why the churches have all but ceased to teach and preach about divine healing and deliverance from demonic power. Where there is no real faith there is no real expectation; and, where there is no expectation (of God answering prayer): then, to teach and preach about God ACTUALLY answering prayer would only serve to shine a light upon their own unbelief. And that would be embarrassing to those who profess to believe in God -- when, in fact, they do not.
Thus what passes for teaching on the subject of "faith", in today's churches, is in reality nothing more than giving intellectual assent to historical facts. Reciting the so-called Westminster Confession (a creedal confession), for example, is substituted for genuine, Biblical "faith". When in fact that devil himself could just as willingly and just as truly recite such a creedal confession -- without himself possessing anything whatsoever like Biblical faith. Believing, for instance, that a man named Jesus once lived and was crucified on a cross -- is no more faith than believing that a man named Julius Caesar once lived and was murdered by one Brutus.
The faith taught in the Bible -- that kind of faith without which it is impossible to please God -- looks unto God with expectancy! of answered prayer. Real faith expects to receive from God an actual manifestation of some certain thing desired ("hoped for", as the Scripture says).
Why is it impossible to please God, without faith? Because, where there is not faith, there is instead unbelief. And unbelief is to make God a liar.
Is there anything I am currently, actively expecting to receive from the Lord? If not, then, how am I making any room in my life for God? How dare I suppose that God is the center and foundation of my being -- notwithstanding I have no genuine expectation of His help and intervention?
God forbid that I should be so deceived.
Another way to put it might be like this. If you are not looking for something you will likely miss seeing it. When focusing on worldly things you see only worldly things. If you don't pick up the phone when God calls you won't know what he had to say.If a hunter is gaulking at the flowers and birds he won't see the deer when it walks bye.
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