What sort of expectations do you have of God? Likely you have them, whether you have spent time analyzing what they look like or not.
For some, your expectations of God are low. You don’t believe that God sees and cares about what is important to you. Perhaps you have asked God for something that He hasn’t provided you, despite your dedication to asking.
Perhaps your expectations aren’t low, per se, but rather that God is indifferent to what goes on here on earth. You may see God as distant. God is a being who dwells in the heavens and is far removed from the cares of this world and the people who dwell in it. You may feel that God doesn’t really get involved with us unless He wants something or needs something from us. God is sort of a distant ruler.
Maybe neither of these expectations fit your thinking. Maybe, your expectations of God are rather high. You know that God can control everything. You just don’t understand the methods He uses to be involved with us – nor do you understand the “when’s” and the “why’s” of his timing and choices of interaction. This might be more of a “God can heal, why has he not healed? God can destroy, why has he not destroyed?” type attitude.
Certainly we can all agree, it is hard for us as finite humans to understand an infinite God. We love things we can control or at least define and categorize. We can’t really do that – at least not entirely – with our Creator.
God has been so good about revealing himself to us. He has. There are so many descriptors of Him within the scriptures. We learn of so many of God’s character traits there. God is just. God is holy. He is righteous and good. He is healer, He sees. God is creator, redeemer, provider, true, and trustworthy.
I’m only scratching the surface.
God is amazing, and yet so often, we struggle. Lloyd John Ogilvie, in his book “God’s Best For My Life” wrote this: “Christ is able! But do we believe it? Our lack of expectation can stand in the way of the miracles of God in all phases of our lives and relationships. Unbelief, discouragement, and disillusionment can stifle our expectation. We expect little and are not surprised when little happens to us and others.”
Ouch. But isn’t there truth in it? Our expectations impact our faith, and that ties our expectations to the degree in which we experience and see the miraculous.
I read a few stories about expectations today out of the book of 2 Kings. Both stories were about the prophet Elisha and two different people who approached him in need of God’s help. Actually, not just God’s help – but God’s miraculous help.
Let’s start with Naaman. Naaman finds out from his wife’s servant that there is a prophet of God in Israel who has been known to be filled with God’s Spirit. God has used him to perform miracles and this servant suggests that her master go to him for healing from leprosy. Leprosy. There was no “healing” of leprosy. This was a death sentence of the day. Naaman has nothing to lose. This faithful warrior is sent by the king to get healing from the prophet of God.
Now Naaman has some expectations. Whether or not any of the expectations involve his actually being healed, we do not know. This is a wild-card attempt to regain life. It’s all he has left in the hope department – this God of Israel, who frankly, is not his God. Yet, when Naaman gets to the place where Elisha is, he is stunned that the man of God does not come out to greet him. Not only that, the directions of the prophet were to dip 7 times in the River Jordan and he would be healed.
The scriptures give us insight into the heart and mind of this man. “But Naaman became angry and stalked away. “I thought he would certainly come out to meet me!” he said. “I expected him to wave his hand over the leprosy and call on the name of the LORD his God and heal me!” (2 Kings 5:11) God’s healing was not going to come the way Naaman expected or wanted it to, and he was angry about it.
Been there? I have. God either decides to do something about my request or doesn’t. God decides to heal in the way I asked or He chooses to heal the situation differently. My expectations are limited by my perspective and finite understanding.
Back to Naaman. Naaman’s officers encourage him to follow the simple instructions. Naaman does what Elisha directed – even reluctantly – and receives healing – impossible healing – from a God like no other. Naaman’s life was forever changed in that act of obedience and time in the River Jordan.
Second story, a wealthy yet childless woman, asks her husband to set up a room for the prophet of God to stay in. They do this. Elisha spends quite a bit of time in their home. Elisha asks God to bless her with a son. God does. A few years pass and this child is struck with a piercing headache while out with his father in the fields. His father sends him home to his mother. Mom holds her child while he dies in her lap. Her only son – this gift from God – is now dead.
Unlike Naaman, I believe that this woman expects a miracle! I think she absolutely believed that God could and would be able to do something through Elisha to save her child. So, without telling anyone about the child dying, she places him on the prophet’s bed and goes to find Elisha. Even though she fights grief and is in “bitter distress,” when greeted by Elisha’s servant her words are “Everything is all right.” (v.27) She has expectations that God can and will help her. She explains the situation with her son and urges Elisha to come and restore life to her son.
Elisha’s actions seem surprising, don’t they? He lays on the child. “Mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands.” Then Elisha gets up and so does the child. Alive. Healed.
Are your expectations of God very high? God has not changed. God is the same yesterday, today, and forevermore.
Here’s the thing: I think we are desperately in need of seeing God’s hand and miraculous power right now, aren’t we? We need God to heal our loved ones, who are dealing with significant health issues. We need God to provide hope that seems to be hard to find in the midst of the evil around us. We need intervention, yet even in our best suggestions or ideas for how that may look, we likely are all blind to what we really need and what is best for us.
Maybe God is going back to this principle: Ask me. Come to me. Trust me. Seek me. Pray to me. Listen to me. Wait upon me and for me. Maybe, just maybe, God’s response is – get on your knees, humble yourselves, confess your sin, and trust me? Maybe God is waiting for us to stop looking for help from others, and is waiting for us to seek help from Him?
This isn’t perhaps what we wanted to hear. Maybe it goes against our expectations of how and when God should act. Friend, we do not know what is best. We like to think we do, but we do not. We like to play the part of gods, but we are not. We are flawed, selfish, sinful humans. And yet, we are deeply loved and valued by the One who created us with a plan and purpose.
God’s calling us to pray. God is calling us to trust in Him. God is calling us to seek His righteousness. God is calling us to live in obedience to Him and Him alone. God wants us to look for life’s answers in Him – where He promises they will be found.
Will we do this, even when this isn’t fitting our expectations?
Blessings.