The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
"Expect God"
In a Sunday school class of middle school boys I taught many years ago, I placed a poster on the wall imprinted with the words, "Expect God." I asked the boys, "What do you think I mean by this?"
Immediately, one of them responded, "You mean Jesus is coming again!" "That is a great answer," I said, "and you're right. Our Lord will return one day and we look forward to it with great anticipation. However, the poster refers to a different expectation than that." I then shared with the boys the Psalmist's affirmation, "My soul, wait thou only upon God. For my expectation is from Him" (Psalm 62:5).
I shared with the boys that if they believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, their lives would be saturated with His presence and working in all things. "You will never live a moment in this life in which God is not the greatest fact and the truest reality. Our Lord lives with us always. He even lives within us us as the very Life of our lives. You will not always see or understand what He is doing, and you may not always be immediately comfortable with how He works. But His glory, your good, and the good of those with whom you live will be the truth of your existence. So, gentlemen, expect God."
More than four decades have not changed my confidence in what I shared with those young men. Time has over and over again confirmed the assurance that God "worketh all things after the counsel of His own will" (Ephesians 1:11). It has also confirmed that seeing and understanding His ways often greatly challenge our understanding. God's working involves the pleasant as He reveals His grace in countless ways. He also leads us along difficult paths as we "must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God" (Acts 14:22). As we expect God, however, we shall not be disappointed. Indeed, our hearts will be kept in His peace regardless of circumstance, situation, or condition as we anticipate the living God awaits us in every venue. As promised over and over in Scripture, He will be all we need in the blessed, the difficult, and the mundane.
"Be careful (anxious) for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4L6-7).
The world, the devil, and the flesh constantly tempt us to expect any thing but God. If we respond to their deceptions, our Heavenly Father may allow us to reap the consequences of our carnal anticipation. If, however, we embrace the truth of God's loving and involved presence, we will harvest the fruit of confidence in Him. We will find our Lord to be all we need, whatever the blessing or challenge. "Expect God." I hope that the young men from so long ago remember the exhortation so filled with promise. Even more, I hope they have experienced the truth that the Lord Jesus saturates their lives as the One in whom they "live and move and have their being" (Acts 17:28). In the light of such grace and truth, let us indeed expect God.
"For I know that this shall turn to my salvation through your prayer, and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, according to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death. For to me to live is Christ."
(Philippians 1:21)
Weekly Memory Verse
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
(Isaiah 53:4-6)
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