{"id":9,"date":"2006-12-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-12-07T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-08-16T08:50:05","modified_gmt":"2009-08-16T12:50:05","slug":"desires-vs-expectations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/michael-richardson\/2006\/12\/07\/desires-vs-expectations\/","title":{"rendered":"Desires vs. Expectations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--StartImportPhoto--><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/michael-richardson\/files\/2006\/12\/1486_7284.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-104\" style=\"margin-right: 10px;margin-bottom: 5px\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/michael-richardson\/files\/2006\/12\/1486_7284.jpg\" alt=\"Jessica and husband Michael\" width=\"300\" \/><\/a><!--EndImportPhoto--><\/p>\n<p>In preparing to leave for Mozambique we have been taking advantage of being able to sit under godly teaching.&nbsp; This last Sunday we started a series on the marriage relationship and one of the focuses was our desires vs. our expectations.<\/p>\n<p>God gives us healthy desires like hunger, thirst, desire for companionship, love, respect and the list goes on.&nbsp; Many times we change those desires to expectations; believing that others owe us or that we deserve something.&nbsp; This can have terrible consequences.<\/p>\n<p>I was trying to think of practical ways that this plays out in my life.&nbsp; It brought me back to my relationship with the Lord.&nbsp; Most of us know that our marriage relationship reflects our relationship we have with our creator.<\/p>\n<p>I desire to have a stable place to live.&nbsp; I can only imagine what it is like to live in one place for more than two years at a time.&nbsp; 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.<\/p>\n<p>PS 37:4 says &quot;Delight yourself in the LORD <br \/>\nand he will give you the desires of your heart.&quot; Do I truly know the heart of God?&nbsp; Am I treating Him like He owes me something?&nbsp; God desires that all men come to know Him.&nbsp; What is that worth to me?<\/p>\n<p>In being a missionary to those that are unreached with the gospel, I have had to give many of my desires to the Lord.&nbsp; In return, He has blessed me in ways that I had not even imagined.\n<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/michael-richardson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/michael-richardson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/michael-richardson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/michael-richardson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/michael-richardson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/michael-richardson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/michael-richardson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/michael-richardson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}