Expectations: When God Flips the Script
Last week, we discussed the importance of directed and orderly morning prayer time. Now, looking at the last part of Psalm 5:3, after our prayers have been properly directed, we are called to wait expectantly.
That Hebrew word, expectantly, is atzafeh, which means I will look up and keep watching. This is the same verb used for watchmen who were stationed on towers or high places. Their job was to observe and report any threats to the city’s safety. This word, atzafeh, does not refer to a simple glance or a quick look. They were responsible for constantly looking up. That is our responsibility as well: to keep looking up, to keep watching expectantly concerning our prayers.
Do we just throw the seeds of prayer into the air like confetti without knowing where they’ll land? We must actively and faithfully wait, like those men on the wall, trusting God and anticipating His answer.
But here lies a potential threat to our peace. God is the scriptwriter, and in our deep desire to see our prayers answered quickly, we must remember that God often does not respond in ways we expect Him to.
Let’s go back to when Yeshua—Jesus—was two years old. Herod issued an edict that every Jewish male child in Bethlehem two years old and under was to be killed, because the magi had come looking for the King of the Jews. This frightened the paranoid king, who feared losing his power. God then warned Joseph in a dream to take the child and His mother and flee to Egypt.
But how would they fund this trip to Egypt? After all, they were poor. How do we know that? Remember when they went to the temple forty days after Miriam gave birth to Jesus and had to offer a sacrifice. The required sacrifice was a lamb, but a provision in the Mosaic Law allowed that if a family could not afford a lamb, they could instead offer a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons. That is exactly what Miriam and Joseph presented.
So then, how would they have the resources necessary to go to Egypt and stay as long as needed? This funding did not come from another Jewish family member or friend, but from foreign, unexpected sources—a group of visitors from a distant land. These were the magi who came from the region of modern-day Iraq, seeking the King of the Jews.
And notice what they brought as gifts: gold—always a valuable commodity wherever you go—and frankincense and myrrh. The last two were in high demand in Egypt, used for making cosmetics as well as for worship rituals. This family received all the financial support they needed at God’s perfect timing, in a most unexpected way. With the Lord, we need to consider the unexpected, but the issue is when we have wrong expectations altogether. That’s why it’s so important to stay in the Scriptures and understand God’s will.
A lack of knowledge of the Scriptures led to wrong expectations about the Messiah, and consequently to a national blindness on Israel’s part when He came.
What were they taught to expect? They were taught that the coming King Messiah would do three main things: first, that He would relieve Israel from Roman oppression; second, that He would rebuild the temple; and third, that He would restore peace to the world. Did Yeshua do this at His first coming? He did not. Not only did He not conquer the Romans —He actually died at their hands.
But had they truly known the Scriptures, they would have had a perfect description of what the Messiah would do—both at His first and second coming. Yes, He was to bring world peace, but only after dying and rising again. He had to fulfill Isaiah chapter 53, for He was, after all, the suffering servant who first needed to take upon Himself our sins.
Israel’s faulty understanding of Scripture proved to be a major catastrophe. As a nation, she rejected the Messiah, and forty years later, in 70 A.D., many Jews were exiled from the land. Many were killed or taken as slaves; their temple was burned to the ground, as was much of the city of Jerusalem.
But the problem of wrong expectations is not reserved only for the Jewish people. Many believers today struggle for the same reason—because of wrong expectations we have placed on God.
How do we feel when we expect God to answer in our way, and He doesn’t? Some of us end up questioning our faith, our salvation, and God’s goodness. We anticipate that God will remove every hardship from our lives, but He does not.
What must Abraham have thought? He left the land of Ur, and in Genesis 12 God promised him that he would take possession of a new land—a divine inheritance. Yet after a hundred years, the only parcel Abraham owned was a burial plot in Hebron, and even that he had to purchase.
We remember David—a man of great prayer and faith. Surely God would bless him once he was anointed as king. Yet who would have expected to see David on the run for the next ten years of his life? Neither David nor Abraham, nor the thousands of believers who were martyred expected to suffer the way they did.
But without suffering, an oyster might never create such a beautiful pearl. A pearl forms when a foreign substance enters the oyster; it responds by coating it with layers of nacre until a pearl develops. Suffering can bring about beautiful transformation. In the same way, coal under pressure becomes a diamond. Suffering can also reshape our thinking.
How did David write so many beautiful psalms to the Lord, filled with such profound understanding of God’s grace and holiness? Suffering taught him patience and dependence on God. It taught him repentance, as in the case of Bathsheba, Uriah, and the child who died after seven days.
One of the least desired—and least expected—answers from God is that we suffer. Yet consider that our true freedom is found in the Incarnation—that unexpected power from heaven which sprang up from a root out of dry ground, from unknown territory, from the son of Jesse. We were given a Messiah with the humblest of beginnings, who faced persecution, rejection, and ultimately death on a cross. Not what anyone would have expected—yet it is in Him that all our true expectations must rest. It is in Him that our victory is certainly expected.
My soul wait thou only, only upon God, for from Him and Him only is our expectation. Psalm 62:5