6:Expectancy rests

Remember where we left off?

“Yet I will rejoice in the LORD. I will be joyful in God my Savior.”

When expectations have died and we’ve fought by faith long and hard, we move forward in expectancy. True hope is birthed.  The sixth and final key to living in expectancy without expectation:

We study, focus, meditate on, memorize, and fix our gaze on the beauty and character of God.  We will trust God when we know God.  When we know God we will trust God.

God is perfect. Because He is infinite, His characteristics are His perfections. Think about this. When God is wise He is perfectly wise. When God is trustworthy He is perfectly trustworthy. When God is just he is perfectly just.  All that He is He is perfectly. So the more we get to know God, the more we will trust Him.

So the remedy for this malady of fear, of not trusting God enough to relinquish our expectations, is to form a greater understanding of the character of God.

Now we can read entire books on this, you can do a study of the attributes of God, you can pray through thanking God for his attributes, there are a million ways to dwell more on his attributes and study them. For today I just want to share the three-legged stool of who God is.

On this three-faceted perfection we rest.

These three, put together, hold our view of God in perfect balance.  Without one of these, we tip over, but if we can rest firmly on these three, our faith and our expectancy will be firmly fixed.

1. God is All-Powerful. Omnipotent.  (Psalm 115:3)  God is able to do all things.  He is the most powerful being in the world.  Greater than life, greater than death. This means He can do anything He wants.  He can make something out of nothing.  He can heal, He can raise the dead, He can bring death, life, he can cause conception, He can deliver from evil. He can do all things. Rest in this.
2. God is All-Knowing. Omniscient. (Psalm 139:2-6) This means that God KNOWS exactly how to use his power. If he were only all-powerful, but didn’t know all things, it’d be pretty useless. But because He knows all things, He knows where the sick child is, He knows your pain, your situation. He knows exactly how to use the power which he has.
3. God is All-Good. (Psalm 136:1) If He were only all powerful and all knowing, but malevolent, then He could NOT be trusted with our lives. But because he is all three it means that not only can He do all things, and not only does He know exactly how to exercise His power over all things, it means that He is using his infinite power and infinite knowledge for our good and for His glory at all times. (Romans 8:28) This is the amazing truth that fits it all together.  All fear and doubt questions the goodness of God. All anxiety is practical atheism.  When Eve sinned in the garden she believed the oldest lie in the book-God is keeping something from you because He is not good. You hear that same beneath the surface in Mary’s words: If you would have been here.

We must maintain a Three-legged Theodicy. God can do all things, knows all things, and is ever and always using this power and knowledge for our good and His glory.

Now to live it. We have to keep these things in the forefront of our minds and hearts.  Because God did not destine us for disappointment.

We’re destined for fulfillment. Remember all those heroes of the faith God strategically disappointed? The story doesn’t end there, does it?

Good news tomorrow. Thanks for reading.