Gateway Church's Podcast
Killer Expectations
Defining moments. The Bible is filled with examples, encounters, and real people's lives of things that happened that we would call defining moments. Defining moments happen when we're faced with options and our choices of actions result in life altering consequences. Defining moments are not often recognized until the decisions made and we're dealing with the results of our choices. Sometimes in the middle of circumstances we don't realize the significance of the choices we're making until we look back on those choices and realize something of a direction, a purpose was established or pointed in our life through the decisions that we were making. Defining moments are a mechanism for God's work to unfold and to be understood in our life. I suggest to us that all of us, to some degree, in little or big, are experiencing defining moments. Maybe it's a defining moment related to your career, or maybe it's a defining moment related to your relationship, your marriage, or something with your children. We're in the summertime about to go into the fall. Maybe there's a defining moment happening in your life related to your children and they're getting ready to head off to college in the fall. There's defining moments that take place. And I say again that the bottom line of defining moments is there a mechanism for God's work to unfold and be understood in our life. We're going to look at an encounter, a situation that was a defining moment in a person's life and we're going to learn some things from it today. So if you're there in 2 Kings, chapter 5 and verse 1. Now, Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great and honorable man in the eyes of his master because by him the Lord had given victory to Syria. He was also a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper. And the Syrians had gone out on raids and brought back captive a young girl from the land of Israel and she waited on Naaman's wife. Then she said to her mistress, "If only my master were with the prophet who is in Samaria, for he would heal him of his lepercy." Naaman went in and told his master, saying, "Thus and thus, said the girl who is from the land of Israel, then the king of Syria said, 'Go now, and I will send a letter to the king of Israel.'" So he departed and took within 10 talents of silver, 6,000 shekels of gold and 10 changes of clothing. Then he brought the letter to the king of Israel, which said, "Now be advised when this letter comes to you that I have sent Naaman, my servant to you, that you may heal him of his lepercy." We get that this story carries on through another seven verses, and I'd encourage you to read it. I'm going to refer to it through the rest of this passage, but just for time's sake, I'm not going to read the whole thing. I just want to set up this situation that was developing as a defining moment in Naaman's life. Naaman was a man that was recognized as mighty, a mighty in valor. He was highly regarded. He was respected by the king. He was his performance in life, had entitled him to some things, some recognition by people around him. And the problem that he had in his life, something that he couldn't fix, is that he had lepercy. Now there's a contrast here that isn't easily understood. In Israel, the way that they dealt with lepercy is they isolated, they colonized it, and you were isolated from society. What happened in Syria is you continued to participate in the society life, but every day was a reminder of the condition that you had that you couldn't do anything about. That's what Naaman was dealing with. He was greatly recognized by the king. He was established in society. Other people recognized him, but he had a condition that he himself could not change. And so they go out on a raid, they take captive an Israeli girl that becomes Naaman's wife's servant. And she begins to exert herself in relationship with Naaman and his wife, particularly his wife. And she says, "If only my master knew of the prophet that was in Samaria, if he would go there, the prophet could heal him." Now again, to understand the significance of this, you have to catch a passage in the New Testament. The reality is no one in Israel at this time, this is what the New Testament says, had been healed of lepercy. This was not a common thing. This girl was building hope in her employer, in her master by saying, "If you'll go there, he could heal you." How did she know that? She didn't. The New Testament says there were no healings of this type in Israel that had taken place. And yet, God, she knew God, she knew God was big enough, and she built hope in her master. So out of that hope, he begins to move forward. Now, here's the thing that I want to understand. Hope is a good thing. Hope feeds God's work in a defining moment. Hebrews 11-1 says, "This faith is the substance of things hoped for." I don't know where you are today, but I imagine every one of us in here have something we're hoping for. We're hoping that God would touch our marriage. We're hoping that God would advance our career. We're hoping that God would get a hold of our child or bless our children in some way. And there's nothing wrong with that hope. It's a necessary ingredient for God's continuing work. And so we look at things, specific things in our life, and we say, "Boy, I hope I can get a new house." And then somehow that hope becomes an expectation that says, "And I want that house in this neighborhood." Or, "I have a hope to get a new job." And all of a sudden that hope moves its way out of hope and into an expectation. He says, "No, I want to get a new job with this company and I want it this month." Or, "We have a hope to improve our marriage." And so we say, "I expect the hope that is God inspired and generated and necessary in our life" somehow becomes an expectation that says, "I expect for my marriage to be changed when I go to the Thrive Conference in two weeks." By the way, if you haven't signed up, you still can. Somehow these hopes morph into an expectation, and that's why I titled this message, "Killer Expectations." Hope is a good thing that becomes a catalyst for releasing faith in our life, but expectations become a barrier that we have to overcome to receive and to understand and be a part of what God wants to do in our life. An expectation is something you regard as likely to take place at a specific time. It's something you anticipate coming into being in a specific way. It's something you look forward to with reasonable certainty because you have projected it with your logic that this is happening and this is happening. Therefore, this will result and somehow the hope that was there has become an expectation based on the way that you have logically projected it. It's something that we become entitled or feel like we've become entitled to. Let me give you an example of this from my own life. I got saved when I was 16, and as I was graduating from high school, my dad and some partners had the opportunity to buy the business that they had been working in, or at least a portion of it. He and his partners bought 11 warehouse locations from Montana to Lubbock. I felt that as God began to talk to me about my future, that what God was calling me to be was an influential business person to go into the business arena of life and live the principles of God and a relationship with God to impact as many people as I could. And lo and behold, my dad buys this business, and I'm one of the sons in the business, and I think, hey, I know exactly how God's going to fulfill this hope that's in my heart, that's in my life. So I enroll in college, and I'm in the business school, and they didn't have a degree plan for taking over your dad's business. So I didn't declare a major, I was just in the business college, and being in the business college, if you didn't declare a major, they made you go through a career development class. So the first day I'm in this career development class, and the professor that's teaching this class makes this statement, he just said a lot of things that day, but the only thing I remembered was, he said this, the greatest percentage of corporate CEOs come from the financial side of the business. I left the class that day, I went to the administration office, and I declared my major in accounting. Because I knew if that was the greatest percentage of corporate CEOs, and I wanted to be a corporate CEO so I could live life and influence as many people as I could for God, that's where I was going. I declared my major, I went to work for my dad after I graduated, and when I graduated, I went to work for him, I took business transfers that got me to Texas. And all of this is going well, and my hope is being generated, and I think I'm on a plan, and I fully understand what God is going to do, and how he's going to use my life. And I'm five years in Amarillo, and my dad and his partner sell the business. What? This isn't the way it was supposed to work out, this isn't how it was supposed to take place. I understood what God was doing. See, hope somehow becomes an expectation, and an expectation then becomes a barrier to understanding what God wants to do. The short end of the story is, I left my dad's business, Jan and I had become a part of a group that started a church in Amarillo. And four years after the church starts, they invite me, they ask me to come on as business administrator, it wasn't a part of my plan. Let me tell you, today you may be in a defining moment, and it's not a part of the way that your logic led you to believe that God would work in your situation. Can I just tell you, God has something in mind. It may not be exactly the way that you have worked it out. So expectations, if our hope moves into an expectation, the potential is those expectations will kill the work of God in our life. And that's what I want to talk to you about today. I want to talk to you about these expectations. So here's the first point in this message is performance, performance thinking feeds expectation in our life. Now, just look back at 1 Kings chapter 5 and verse 6. The letter it says, the letter that he took to the king of Israel read, with this letter I'm sending my servant name into you so that you may cure him of his leprosy. Now, we read in the verses that follow the king immediately went into a panic. It's like, who am I? I'm not God that I control these kinds of things. The letter carries with it an implication that this man, Naaman, the king of Syria writes, he is a good man. He's served me faithfully. He's highly regarded. And because he's highly regarded, his performance has entitled him to the work that now I expect you to do. And that is to heal this man of his leprosy. Performance thinking goes something like this. It takes good works and it defines our worth and others define our work by those good works. I deserve this. I've worked hard for this. We put it in spiritual terms and we say, I've read my Bible every day for the last two months. I deserve God to hear and answer my prayers. I've been to church more than all of my friends combined. I'm really serving God. And because I'm serving God, this hope now becomes an expectation that becomes based on my performance. And I think I deserve this work that I'm expecting. I'm hoping and now expecting for God to do. Comparison leads to responses or a sense of entitlement. And we find this difficulty working where on the one hand there's a pride that develops and it says, I'm good enough. I've worked hard enough. I deserve this. Or if we're not there, we're on the other side and we say, I don't deserve this. I haven't worked hard enough. And our self-worth becomes attached to the performance or lack of performance that's taken place in our life. These killer expectations rob us of the reality of God's work. The performance thinking begins to permeate our conversations and so we start thinking and talking to people and saying, you know, it's just not fair. It's not fair that so-and-so gets it and they haven't been to church. They haven't done this. They haven't worked as hard as what I've worked. It's not fair. They don't deserve it. I deserve it. I have earned this and they haven't. Our conversation begins to take on this form of entitlement or it begins to be reflective and saying, I'm just lowly as a worm. I don't deserve this. God would never even give me any account. And the reality is God Himself is a good God. He works on our behalf even though we don't deserve it. Our best efforts don't qualify us for His work. Performance moves our focus to the wrong place. So Nam, first thought his healing came from the king of Israel. So he gets the letter from his king, presents it to the king of Israel and says, okay, my king says I'm good enough now. You're supposed to heal me. And the king goes into a panic and so he lies to the prophet in Samaria. He says, wait king, don't panic, send him to me. So Nam and says, oh, it's not you that's going to heal me. It's the prophet that's going to heal me. Okay, so he leaves the king's palace and goes to Samaria to meet with Elisha and Elisha doesn't even come to the door. He sends a servant to tell him to go dip seven times in the Jordan River and he'll be healed. You see, when we think people are the response, your boss is the mechanism for fulfilling God's plan, your expectation in life. Your friends or your wife or your husband is the responsible to fulfill this in your life. Somehow you get the focus in the wrong place because performance has moved you to a place of expectation entitlement. Here's what Luke 17, 10. This is what Jesus said. So you also, when you've done everything you were told to do, should say, we're unworthy servants, we've only done our duty. It's God's goodness that supplies the needs of our life. It's not our performance. We overcome performance thinking when we realize we don't know the best way to get what we need. We recognize God's goodness supplies our needs and not our performance and his grace covers our life. If you have performance expectations today, you're believing you've been good enough to deserve something that's taking place and you're frustrated by a part of the process involved of God's work. And that's the next thing I want to say. This is my second point. Specific methods and specific times are attached to expectations. So in verse 11, it says that Naaman went away angry and said, "I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God and wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy." "Are not Abana and far apart the rivers of Damascus better than any of the waters of Israel? Couldn't I wash in them and be cleansed?" So he turned and went off in a range. We think that God's way will happen at a specific time, in a specific method, a way that we have projected, just like I projected, when I thought, I know what God's going to do in my life. Even as before I begin college, as I move into college, I know where God's going to take me. And when my life begins to take a detour, all of a sudden I'm faced with this decision, this frustration developing in my life. Why is it happening the way I thought God was going to do it? God's work unfolds in God's time and in God's ways. Listen to Jeremiah 2911, "I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you." Or look at Isaiah 55 and verse 8, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord, as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." Expectations grow the longer we wait for something. This opens the door to frustration, it leads to anger with the process that's unfolding, and it can lead to disappointment with the result. When we feel that we expect it to happen a certain way and it doesn't, our eyes are blinded to see the reality of what God is doing in the midst of the circumstance that we're in. When some of you know we have four children, Todd is our oldest son, our children's ages range from 34 to our daughter that will be 24 in November. When Todd was eight years old, one morning I was up with the kids doing cartoon duty on Saturday morning. We were watching Scooby-Doo and Bugs Bunny and Friends, anybody remember those cartoons and you see you're old too. So we were watching cartoons and Todd said to me, "Dad, can I have some toast?" And I said, "Sure." So I got up to go into the kitchen and I got the toaster out, I got the bread out, and I got some plates out, and he comes in, and it just has been a few minutes, he comes in and says, "Dad, where's my toast?" And I said, "Sir, it's coming, it's coming, just be patient, go and watch cartoons and I'll have it ready for you in a minute." So I get the bread out, put it in the toaster, I get the butter out, I've got the jelly working, I mean I'm all ready for when the toast pops up. And he comes in, rather indignant, kind of hands on his hips, and he says, "Dad, where's my toast?" And I said, "Go back in the other room and watch cartoons, I'll call you when it's ready." And just about the time he turns around, the Lord says to me, "That's exactly the way you are." You ask me for something, and I set things in motion to answer your prayer, and just in no time at all you say, "God, where is my answer? Where is my thing that I've been asking for?" And sometimes God will be kind enough to give me some comfort and say, "It's coming time, just be patient, it's okay, I've got it working." And then in a short amount of time, I'm very indignantly in God's face saying, "Where is it God?" We're unwilling to wait as a part of the process of God's work. We get frustrated by the process of waiting, and this leads me to my third point. Frustration is the fruit of unrealized expectations. The last part of verse 12 leads us into 13 and 14, so name and turn and went off in a rage. Name and servants went to him and said, "My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more than when he tells you, wash and be cleansed?" So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy. Our frustration over unrealized expectations will blind us to the opportunity that's before us. Something, just a minute about Naaman's situation, something that he had been hoping for, desiring, maybe worked years for in his own country to go to the best specialist, to go to the baths, to take care of his skin. Nothing seemed to work, and he was on the road to getting God's answer in his life, but he got frustrated because it didn't happen in the time and the way he thought it would happen, and he was going to throw it all away. What about us? We get frustrated because of an expectation that happens, that develops in our life, and that expectation then presents a barrier that we have to overcome before we can even see the work that God is doing. Now how do you know if you have unrealized expectations? It's pretty simple. If you're frustrated and angry, you probably have expectations that are being unrealized. If you complain about the way things are working out, you have unrealized expectations. If you criticize people's responses to your situation, you don't think that they know or understand or it's their fault for what's taking place. You have unrealized expectations. If you feel justified to defend your wrong responses toward others, you have unrealized expectations. Unrealized expectations will tempt you to look to people and not to God. So let me just ask you a question today. Who are you blaming or holding responsible for your unrealized expectations? Something, you had a hope that developed in your life and somehow this hope has become now a killer expectation. And out of that expectation, you're holding someone responsible who cannot fully meet what you are expecting anyway. Only God can do that. Listen to what Isaiah 40 and verse 27 says. Why do you say, oh Jacob and complain, oh Israel, my way is hidden from the Lord. My cause is disregarded by God. Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youth grow tired and weary and young men stumble and fall. But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint. If you have unrealized expectations and you're frustrated today, would you be willing to enter into a place and allow God's process to unfold? Would you wait on the Lord today and not push in with expectations on somebody who can't fully meet that need anyway? It's not your boss's fault. It's not your spouse's fault. It's not something your kids can do. The toast is in the toaster. Hang on. Don't get frustrated. Unrealized expectations will tempt you to turn away. But hope encourages you to press into God. Here's what God said to Cain in Genesis chapter 4. Then the Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crossing at your door and it desires to have you. But you must master it. I believe this is a word for somebody in here. Maybe more than one person. You've been frustrated by these unrealized expectations, and you're bad. Can I tell you today? Don't be mad. Wait on God. He's at work in the situation of your life. Follow Him. Trust in Him. He will bring it about. Don't throw away your hope, but keep that hope from morphing into a killer expectation that becomes a barrier and prevents you from seeing what God is doing in the middle of your situation. It may not be happening exactly the way you thought it would or in the exact timing that you thought it would, but God is in the middle of what's taking place in your life. It's a defining moment. If you bow your heads, let me ask the question that we always ask. What's the Holy Spirit saying to you today? The only responsibility that we have before God is simply to obey. [BLANK_AUDIO]