You Get What You Expect

A few years ago, my husband and I were meeting with one of our pastors and he said to us, "Always be expecting good things to happen, because you get what you expect." Now, don't blow this out of proportion. He wasn't telling us that if we expected God to give us a big house with a swimming pool, that He would do it and all we had to do was sit back and wait. What he was saying was that our perception becomes our reality. If we are depressed all the time and think things will never turn out for us, more than likely they won't. Why? Because our thoughts control our words and our words control our actions. Look at what Jesus said to one man about how your perception becomes your reality:

Jesus was approached by a Roman officer who had a sick servant. He was seeking Jesus out to heal his servant. Jesus offered to go to the man's home, but the officer wouldn't hear of it. He said to Jesus, "Just say the word from where you are and my servant will be healed! I know because I am under the authority of my superior officers and I have authority over my soldiers. I need only say, 'Go,' and they go or, 'Come,' and they come." When Jesus heard this, He was amazed...Then Jesus said to the Roman officer, "Go on home. What you believed has happened." And the young servant was healed that hour, (Matthew 8:8-10, 13 NLT).

This story shows us two things. (1) You get what you expect. Proverbs 23:7 says, "For as [a man] thinks within himself, so he is." The officer both thought and believed that he was under the authority of Jesus and his servant was under the officer's authority. He expected that what was said to him happened and so on, down the chain of command. The Bible says, "It's like the precious oil...running down," (Psalms 133:2 NKJV). Both this soldier and his servant got what they expected. (2) Our perception of how big God is determines our reality of what He can do in our lives. In his book, In A Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day, Mark Batterson said, "We think of [God] in four-dimensional terms. But God is omni-dimensional...God has no dimensional limitations, and...that truth...[will] transform our outlook on life. ... In very simplistic terms, a dimension is a way you can move. And the number of dimensions determines what is and what is not possible...Faith gives us the dimensional freedom to overcome our human limitations by exiting space-time via prayer," (25-27). If our God is a big God and He said that He created us in His image, then when we ask for things in Jesus' name, shouldn't we expect that it will happen, (see Genesis 1:27; Mark 11:24)?

What are you believing and expecting in your life? Are you expecting that your marriage will be the best marriage there ever was or are you expecting it to fail? Are you expecting that God wants to bless you with good things because He loves to dote upon His children, or are you expecting that God's out to get you and destroy everything in your life? If the Bible is right and we get what we expect, why not be expecting good things?

Lord, You are a big God and Your Word says that Your ways are not our ways. Lord, I know that when we pray, we don't always see with our human eyes the answers to our prayers, so we often think think that they haven't been heard or answered. But Lord, I know that Your Word says that when we pray, you will hear from heaven. So Lord, I pray that you would expand our perceptions today. I pray that you would give us a peace in our hearts to know that the answers to our prayers are just around the corner, if we will only keep believing. In Jesus' Name, Amen.