Raise Your Level of Expectation

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Raise Your Level of Expectation

Wait and hope for and expect the Lord; be brave and of good courage and let your heart be stout and enduring. Yes, wait for and hope for and expect the Lord. Psalm 27:14

We’ve all found ourselves dealing with pessimistic attitudes and low expectations-describing the weather as “partly cloudy” rather than “partly sunny,” seeing the glass as “half empty” instead of “half full.”

For many people, low expectations keep them from enjoying their lives. They go through each day with negative, faultfinding, critical attitudes, rarely hoping for the best because they’re too busy expecting the worst. When things are going poorly they think I had a feeling today was going to be a bad day, and when things are going well they think This probably won’t last long. Good days or bad, on the mountaintop or in the valley, they’re not enjoying their lives . . . because they’ve never expected they could.

Low expectations are more than a few grumpy complaints on a longer-than-usual Monday or a feeling that maybe you woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Low expectations are symptoms of a deeper problem, a spiritual problem. A person may have a history of disappointments that caused him to form a habit of expecting more of the same. Some people have such low self-esteem that they assume they are not worth anything nice, so they never expect it. And then there are those who don’t know that God is good and wants to do good things for His children.

What are your symptoms? If you were to conduct an honest evaluation of your heart, what would you find there?

Are you excited about the future, expecting today to be better than yesterday and tomorrow to be even better than today? Do you wake up each morning with a happy anticipation that God is going to do something amazing in your life?

Or do you find yourself bracing for the worst? Do you worry about bad things happening before they actually happen? Do you use phrases like here we go again, this will never work out, I should’ve known things would go sour, and I’ve got a bad feeling about this

The level of your expectation is the level of your faith. Show me a person with low expectations, and I’ll show you a person using very little faith. But show me a person with big expectations, and I’ll show you a person acting with bold faith. Just remember that we are talking about having our expectation in God. It is more than a mere positive attitude; it is trusting God to take care of you and everything that concerns you.

From the book Get Your Hopes Up by Joyce Meyer.