Greater Expectations

“God wants to do both different and better than our expectations…

  • Abram (Abraham) didn’t have a natural heir so he brought Lot… that didn’t work out…
  • A little while passed and Abram’s wife becomes impatient… that didn’t work out… Abram’s now 86 years old…
  • Then in Gen 21, they would get what God truly desired for them. A son between Sarah and Abraham named Isaac… they were 100 & 90 respectively…

 

God wants to do both different and better than our expectations… It took Abraham 100 years to be spiritually ready for this miracle…

 

Elijah was exhausted, God had used him to call fire from Heaven… Then Jezebel wanted him dead and she was no joke… Elijah was done and ready to die…

  • But God wasn’t quite done yet with him… God give him a snack for the road… God then speaks to him and sets things in order and in to process gives him a prophetic heir…
  • 2 Kings 2… chariot of fire… the thing Elijah wished for was death but God didn’t meet that expectation…He didn’t even have to taste death to find rest, God just took him home in His Uber…

 

God wants to do both different and better than our expectations…

 

Moses desired to free his people… (exodus 2) so he killed slave driver then is driven to the wilderness for 40 years… freedom would come to Israel, not militarily but by God’s power alone…

  • Yet in all this is the sad epitaph that Moses wasn’t himself able to enter into the physical promised land…
  • Yet we do know he did enter in an eternal promise land… (but Moses’ story doesn’t end there… he was present at Transfiguration … Luke 9:30… (Either Mt. Tabor or Mt. Herman)

 

God wants to do both different and better than our expectations…

 

  • Jesus’ disciples expectation was for a physical kingdom… They got the cross and then the resurrection… God wanted a bigger kingdom, and spiritual kingdom…

 

God wants to do both different and better than our expectations…

  • Our expectations of God may not match up with the realities of our lives… mine haven’t…

 

  • I’m sure Abraham felt disappointed with every heir that didn’t work out, but… I’m sure Elijah wanted the angel of death to visit him, not an angel with food, but… Disciples disappointment at the cross was incalculable, their earthly kingdom was gone at Jesus’ death, they lost their mentor and greatest friend they ever knew, but… when we follow Jesus, when we reverence and fear Him, God will give us better then we can imagine…

 

  • “Our limitation is that we can only see the edges of God’s ways and His character. He is so much bigger, so much better, so much purer, so much deeper than we can fathom, and His ways are not our ways… He will redeem, amend, discipline, correct, sanctify, deliver, and prepare us in ways that we neither expect nor enjoy… He fixes things radically, finally and gloriously… in His own wondrous way…”

 

2 Corinthians 4:16-18 NKJV

16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. 17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, 18 while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

 

Our reward in Christ is greater than our suffering for Him…

  • I know for those walking through hardship that may sound flippant, and easy to say… but when we’re walking through hardship it’s important to remember that our life is bigger than the moment we are enduring…

 

  • In Thessalonians, a church walking through extreme hardship, Paul again and again reminds these people of Jesus’ second coming… reminding them that the reward in Christ is greater than the suffering…

 

God wants to do both different and better than our expectations…”

 

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