Bible Reading: Isaiah 54:1-17
Have you ever been shocked to your teeth by a turn of events? Have you ever expected one thing to happen and a totally different thing happened?
I think life and the world we live in are so full of such surprises that hurt our sense of expectation: sometimes you get hate when you expect love; failure when you expect success; rejection when you expect acceptance; and so on.
Often time, we deal with wounded expectations. We buy into the narrative of wanting to be surprised rather than disappointed, and so we cancel out and kill every sense of audacious expectation within us. We approach life really flat.
But God calls us to raise our expectation and live our lives with such an audacity!
Our reading today calls out for the barren to sing and rejoice more than those who have children! He promises expansion and says based on an expectation of that, we must prepare and enlarge and stretch our capacity! That’s huge!
Are you living with wounded expectations?
Are you silently not quite expecting to be loved and accepted, or for your marriage to work, or for your children to turn out right, or for your effort to yield fruit, or for your best relationships to stand the test of time, or for your biggest opportunities to be maximized, or for the gift and purpose of God on your life to thrive? Has life wounded your expectations?
The thing with wounded expectations is that it’s like a production mould that has been dented. It starts to produce a wrong shape of everything that goes into it. People with wounded expectations naturally produce and leak hurt, bitterness, a lack of joy and narrow mindedness.
Would you really believe today that God calls you to a life of more and allow your faith to fuel a fresh hope and expectation in you? Would you accept in your heart today that God’s plans for your life are exceedingly, abundantly greater than what you can ask or imagine? And this is no mere hype, it is substantiated in an awareness of a God who loves us and is for us.
This hope will not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us Romans 5:5 CSB
And this hope is not a disappointing fantasy, because we can now experience the endless love of God cascading into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who lives in us! Romans 5:5 TPT
I invite you today to an expectation that honours God! I invite you today to an expectation that looks like you know deeply that God is a good father who loves you. I invite you today to an expectation that is anchored on God’s love for you and your faith in His promises.
Lift up your eyes! There is more promise over your life than pain in your circumstances.
Tolulope Moody
For Life Group Discussions:
In the broken world in which we live, how can I protect myself from having my expectations wounded? What processes can I walk through to see my wounded expectations healed and realigned with God’s promise, so I can rediscover an audacity to life?
1 Comment
Akinyinka SimilOluwa
An expectation that honours God…