40 Days of Fasting & Prayer--Day 39

That God’s presence would INVADE my expectations

(1 Corinthians 9:1-11)

I have written recently about my parents divorcing when I was too young to remember.  My biological father at first maintained some semblance of a relationship with my brother and me, his only sons.  I don’t know the details of the visitation arrangement but I seem to remember that it was magical when we got to see him.  I suspect that he spoiled us out of guilt on those occasions that we saw him.  Based on this history, my brother and I came to have great expectations of a Disneyland-like atmosphere whenever he would come to pick us up.

It was an early Saturday morning and I was dressed and ready to go.  Mom had told my brother and me previously that daddy was coming to pick us up that morning to spend the day and night with him.  I spent several hours on the couch looking out of the living room window down the street.  I was waiting for the familiar car to drive down the street.  I didn’t have the capacity to understand.  If he said he was coming then why wasn’t he?  This would prove to be the first of several identical mornings.  I was four when I experienced the first image-shattering event by the man I was named after.

At the time, I didn’t feel that I had unreasonable expectations.  When someone gave their word, I believed it.  If I was told something, I was too innocent to think otherwise.  It didn’t take very many of these let-downs to cause me to become jaded.  I would soon discard any of my reasonable expectations for an “I’ll believe it when I see it” mentality.  This isn’t a positive early-development trait to acquire. 

Looking back, I recognize that my expectations were reasonable but they were based upon one who was unreasonable and undependable.  I don’t share this for the sake of sympathy or just to tug at a heart string.  I share it to illustrate misplaced and unreasonable expectations.  When it comes to what God will do, our expectations are unreasonable.  They are unreasonably low.

This time of fasting has birthed an expectation of far greater things than I have allowed myself before.  This new expectation is NOT based upon the fact that I fasted.  On the contrary, this fast has only given me an awareness of the faithfulness and dependability of God that already existed.  He has made statements that I can take to be true.  I have great expectations through the knowledge that He is willing and able to do immeasurably more than I ask or imagine and He has never gone against His word yet.

 

“Lord, I pray today that You would invade my pitiful level of low expectations.  You are the Creator of the cosmos and yet I hardly ever expect You to create in my life!  Position me at the front window of my life like a child waiting for their Father to come home.”