Well, what do you expect?

My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from him. - Psalm 62:5

Do you ever find yourself frustrated with the people in your life? I know I do. I am finding that these frustrations are a stumbling block to me. How can I love my neighbor if I am frustrated with him? After all, the very first characteristic of love that is listed in 1 Corinthians 13 is patience. Oh dear! Frustration and patience mix about as well as oil and water!

So, I began seeking the Lord on how to deal with these frustrations. My first reaction, naturally, was “Lord, I'm frustrated with so-and-so. Please deal with them!” Well, that never works. Whenever I ask the Lord to deal with someone else, He shines His spotlight on ME. In this particular case, the Lord led me to examine my expectations of the other person. I realized that my frustration was rooted in unfulfilled expectations. The carnal response to this revelation would be to ask, “how do I get the person to do what I want?” But, that is an attitude of manipulation and control that a Christian should avoid. Instead, I examined my expectations and asked myself if they were realistic. Ultimately, I adjusted my own expectations. Problem resolved. No more frustration. (I made that sound so simple, but it involved swallowing large chunks of pride and there was weeping.)

As I dug more deeply into the effect of expectations on relationships, the Lord revealed an interesting insight. The Hebrew word for expectation is tiqvah, and according to Strong’s Concordance, it literally means a cord or attachment. This gave me a visual image of myself attaching a rope to someone and trying to pull something out of them. Then, I imagined what it must be like to be on the other end of that rope. Expectations are always two-sided: the one doing the pulling, and the one being pulled. Frustration can occur on either end. If I am trying to pull something from someone that they don’t have or are not able or willing to produce, I will be frustrated and the person being pulled will be frustrated as well. What is the natural response to being pulled against your will? You pull back! The whole situation creates stress and tension between the two people.

So, how do we stop the tug-of-war? Stop pulling. Love does not seek its own way, but prefers the other (1 Cor. 13:5). We must examine and adjust what we expect from other people. Are we expecting them to meet our needs, rather than looking to our Father or taking care of ourselves? Too often, Christians want a quick fix. They expect their pastor or an elder to spoon-feed them the Word instead of studying it on their own. They expect someone to loan (or give) them money for a quick bailout instead of allowing the Lord to bless the work of their hands. There are many situations where we set our expectation bar too high. Parents, are you expecting your children to behave perfectly at all times? Spouses, are you expecting your mate to read your mind and always see things your way? Do we expect people to put their own lives and callings on hold to help us promote our “latest thing”? We must continually examine our motives and take our relationships and expectations before the Lord, so that He can purify them. Our greatest expectations should be on the Lord, rather than on one another. Expectations of others should be Word-based, rooted in love and should be communicated very clearly. And, we must learn to extend grace and mercy if those expectations are not met.

After gaining revelation of myself as the puller, I began to realize just how much I have been pulled… in several directions… by many people. It’s my own fault. I have lived most of my life as a people pleaser, always wanting to make everyone else happy, even to the point of my own deterioration. I have set myself up to fail. I convince myself there are expectations of me that don’t even exist. No one puts more expectations on me than myself. I am learning to recognize when I am being pulled. The next step after recognizing the pull is to take these things to the Lord and ask for His wisdom. How do I know which expectations to fill? They will line up with my Father’s Word and His plan for my life. Jeremiah 29:11 tells me that God has expectations for my life. Those are the ones I should be fulfilling. If a person’s expectation of me lines up with my Father’s, then I can say yes. I am finding that when I say yes to those, I am fulfilled and energized with a sense of accomplishment rather than feeling drained. I spent most of my life thinking that if I’m not always there for everyone all the time, then I was a bad Christian. Now I am learning to say "no" to people, gracefully and in love. Doing so does not make me a bad Christian. On the contrary, it helps me to weed dead works from my life and focus on the areas that are bearing fruit. My goal is not to be busy, but to be productive.

My search has brought me to the following conclusions: Why would we seek to fill the expectations of man, when we are instructed to seek first the Kingdom of God? Why would we expect man to meet our needs, when our Father has already promised to do so? We can always trust that when we place our expectations on Him, He will never let us down. He exceeds our greatest hopes.