If I’ve learned anything on the World Race, it has been to completely let go of my expectations. We expect to reach our next destination in 30 hours, it takes just shy of 60. We expect to be doing ministry with children, we do ministry with break dancers and gangsters. We expect to finish church service in an hour, we stay there for five. We expect to have electricity and running water, we end up with a bucket showers. I could probably go on forever, but we really have learned to roll with the punches out here on the field. And that has been such a valuable thing to learn.
This month, my team is doing what we call “Unsung Heroes,” which means instead of a normal month of ministry with one host in one location, our job is actually to seek out new hosts for future World Race teams to work with. We are visiting Arequipa, Puno, and Cusco in hopes of finding some faithful ministers of the Gospel who need some encouragement and support. As we venture out into these places with little but a prayer, a plan, and a gut feeling, and as we trust God to lead us to these people, He has constantly reminded me of this idea: expectations versus expectancy. What are my expectations? How can I abandon those and instead take up an expectant attitude?
What I didn’t realize is that expectations are a form of law. In the book “The Shack,” the main character has a conversation with God about how we have been freed from all forms of law, including expectations. Because expectations simply are putting standards on something or someone: they now have an obligation to perform, and there is a possibility of failure.
But God has shown me that while we are not have expectations — on ourselves, other people, or even Him — we should live with expectancy. We should carry expectant hearts.
The dictionary makes this distinction:
Expectant (adj.): having or showing an excited feeling that something is about to happen, especially something pleasant and interesting.
Expectation (noun): a belief that someone will or should achieve something.
In my opinion, “should” is an ugly word, full of burden and obligation. That’s a word of the Law. Since we have been FREED from the Law, and therefore freed from all expectation, we can live with expectancy — an excited feeling for what is about to happen. There’s eagerness and life here. It’s a dynamic moving thing. Expectancy is beautiful and Spirit-filled.
In the book of Acts there’s a man living with expectancy without expectations. He is crippled, and he is placed each day at the gate of a temple. One day, John and Peter, two prominent disciples, walk by and the beggar greets them, asking them for money. Peter says, “Look at us,” which has makes me think this beggar must have been shamefully looking at the ground. When he looks up at them, the verse says “he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them.” Peter says, “I have no silver or gold but what I do have, I give to you,” and then Peter heals him. The beggar stands up, walks into the temple, and leaps about, praising God.
Imagine if the beggar had expectations, and when Peter told him he had no money he turned away and rejected anything else Peter would offer? That man would have wasted his days away outside that temple gate, sitting merely yards from the very thing he really needed. Yet because he sat with an expectant heart, he received more than he could have ever imagined, and definitely more than he asked for.
So I’m expecting. I’m expectant that God will answer my big specific prayers for this month, even if they seem crazy. I’m expectant that even when I ask for something, God will give something even better. Where you have expectation in your own life, choose to free yourself and anyone else, including God, from the obligation to perform. And be expectant — something exciting and interesting is bound to happen.
