by Aaron Davis
EXPECTATION
Mark Batterson points out in his book, The Circle Maker, the importance of expectancy when he cites that “King David waited on the Lord expectantly.” I think that there is possibly a significance hidden in the word waited.
Throughout the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, there are repetitive examples of displayed faith in which there was an expectancy revealed through the subsequent actions of the people who prayed or sought God about a situation and then waited for Him to respond. It was as if they understood God to be one who was in covenant with them and they simply expected that He would fulfill His promises to them or fulfill His end of the deal (if you will). This example is mirrored throughout every book of the Bible.
In fact, if you perform a search of the Amplified Bible, it reveals that the books of Psalm, Proverbs, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Daniel, Hosea, Luke, Romans, Hebrews, and James all have scriptures specifically outlining the importance of waiting expectantly on God (actually using those exact words), and it makes me wonder if there is something significant in the extension of faith demonstrated in waiting with expectation.
Somebody who waits is expecting a response. If I knock at your door and stand there for a while, I am displaying an expectation that someone is going to answer my knocking. When I walk away, I also display something about my expectation or belief surrounding it.
Luke 11:9–13 (AMP)
So I say to you, Ask and keep on asking and it shall be given you; seek and keep on seeking and you shall find; knock and keep on knocking and the door shall be opened to you.
For everyone who asks and keeps on asking receives; and he who seeks and keeps on seeking finds; and to him who knocks and keeps on knocking, the door shall be opened.
What father among you, if his son asks for a loaf of bread, will give him a stone; or if he asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent?
Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?
If you then, evil as you are, know how to give good gifts [gifts that are to their advantage] to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask and continue to ask Him!
There is something very intentional about action within the laws of this physical realm. The Bible states that God spoke things into being; He didn’t just think them. The Bible specifically alludes to physical action.
I remember in biology class we discussed the transfer of heat and absorption, conduction and convection. The example was sugar and tea. We’ve all seen it displayed in application—you can have iced tea and pour sugar into the iced tea and virtually nothing will happen outside of the sugar sinking to the bottom of the glass. Within this scenario, because of the lack of absorption, there will be very little change in the flavor of the tea. However, when you stir the liquid, it excites the environment and the sugar changes structure and is absorbed into the liquid. The physical action of stirring is the catalyst for the change.
Although the ingredients were all correct even when combined, until there was a stirring and energy was exhibited, nothing in the environment changed. But, add a little energy to the scenario, insert some action into the combination, and unsweetened tea experiences a transformation and becomes sweet tea!
So what is to be revealed in the example of waiting expectantly from a biblical perspective? In order to wait, one must have had some sort of expectation for their efforts or would have only hoped (likely resulting in a failure to wait or other subsequent actions corresponding with no expectation), rather than additionally waiting expectantly. I think there is an expressed difference between these biblical examples of expectant waiting and in what we typically see in the modern church today where people pray but do not display any expectancy in their actions thereafter. There is often a prayer of hope, but I wonder how often people really expect God to come through for them. And I wonder if this expectancy reveals what people believe about God and actually plays a part in the breakthrough of what is prayed for.
This lack of expectation leads me to believe that possibly many in the modern church see God differently from those in the Bible who had great faith in Him. And if one’s faith is revealed by the expectation and willingness to wait, and those exemplified in the Bible played any part in the fulfillment or reception of what God promised them, then I wonder if it’s possible that we have somehow exempted ourselves from receiving from God by failing to fulfill a misunderstood or unknown spiritual law directly connected to the extension of faith and waiting.
James 1:4–8 (AMP)
But let endurance and steadfastness and patience have full play and do a thorough work, so that you may be [people] perfectly and fully developed [with no defects], lacking in nothing.
If any of you is deficient in wisdom, let him ask of the giving God [Who gives] to everyone liberally and ungrudgingly, without reproaching or faultfinding, and it will be given him.
Only it must be in faith that he asks with no wavering (no hesitating, no doubting). For the one who wavers (hesitates, doubts) is like the billowing surge out at sea that is blown hither and thither and tossed by the wind.
For truly, let not such a person imagine that he will receive anything [he asks for] from the Lord,
[For being as he is] a man of two minds (hesitating, dubious, irresolute), [he is] unstable and unreliable and uncertain about everything [he thinks, feels, decides].
So, as it pertains to the expression of expectation revealed in clichés, is there a connection between commonly accepted clichés surrounding God and His relationship with man and our expectation or faith in Him?
Let’s consider a different perspective on this issue: If David had been as disregarding of God’s faithfulness as it seems many express today in their clichés, do you think he would have experienced the level of breakthrough that he did in his lifetime? What about others who experienced the miraculous by God? Would Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Abraham, Elijah, Elisha, Naomi, the disciples, the apostles . . . Would any of them have experienced the level of renown and blessings that they did, had they not extended faith and expectation in the capacity that they did?
I think, considering the circumstances, that there is at least a justifiable question mark revealed in this line of thought, and I wonder if we as a Christian society have become content to expect and ultimately accept less from God than He intended. As a result, our experiences are less contingent upon His will or desire for us but rather tied more directly to a misunderstood law that is somehow linked to our expectation or expression of it. It’s just a thought, but I think it merits significant consideration.
THE POWER OF AN IMAGE
So the question becomes, “How does the degree of your belief or faith influence what you are seeing or experiencing in the moment?” I have heard it said that “perception determines reception.” This is clearly exemplified in the statement, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” Any sales course worth its salt will have a teaching portion explaining how human perception plays a significant role in the reception of a person and what he is presenting.
A friend of mine recently said to me, “I would never hire a fat physical trainer,” the reason being that we would perceive that if his knowledge isn’t working for him, why then would it work for us? He may know exactly what it would take for you to get where you want to go in your health quest, but his failure to implement his knowledge himself causes us to be less likely to receive information from him on this subject because of his inability to implement the information.
I wonder how much this “perception determines reception” paradigm influences people and how they relate to you and me as Christians, or furthermore, how they perceive, relate to, and receive God. How much does this power of an image actually impact our reception of God and what He would want for us?
People who have been hurt, abused, neglected, and taken advantage of naturally perceive things differently from those who have not, and oftentimes their actio
ns directly reflect their experiences.
EXPERIENTIAL REFLEX
In my own life, when I became a detective, my lieutenant sat me down on the first day of the job and told me, “Aaron, this job will change you!” I thought I knew what he meant and I brushed it off as I explained to him how the job might affect other people, but it wouldn’t affect me. However, a few years later, I understood exactly what he was saying—my perception had changed.
Before dealing with criminals day in and day out, investigating their crimes, listening to their lies, seeing them cry and beg me to help them moments before they tried to kill me, I was a DARE officer, school resource officer, and youth pastor. I dealt with kids and sometimes troubled teenagers, but my overall interaction with society was positive. However, it didn’t take long for me to have my rose-colored glasses shattered once I started working in criminal investigations. It’s not that the reality changed; there have always been evil people who were intent on hurting others for their own gain. But my reality changed because of my experiences, and as a result, so did my perception of people and my demeanor toward them.
To this day, my experiences have influenced how I carry myself in public and the decisions I make when in an environment where I don’t know everyone. I can’t walk into a Starbucks without my developed behaviors taking over: I look at every person in the room, from corner to corner. I evaluate the people to determine if I know anyone. If any are acting or postured threateningly, I identify who may be the most likely threat. This happens in seconds without my even thinking about it.
My experiences completely restructured how I see people and how I process information. It’s almost as if the experiences created in me a learned reflex, and when I encounter specific environments, I immediately see my current situation through the experiential lens of my past, which directly influences my attitude, responses, and heightened level of guardedness. As a result, occasionally I have to cognitively process through a situation that has evoked a particular response in me that isn’t necessarily appropriate for that similar yet different scenario.
TRUST FALL OR TRUST WALL?
A clear example of these changes is in the arena of trust.
I used to be a very trusting person. I was an eternal optimist who wanted to believe the best about people. Then I experienced several occasions in which people I trusted betrayed that trust. When I went into law enforcement, I experienced deception and manipulation on a criminal level. As a result, I ended up having to process through cynicism in a way that had previously not even been a part of my internal makeup. Today, because of my experiences, I’ve learned to be much more balanced than I was in years past, but still there is an experiential reflex that battles between wisdom, experience, and discernment that I’ve had to become intentionally aware of.
So, if we recognize that there is often a direct connection between our experiences, receptions, and perceptions of people, I wonder how often these same types of experiential reflexes also dictate our perceptions and reception of God, or ultimately our expectations of Him. This question is a weighty one to me, because if there is a spiritual law at work and our expectations influence how we respond and how we receive, then I wonder if the very experiences (especially pain-filled ones or failures) that we often use as a litmus test for our future responses and expectation could actually be setting us up for the next failure . . . before we ever even enter that race.
AN UNEXPLAINABLE LAW
Since I began studying scriptures with the intention of discovery rather than simply the confirmation of what I had been taught, I have come across some new realizations, particularly as it pertained to what we know and understand about spiritual progress and the application of physical and spiritual laws within a biblical context.
Hebrews 11:1 (AMP)
Now faith is the assurance (the confirmation, the title deed) of the things [we] hope for, being the proof of things [we] do not see and the conviction of their reality [faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses].
I’ve discovered that the Bible often addresses issues in their simplest understandable form, when often the reasoning behind what is addressed may be much more complex than the initial hearer or reader’s capacity to understand. Occasionally, this form of simple instruction may pose additional questions from the hearer. But it has become apparent in my studies that often the questions that might arise and the capacity of the one posing the questions may not meet on the same plane, and as a result remain completely misunderstood outside of simply obeying of the instruction and receiving the benefits of that obedience. (I will address this in more detail in the remainder of this chapter.)
I’m sure, to many a theologian’s dismay, that this would be much like a physicist trying to define quantum physics before even the understanding of Newtonian physics was established.
Historically, knowledge seems to be revealed in the time frame that progress and enlightenment have made the advancement of understanding even feasible. It’s as if one concept builds off of a previous one, but the resulting understanding could have likely never been derived without the sequences of events in the process leading to the conclusion.
This means there is little room for shortcutting the system, even if we intensely desire to. Knowledge and its progression usually follow a path of learning from the previous principle. However, it doesn’t make swallowing the present understanding and living with not understanding the answer to “Why?” any easier. But oftentimes, all of the factors within the equation have not yet been revealed, and as a result, there are too many hypotheticals present to actually make absolute sense of the scenario with the available information. This would be much like an aspiring physicist trying to define quantum physics before even the understanding of Newtonian physics was established.
MICRO-COMPLEXITIES
Take, for example, Numbers 19. This chapter is dedicated primarily to the cleansing process for anyone who touches a dead body. In this chapter, there is significant elaboration on cleansing yourself, cleansing the house, cleansing the clothing, even how to handle pottery that didn’t have a secure lid on it, and finally cleansing any person who is touched by any other person who touches a dead body, or the bones of a dead body. It’s pretty involved, and without understanding all of the factors involved in why God would instruct people to follow these rituals, one might derive that these requirements were excessive and ridiculous.
For millennia, I’m sure many Hebrews may have asked questions like “What’s the big deal? Why do we have to be so thorough in our cleansing rituals?” Yet I have read several similar accounts from people (even in the past few years) who have theorized that there is some kind of significant spiritual transfer at the root of God’s instruction on touching the dead and the cleansing process for His people to keep them from being contaminated by demons and other things when they have physical contact with the dead. And actually, it is continued human flakiness and these far-reaching theories on a subject like “cleaning yourself after touching dead stuff” (which the reasoning for is so easily understood today because of our scientific advancements) that substantiate my next statements as it relates to this very topic and human nature.
Is it possible that God was intent about this issue of cleansing because He understood the significance of microorganisms and bacteria, but He also knew that man would not advance in the necessary scientific understanding of biology to be able to comprehend why He would institute these laws until at least the mid-1600s?
If God had explained bacteria and microorganisms to man in terms that would have made sense to them in that day, I can see the possibility of all kinds of interpretations of what God was trying to say. As happens so often in historical accounts, they would have likely created an entire religion based upon the information that was conveyed to them about tiny, invisible life forms that exist, grow on, and actually consume the flesh of the dead and which can be transferred by touch. So, if for no other reason but that man simply wasn’t a
ble to comprehend the weight of the information, God simply instituted the necessity of a seemingly inconsequential ritual that would protect His people from what they could not understand yet.
Perhaps God, understanding human nature, realized that if He went beyond simply emphasizing the importance of the cleansing process, people would miss the necessary message and the life-saving application of the ritual, making it into far more than what it was.
Placing myself in the sandals of the Hebrew teenager who thought God’s rule for ceremonial cleansing after touching the dead was stupid, I can imagine a sequence of events, like the fictional story below, taking place because of the ignorant denial.
Young Benyamin was the first-born son of his family, named intentionally because, as his name was defined, he was to them the son of their right hand. Overall, Benyamin was a pretty good kid but like any teenager, he went through a stage where he was a bit of a know-it-all and began to question why some of the things he was taught within his religion were even necessary, particularly as it pertained to all of the laws and rituals.
As the firstborn son of a firstborn son and inheritor of the family birthright, Benyamin had a special bond with his grandfather Gedaliah, the patriarch of their family.
Because it was the harvest season and all the young men were working, Benyamin had not seen Gedaliah in two days. His mother Eliana sent him to the house of his grandfather Gedaliah just to check on him and bring him some food that his mother had cooked for him.
When Benyamin arrived he discovered his grandfather, whom he so adored, had likely died two days before and in his grief and mourning, he kissed his grandfather, disregarding the knowledge that he was not supposed to touch the deceased.