Words Of Encouragement For Your Day (Friday 10/28/2011)

Don’t Expect If You Can’t Be Expected

Luke 6:37-38 Amplified Bible (AMP)

³⁷Judge not [neither pronouncing judgment nor subjecting to censure], and you will not be judged; do not condemn and pronounce guilty, and you will not be condemned and pronounced guilty; acquit and forgive and release (give up resentment, let it drop), and you will be acquitted and forgiven and released. ³⁸Give, and [gifts] will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will they pour into [the pouch formed by] the bosom [of your robe and used as a bag]. For with the measure you deal out [with the measure you use when you confer benefits on others], it will be measured back to you.

            This week has been a week where God was teaching me lessons; this week has been a culmination in some cases of the lessons of this year.  He was allowing me to see, people, situations circumstance and attitudes for what they have been all along, and what they have really been.  He was allowing me to see the fact that I can no longer sugar coat, things or enable people by looking at a particular incident and justifying a consistent behavior and bad decision making.  That I had made excuses for people and gave far too many people passes, while I stressed, strained and struggled, and then they were just able to live, do and move on with life with no consequence for their decision making and actions.  The expectation is I would get over it, be okay with it, or that I should far from complain about it.  For far too long God was showing me that I was allowing people to expect from me, without me being able to expect anything from them in return.  I have been expected to be and do while others have been allowed to escape expectation. I have been expected to have the back of others while I have gotten stabbed in the back; I have been in a place where I had to show up while others remained in a state of sleep.

            Funny, this is not just our behavior with one another, it is us with God.  We expect from Him, we require of Him, but He cannot not expect us, nor can He require of us.  We have fallen into a state of feeling like we are entitled to get just because we do the bare minimum of what God asks; we think that just because we may read a scripture, post a scripture, or give an offering or tithes that we have done enough to warrant God’s favor upon our lives, or we have placed ourselves in a position to be abundantly blessed. But what about the exceeding things that we should be doing to receive that exceedingly abundant blessing?  Great Blessings require great faith, and great persistence and commitment, it has little to do with us being deserving because when it comes right down to it none of us are really deserving.  We want God to heal our finances, but yet our spending habits have not gotten any better, nor have we disciplined ourselves to be a good steward.  We are asking for a better job, but we are there, but we are not there, or when we are there we are doing more of our own things than we are taking care of business.  We want God to bless us indeed, but when we have we won’t bless others or even do what is right by others. If we want something extraordinary we have to be willing to do something more than the ordinary.  We have to get up off of our expectations and get into a place of being expected to be more to God than just someone that gives Him a shout out or a drive by. More than someone that just asks and never contributes to the process or extends them in service to God.

            What if God decided that He expected us but He was going to be the one who could be expected? What if God decided that He would give us the bare minimum or nothing at all sitting back on His laurels’ as we do waiting for us to move on His behalf?  What if He got mad with us every time we were expected and didn’t move?  What if we started receiving the same non expectancy from God and others that God and others have come to see and experience in and with us?  Would we be okay with that?  Would we still think it was okay to expect without being expected? It is high time for many of us to wake out of sleep that we have been in, and stop making excuses for not doing something, anything to allow God and the people around you to know that you can be relied upon, and expected to do, what is the acceptable things that will identify us as reliable, responsible and without presumption!  It is alright to expect, but we should know that when we expect, we should be expected to do more than just complain and think we deserve we should be rescued or taken care of just because we are a part of God’s family!