Several years ago my mentor said these compelling words to me: Susie, there’s a big difference between expectation and expectancy. Expectation is premeditated disappointment, where expectancy involves faith. Expectation means you’ve decided how things need to turn out for you to be okay; expectancy engages your faith in the fact that God is involved in your life, but it opens up the possibility that He may come through for you in a way and at a time that you least expect.
Wow, wise words, wouldn’t you say?
I don’t know what kind of year you’ve had but for me, it’s been a bittersweet one. On one hand we’ve seen God move in ways that have completely inspired our faith, and on the other hand, we’ve experienced loss and heartbreak in ways that have left me breathless.
Can you relate?
What are we to do with the very real sense of loss, disappointment, and heartbreak we encounter along life’s way? How do we keep our disappointments from tangling us up, from strangling our joy, and from skewing our perspective?
The answer, I believe, is this:
To release expectation
To embrace expectancy
It’s time to open our clenched fists and release the crinkled picture of how we thought things would look by now. It’s time to hand it over to the One who knows us best and loves us most. God has a bigger canvas and a far bigger brush. He can paint something beautiful with our lives and with our story that we can’t even comprehend right now. We need to give Him time and space to work in, through, and around us. It’s time to release our puny, detailed expectation of what we think our lives should look like.
And, it’s time to pick up expectancy and to wrap our arms around the fact that Jesus is alive and active in our lives. He moves on faith. Fear doesn’t motivate Him. Faith does. So as we embrace His love and trust His promise to hear our prayers and respond to our faith, we can know, that any day now, Jesus will break through in ways that surprise us.
We’re never out of His care, never out of His reach. He is the God of breakthroughs and He loves to break through when the time is right.
Susie Larson is an author, speaker and radio host for KTIS in Minnesota and Focus on the Family. Visit Susie’s web site at susielarson.com.
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