Expectations

When I committed a year to Japan, I wasn’t sure how to articulate what I expected, but I knew I wanted to see God work somehow. It was a bit of a surprise, then, to hear several people tell me not to expect to see anyone come to Christ during my time there. I appreciate their concern for me — they only didn’t want me to be too disappointed because the typical Japanese person needs to hear the gospel an average of 7 times before entering into relationship with God.¹

I accepted that piece of advice because I respected the experience from which it came, but I don’t think I received it in the way it came across to me. If I didn’t expect God to do amazing and miraculous things (the highest of which would be granting eternal life to a person condemned to eternal death), what kind of god did I believe in? Why else would anyone interrupt a relatively comfortable life-as-usual? Instead of changing my expectations, I began to examine them.

That year, I began digging deeper into the difference between expectation and demand, the importance of setting responsible — even visionary — goals and plans while holding them in an open hand before God. It’s a fine line between expectation and demand, an open or closed hand. Things look almost identical on paper, but the difference is glaring if we can judge hearts. (Other than our own, we can’t, by the way…and even then, it’s a tricky business, according to Jeremiah 17.9)

I didn’t see a single person come to Christ that year. To this day, I am unaware of anyone from that network of relationships who has surrendered his or her life to God, although I have seen others from following missions to the Japanese begin their lives with Him. I am confident He used me to plant and to water, but there was no evident harvesting happening. I don’t know if I’m disappointed exactly (maybe a little), but I do know God did miraculously orchestrate some really awesome and enjoyable times of living and speaking out His goodness in the presence of people who were curious about Him.

What I learned through it is this: there is rarely sin in disappointed expectations. Pain, maybe, and definitely discouragement, but hardly ever is there the element of willful immorality. These results can be expected in a fallen world. If anything, I wonder if God would have been disappointed in me if I expected less from Him.

The Other Side of the Coin

It’s one thing to deal with our own expectations. It’s quite another to deal with others’ expectations of us. Usually, we fear not being able to meet someone’s expectations, but lately I’ve been wondering if we haven’t been expecting enough of each other in the Body of Christ. Not in the more obvious areas of skills or accomplishments, but in the realm of spiritual potency. As congregations and groups grow, we tend to cater to the lowest common denominator in an effort to make everyone feel included, but in doing so an invisible ceiling begins to fall into place.

Whether in academics, athletics, creativity, or leadership, I’ve learned and grown the most when challenged to reach a potential others have seen in me but I didn’t have the courage or will to identify. What if we applied that same mentoring technique to our spiritual lives and started raising our bar of expectation? Assuming anything less than holiness now (not later, after gaining years of experience and Bible knowledge) was falling short of God’s standard as laid out in the Bible? That living utterly selflessly was actually the norm rather than the exception? That trusting God with anything less than all of our lives could not truly be called trusting Him with all our hearts? It’s one thing to expect perfection; it’s another to expect mediocrity. Neither are reasonable expectations any human being should hold over another.

Sometimes it can be difficult to rise to the occasion if there is no expectation of such levels. It’s no excuse to hold back, but knowing others believe in you (or, even better, believe in God in you) can be pretty empowering and encouraging, pushing us to go further than we thought we really wanted to. When it comes to Christian discipleship, Miles McPherson of Rock Church in San Diego put it well when he suggested the Church would do well to adopt Home Depot’s tag line²:

You can do it. We can help.

We might end up disappointed when things don’t work out. We might experience heartbreak or discouragement. We might even find ourselves in a mess we’ll have to clean up, but there is no sin in that. I would rather require the people I lead (as well as myself) to try so hard, to push their limits so far, they epically fail at least once a season than to demand perfect execution of their plans every time and have them operate out of fear of disappointing me. I’d rather they fear disappointing me because they were afraid to expect great things of God.

I don’t understand why, but the negative emotions we experience from unmet expectations are often an open door for something positive in the Kingdom within us. Personally, I’d rather find a reason to avoid that kind of pain at all costs, but according to what I read in Scripture, I can’t justify that approach. There is potential for tremendous growth and great long-term benefit in failure when we once again surrender with open hands to our Sovereign God and attempt, one more time, to rise to the heights He desires for us and for which He has given us His Spirit.

As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. Isaiah 55.9

1. Not sure where that statistic came from, but that’s what I’ve heard repeatedly regarding evangelism in Japan. [↩]
2. You can view that comment in its context here. [↩]