What does the Bible say about expectations?

And just so is it with the Lord's people, now. There is no limit to the blessing which we might enjoy, could we only count more fully upon God. "All things are possible to him that believes." Our God will never say, "You have drawn too largely; you expect too much." Impossible. It is the joy of His loving heart to answer the very largest expectations of faith.

Here let us observe two facts: First, that disappointment amongst believers is caused by their cherishing mistaken expectations not warranted by the Word of God. Second, that such unwarranted expectations are entertained by believers because they base them upon a partial view of Scripture rather than "ALL that the prophets have spoken."

Not a few believers may be found today who have drifted off into the world in rather similar fashion. They too have drifted because disappointed, and they are disappointed because of entertaining unwarranted expectations. The expectations may have been centred in Christian work, and the conquests of the Gospel, or in some particular group or body of believers with whom they were linked, or perhaps in themselves and their own personal sanctity and power. However, things have not happened as they expected, and they are in the depths of dejection.

Most of us know that in our flesh there is a great deal of evil. But if that were all there might still be a little bit of good, and upon that little bit we might base certain expectations. But the truth is that in the flesh good is totally absent. The fairest thing it produces is vitiated by selfishness and sin. If we have really learned its character, we shall have no expectation of sweet water ever proceeding from that fountain, nothing but bitter. With that lesson well-learned, all our expectations of good will centre in God. And we shall not then be disappointed.

Let us join with the Psalmist, and each of us call upon our soul to wait in silence, or rest peacefully, upon God alone, basing all our expectations on Him. Then He only, to the exclusion of all else, will prove Himself to be all that we need — our Rock, our Salvation, our High Fortress. Each of us will then be able to say with the full assurance of faith, "I shall not be moved." The soul that finds all its expectation, as well as its salvation, in God is in an impregnable position. All that is then needed is indicated in verse 8 — to trust in Him at all times, to pour out the heart before Him in every emergency, and He proves Himself to be a Refuge.

And now I have a question to ask. Why should we twentieth-century Christians expect that the path should be different for us? Is it our prescriptive right to be carried to heaven on downy beds of ease, amid sunshine and flowers, whilst all others sail through stormy seas of trial and persecution? Is it for us to feel shocked and scandalised if difficulties seem to dog our footsteps? By no means. It is just what we should expect. It is as true today as nineteen centuries ago that "we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God" (Acts 14:22). We may not get the tribulation in the form of outward persecution from the world. Still we get it within the bosom of the professing church, if not from without.

The servant of Christ will not lead the converts to expect an easy life. Material blessings, such as those promised in connection with the future Kingdom (e.g., in Ps. 112:1) are not guaranteed to Christians. Paul, while he was at Thessalonica, told them that we must suffer tribulation (3:4). Christians have their present "great tribulation" as surely as Israel will have "the time of Jacob's trouble" in the future.

These men had been born many years before the deliverance from Egypt came, and though their parents would seem to have been godly people, whose hope was truly in God, yet they had a long wait, and no doubt many of them passed off the scene, before the expected deliverance appeared. And there is a deeply important lesson for us in this wait. We are by nature so impatient. It is so hard for us to wait. Our expectation is in God, and if it is His will, He will bring it to pass; but often He permits us to wait long before turning our expectation into reality. What an encouragement to pray on, and to hope on. Jacob could say, "I will not let Thee go except Thou bless me." (Genesis 32:26); and in Hosea 12:4 the Spirit of God gives us His comment on this act. "Yea, he had power over the angel, and prevailed; he wept, and made supplication unto him." We so easily grow weary of the waiting and "let go". The urgency of the desire passes away from us, as it did with Moses; and when at last the command comes to go and do the very thing he had tried to do forty years before, he all but refuses. But those forty years had not been wasted years, and now he goes in the strength of the Lord, whereas before he was going in his own strength. And we will find that the weary years of waiting have not been wasted years, but rather that God has taught us lessons in this waiting time, that could not have been learned in any other way.

Reader, is it not so? Are we not constantly prone to forsake the Fountain of living waters, and hew out for ourselves broken cisterns which can hold no water? And yet we speak of living by faith! We profess to be looking only to the living God for the supply of our need, whatever that need may be, when, in point of fact, we are sitting beside some creature stream, and looking for something there. Need we wonder if we are disappointed? How could it possibly be otherwise? Our God will not have us dependent upon ought or anyone but Himself. He has, in manifold places in His word, given us His judgement as to the true character and sure result of all creature confidence. Take the following most solemn assurance from the prophet Jeremiah, "Cursed be the man that trusts in man, and makes flesh his arm, and whose heart departs from the Lord. For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good comes; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited."

Next we are told of the blight created by disappointment, and the cheer given by receiving what the heart sought. "Hope deferred makes the heart sick; but [when] desire comes, it is a tree of life." Some may have proved both experiences, and know how true it is. But we do well in the things of this life to judge our thoughts and desires before God by His Word, and ever to say in truth, "Thy will be done."

Many other such sorrowful complaints could be instanced, but one and all they would only illustrate, as do those quoted above, the disastrous effects of cherishing expectations not warranted by Scripture as a whole.