Living faith is never found on it's own. Like a spider web that can not be made or keep its shape must have anchor supports to exist or continue existing, faith can not stand alone. It must be accompanied with expectation. Now, I have written before what I have learned about expectations being dangerous and the building blocks of anger and resentment. I most certainly still believe that when it comes to selfish expectations, especially those concerning God.
Faith can not live without expectation, but expectation can certainly live without faith. Desire can easily be confused for faithful expectation. We believe we have faith when what we have is hope or optimism where we try to manipulate circumstances and even God with our positive thinking. I believe in the promises and goodness of God so things have to go the way that I want them to. That is a return to selfish expectation that leads to disaster.
Faith believes and approaches God. Faith says grace makes it possible for me to go to God, so I'm going to go. Faith says God is good and loves me even when life feels bad, but it's not about convincing ourselves that the bad and the pain aren't bad and pain. It's not about deluding ourselves into thinking things are going well when they suck. Faith says things are indeed painful and bad and out of control and overwhelming but the closer to God I can get the more I will somehow understand and see and know His goodness and love, regardless of whether or not it happens as I would want.
We feel the storm rock the ship as the waves crash down on us. We cry out, "Lord save us! The ship is going to come apart and we're going to die!" What we want is Jesus to step into the moment and say "Peace be still" to the storm. Sometimes He will. Sometimes He does. It's awesome. But sometimes what He says is "Don't be afraid. I called you to sail to such and such a place and I will get you there. You will live and not die from this storm." Then the waves keep crashing, the wind keeps whipping, and we still feel like hurling. Nothing has changed.
If our expectation is selfish at this point it will feel like God has failed us, let us down and doesn't love us anymore. Our faith will break apart and be as useless as a lifeboat with no bottom. It may remain tied to the ship, but dry rot has made it worthless. It can't hold our weight. But if we have faithful expectation when the Lord reminds us that He will see us through the storm, we relax. We may not see how, but we expect to reach our destination in tact, not because the storm is gone. The storm becomes irrelevant. Whether it stops or becomes a hurricane is immaterial. All that matters is who God has said He is, how God says He loves us and His word that says the storm is not our end. We expect God to be God, in His way, in His time, but we fully expect to set foot on shore. We're not going to drown.
When we have that kind of expectation, our faith is still living and can not dry rot. It is not and never will be a matter of if we have enough faith, believe and desire hard enough, that God has to do what we want. But it will always be true that if our faith in who He is lives we will expect Him to show Himself mighty and good. We will stay in position to move best in the waves, because we will keep our eyes on Him knowing that He is the North Star that we can trust to keep us on course no matter what changes around us, We don't fail, we don't give up, and we don't turn of course when we have a faithful expectation in God being God and caring for us.
Today let us repair the dry rot of our faith by looking to Jesus, the author and completion of that faith, with an expectation to see and experience His love and power in our lives this day and every day. Let us look for it with the child-like wonder of a kid who wonders what neat thing his Daddy will do next and not as a cynical who insists anything has to be done his way.
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