Expectations

Sometimes the expectations for our life mask the reason we are doing it, which is to glorify God.

I have a perfect example of this. Today would’ve marked 365 days in my Glorify devotional, sadly I forgot to do it yesterday so now today marks my 1st day of Glorify. I ended at the 363 days. I was devastated, I was trying to convince my parents to pay for me to repair my streak but it wasn’t worth the effort.

All I wanted was to take a screenshot of my 365 day streak and prove to everyone that even “a busy high school girl” can make that commitment to God. Therefore, you can too. That was my Expectation.

I lost sight of doing it to glorify God. Once it hit that 1 day streak, I felt empty.

Now if I wasn’t using it as a crutch, and was doing it for God that streak wouldn’t have affected me as much as it did. Everyday I did it in the morning quickly just to get the streak. God still filled me up with what I needed but he wasn’t the expectation, the streak was.

The worst part I made an idol out of something that was expected to strengthen my faith.

Truly, how many times does our expectations get in the way of our God?

We want this, God wants something else. We want something to go this way and stress for it to go that way, completely missing the reason we are doing it in the 1st place.

My Facebook profile picture shows an image that says “Jesus is my first love”. It’s a great reminder that in everything I do, I must not forget who my first love is.

I stressed so hard this week, trying to get good grades on all my assignments and constantly staying up late just to complete them. If I was doing it for God, I wouldn’t have let the stress have that hold on me. If I was doing it for God, I wouldn’t deny my own needs in order to get a good grade.

There should be a healthy balance. When Jesus is the 1st love, he’s the 1st priority in everything you do. I lost sight of this. I was just wanted a good grade, and was getting increasingly mad, the later I stayed up to just get it done.

What I should’ve done was look at the big picture. I should’ve prayed before going into the hard assignment, and carried God’s peace with me through it. That’s when I realized I was never relying on God’s strength to begin with, I was only relying on my own.

Just yesterday, I got the grade back. I got a 40/50 on it, keep in mind my expectation was a 100. The reasoning for why I didn’t get a 100 was because I made too many pages to the Ad Project I was working on. I got points off for putting more effort then I needed too.

Kind of reminds me of my Glorify streak, I lost my streak for putting more stress on the streak then I needed too.

So what’s the big picture? All that stress, all that work, all those hours up late, amounted to nothing. It was all for nothing.

When we spend time with God and rely on him, he gives us peace where there should be stress. When we spend time with God, he allows us to relax when we should be working hard. When we spend time with God, he allows us to sleep peacefully when we should be up late working.

Relying on God should be our expectation. We accomplish nothing when we work harder only on our own strength. Relying on God’s strength, we accomplish everything. Honestly, if I didn’t put as much effort into my Ad project I would have gotten a 100 and a good night’s sleep. Instead, I got neither.

However, it taught me a valuable lesson. Don’t forget your first love. When you forget your first love, you get stressed by expectations and mask doing everything to glorify God.

We glorify God by having peace in the conflict. We glorify God by depending on his strength not our own.

Isn’t this a better way to go about life in general? It sounds amazing. Who wants stress?, I’d wager to say nobody does. That being said, having peace when everything in your life seems to be piling up on you is very difficult.

Therefore, how do we go about that? I find this is a lot easier for experienced Christians because they have a whole log of all that God has done in their life and they can just meditate on that. However, with brand new Christians it is very difficult to do. The reason it’s hard to see all God has done, is because you just started paying attention to it.

As a new Christian, you must look at the big picture. By repeating these words, “No matter what happens I know I’m going to be in heaven for eternity”. So what’s the worst that can happen now? It’s not the end of the world, if something is not completed at this exact moment. Take your time, take a breath, do as much as you can and rely on God for the rest.

You have to remember God’s promises in order to get through the challenges of life. God’s promises give us peace.

Take this Bible verse for example, “The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.” Deuteronomy 31:8.

The promise that God is always with you, and because he is with us we don’t have any reason to be afraid. We don’t have to stress because God is with us. We say we can’t do it, and God’s like, “Honey I know you can’t do it, but I can”. We say it’s just too much, and God’s like, “Honey it’s not too much for me”. He wants to be there for us, to be the outlet for all our worries and stress that we put on ourselves.

All we have to do is take our hands off what we can’t control and give it to God because he can. My God can. Trust in his peace and there will be a much better result to everything you do. Why? Because you’re doing it for the right reason, “to glorify God”.

Just like earlier with me, we may not be able to get that “365 streak”, but the “363” is enough.

We don’t need to put any unnecessary expectations on ourself, just the expectation to Glorify God Always by not forgetting about our first love (Jesus Christ).