Everyone has expectations. How often are our expectations met? How often do our expectations create limitations?
Last month in Colombia, a friend of ours from our ministry site told us that his mother was in the hospital and that she had a very low chance of survival. The full story was lost in translation for me, but what I knew was that there was an issue with her heart and that she needed a surgery that she wasn’t expected to make it through.
Even though the situation looked hopeless, we know the power of God and what He is capable of doing. So we went to the hospital to pray. On our way there we kept talking about how we are expecting big things from God and how we were going to pray bold prayers over this woman. Needless to say we went into this pretty pumped about what God WAS about to do.
This woman shocked me. She wasn’t what I expected. I expected a woman, frail and sad, to be lying in her hospital bed waiting for her time to pass. What I walked up to was a woman, strong and joyful, sitting up and laughing as we talked with her. Despite her situation, she was so full of joy, the joy of the Lord. It radiated out of her.
Before we prayed, our friend went to get a man who needed a heart transplant and was running out of time. His heart was working at 10%. His head hung low and he had a face of hopelessness. When I saw him, my expectations for God skyrocketed because this man broke my heart. I have seen a lack of hope, but this time I felt it. His hopelessness became mine and the weight was heavy.
My team circled around these people as we prayed our big and bold prayers for God to heal them. I don’t know how praying big prayers could become arrogant, but that is how my expectations for God started to feel. I was demanding, not humbly coming before my Father and asking for healing for His children. In the middle of my demands I was so kindly convicted.
“How dare you have expectations of what I can do. You have no idea; you can’t even imagine what I am capable of. Don’t you know that your expectations only limit me? Let go of your expectations and see what I do.”
I had never even thought about how I could be setting limitations on God. It is true. There is no way I could possibly understand what all He could do, so how could I walk in that room and tell Him what He was going to do. I had to lay down my expectations and just let God blow my mind. And He did. I have never felt the presence of the Lord so strong in the midst of prayer. Prayers and worship rang from our lips as the peace and power of the Lord flowed through the room. It was incredible, but what was more incredible was what God did.
Our friend’s mother, a woman with little chance of survival, is out of the hospital and back at home. That man, in need of a heart that wasn’t available, was given a heart and is back at 100%.
I have had to do a lot of letting go this year, but it is amazing to see what God can do when you give things up to Him and trust Him to take care of them. Not having expectations is hard and giving up control is even more difficult, but just look around and see what God does when you do. It is a work in progress for me, but progress nonetheless.
God is good.
