My trip is only 76 days away(!) and my heart is abundantly overflowing with joy, excitement, longing, passion, and many other emotions that the English language fails to allow me to describe. As I draw near to this trip, I feel utterly inclined to feel so many things. I am not yet physically there, but my heart and mind have been there for months now! These seem to be inevitable and natural prerequisites to any trip of this magnitude. However, I feel that God has given me a warning, or rather, a different precondition: to have no expectations. I feel I am to have hope, but no expectations . . . because God doesn’t always live up to our expectations.
During most of Jesus’s ministry He never publically claims to be the Messiah, and whenever somebody does openly recognize Him as the Christ, He charges them not to recount it to anyone. The first time that Jesus actually claims to be the Messiah is in Mark chapter 11. Jesus rides on a colt down the Mount of Olives and into Jerusalem as a deliberate fulfillment of the prophecy in Zachariah 9:9-10 thus claiming to be the promised king of Israel, and the message was received by the people! The masses cry, “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” . . . but can I just point out that this is one of the most anticlimactic moments in the Bible? Look at verse 11, “And Jesus went into Jerusalem and into the temple. So when He had looked around at all things, as the hour was already late, He went out to Bethany with the twelve.”
In 63, B.C. Rome deposed the king of Israel and put an end to an independent Jewish state. There was a lot of seething animosity from Israel towards Rome. Israel longed for a messianic deliverer of whom would restore the throne of David and free them from Rome. Jesus provocatively and deliberately claims to be the Messiah and yet all He did at that time was look around and leave! He gave no stirring speech and He did not raise a finger or even His voice against Rome . . . this inevitable disappoint was part of what changed the cries of the voices from ‘Hosanna’ to ‘crucify Him…’ The people were dismayed because they did not receive what they expected. What they did not realize was that they were just a blip in the grand scheme of God’s sovereign plan! Jesus had bigger things than saving Israel from Roman tyranny; He was there to save the entire world from the oppression of sin!
Any expectations that I could conjure up would never amount to the plan that God has for me on this trip! He will change me in ways I could never imagine; use me in ways I could never think possible; and impact the world in ways that only the undeniable truth of God could! I want to walk into this season of life with a clean slate and an open mind to whatever God wills. I don’t want my heart to be clouded with presuppositions and expectations that might never be God’s intention for me. The only expectation I should have is that GOD IS GOING TO MOVE!
My hope and prayer is that I can be an unhindered body that is ready and willing for anything that the Lord might do in me and through me.
Yours in Christ,
-David Sands
