expectations on Assumptions

A man named Jack was driving on a dark country road one night when he got a flat tire. He saw a cabin in the woods and began to walk towards it. He told himself that the person who answered the door w...

Part of our experience of waiting is cultural, and how time elapses while we wait can vary from person to person and context to context. We wait differently and we have different expectations that are...

Men box God into the contents of personal experiences, and then seek to define his attributes by this limited exposure to eternity.

Children are likely to live up to what you believe of them.

Life is so constructed that the event does not, cannot, will not match the expectation.

I find my life is a lot easier the lower I keep everyone's expectations.

Grace frees us from having to earn God’s acceptance by meeting others’ expectations, and it also frees us from the unholy pride and prejudice of determining others’ acceptance by God on the basis of o...

Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.

Our God has boundless resources. The only limit is in us. Our asking, our thinking, our praying are too small. Our expectations are too limited.

My eyes account for less than one percent of the weight of my head,” she observes with sweet resignation; “I’m bony and dense; I see what I expect.”).

No soul can be really at rest until it has given up all dependence on everything else and has been forced to depend on the Lord alone. As long as our expectation is from other things, nothing but disa...

Dear Lord, We come to you this evening with great expectations. Expectations that your Son Jesus has been born, and that his life is a light for us and all people. We come with expectations that He c...

But what seems to happen in our lived practice of worship is that we don’t simply enjoy the stimulation; we expect it from God. We don’t just value “positive” emotions, but in our lived experience and...

American Christianity is a story of perpetual upheavals in churches and individual lives. Starting with the extraordinary conversion experience, our lives are motivated by a constant expectation for t...

May all your expectations be frustrated, may all your plans be thwarted, may all your desires be withered into nothingness, that you may experience the powerlessness and poverty of a child and sing an...

Grace substitutes a full, childlike and delighted acceptance of our need, a joy in total dependence. The good man is sorry for the sins which have increased his need. He is not entirely sorry for the ...

To some degree we all get what we want. Maybe not all we want but what we most deeply desire ends up finding its way to us. If you are skeptical about this, try writing down one desire each day for a ...

Leadership is often a matter of failing people’s expectations at a rate they can stand.

Their first night home after their honeymoon, Paul set his alarm clock, turned off the lamp, fell onto the pillow, and said to his wife of six days, Rachel, “I’ve got to leave for work at six, so can ...

Christmas is fast approaching. And now that Christ has aroused our seasonal expectations, he’ll soon fulfill them all!

Advent 2023: Make some noise Alive, Awake, and Alert AIM commentary Ancient lens What's the historical context? The Worst Is Yet To Come I wonder if some of Jesus’ Galilean crew regre...

Laughing at the Disciples? This is one of those texts where it’s pretty easy to laugh at the disciples. This is the second time Jesus told them he was going to die and then rise again after three day...

In her excellent little book (Mythical Me), Richella Parham begins by describing a single event that led to a personal journey into addressing her struggles with comparison. Having recently moved to a...

My wife, Susan and I were sitting in the office of a fellow pastor, Jack Harrison, in the fall of 1992. The recommendation of friends had led us to Jack’s office. “He’s an amazing counselor,” they sai...

Ancient lens What's the historical context? The Worst Is Yet To Come I wonder if some of Jesus’ Galilean crew regretted volubly admiring the beauty of Herod the Great’s temple. I can see Pete...

When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.

It happens sooner or later in every relationship: someone will let you down. We have a term for the earliest stages of a relationship: the “honeymoon phase”—that rosy time period when everything but d...

In the darkness of a Herodian prison, John the Baptist seems to have had some doubts about his cousin, Jesus of Nazareth. The man who John had declared was so far beyond him that he was unworthy to ti...

If you’ve ever run a business or led a team of people, you know what it’s like to send someone in your place. You know they’re going to interact with a person who might not know you, and that person w...

The late comedian Sam Levenson enjoyed sharing funny anecdotes about his childhood, especially his early school days. One of his favorite stories was about his first day of school, when his overly pro...