“Expectation is predetermined resentment.” An expectation has two basic outcomes: it is fulfilled or it remains unfulfilled; we are satisfied with the result or we are not. A goal has been met, or an effort has fallen short. Where an expectation exists, anything less than complete compliance or completion, leaves room for the seed of resentment to grow. If there is no expectation, there is no soil in which such a seed can be implanted. Resentment is only one side of the emotional coin spun by expectation: the other side is the bedeviling sense of disappointment. It is a toss up as to which side lands face up first.
Before jumping into a whirlwind of discussion involving the pluses and minuses of expectation and its uses, from our human standpoint, a top down view might provide the best perspective with which to start. As far as God is concerned, what significance or role does He give to expectation—specifically within the context of its effect on relationship? Expectations always affect relationship, directly or indirectly. Once again the weather provides fodder for the illustration mill. If for any reason, the weather ruins my plans for the day, any consequent emotions will have a ripple effect, radiating out into the rest of the day and toward the people around me. Whether I additionally choose to blame God for His lack of intervention, or the weatherman for his lack of accuracy, I only increase the reverberations from my dashed expectations.
I’m going to dare to make a blanket statement: Our Heavenly Father has no expectations. He simply has no need or use for them. Were God to have expectations, it would run counter to His very nature of perfection, His character of love, and His attributes of omniscience and omnipotence—all-knowing and all-powerful. To this, mankind cannot likewise lay claim. Humans regularly use expectations to control behavior or to get what they desire. That is neither the heart nor the way of God, because control is of the law, not love. God has no expectations because He is more interested in loving us than controlling us. Furthermore, why would God have any expectation other than what He already knows to be true? He knows us and everything about us. Where there is complete knowledge, expectation is superfluous. It gets even better: because God has no expectation--outside that which He already knows--we never disappoint Him. He knows us and accepts us as who He created us to be—His children--fully loved, fully reconciled, through Christ, living under grace and by grace, in every act, every day of our lives.
If God—the greatest Being--has no expectations, it seems rather trifling, if not downright foolish, for us to have them—one imperfect being placing expectations on another imperfect being--an act which God, the only perfect being, does not recognize as being a component or dynamic in a relationship of love. If we are still interested in taking up the cause of expectation, I’m not sure how we get around God’s rejection of expectation as being conducive to nurturing the kind of loving fellowship He desires us to enjoy with Him and with each other. Just sayin’.
Does God endorse a legitimate version of expectation? I believe so. God calls it expectancy, and expectancy has a whole different flavor to it than expectation. It is the flavor of the day for preponderance tomorrow.
“Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who trusts in Him!” Ps. 34:8
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