Desires vs. Expectations

In preparing to leave for Mozambique we have been taking advantage of being able to sit under godly teaching.  This last Sunday we started a series on the marriage relationship and one of the focuses was our desires vs. our expectations.

God gives us healthy desires like hunger, thirst, desire for companionship, love, respect and the list goes on.  Many times we change those desires to expectations; believing that others owe us or that we deserve something.  This can have terrible consequences.

I was trying to think of practical ways that this plays out in my life.  It brought me back to my relationship with the Lord.  Most of us know that our marriage relationship reflects our relationship we have with our creator.

I desire to have a stable place to live.  I can only imagine what it is like to live in one place for more than two years at a time.  When I begin making that desire an expectation that I have of God; I become dissatisfied, grumpy filled with unthankfulness and can potentially miss an incredible blessing that the Lord has in store for me.

PS 37:4 says "Delight yourself in the LORD
and he will give you the desires of your heart." Do I truly know the heart of God?  Am I treating Him like He owes me something?  God desires that all men come to know Him.  What is that worth to me?

In being a missionary to those that are unreached with the gospel, I have had to give many of my desires to the Lord.  In return, He has blessed me in ways that I had not even imagined.