Great Expectations from God
‘THE less we expect from this world the better for us. The less we expect from our fellow-men, whether of spiritual help or of inspiring example, the smaller will be our disappointment. He that leans on his own strength leans on a broken reed. We are always going to be something stronger, purer, and holier. Somewhere in the future there always hangs in the air a golden ideal of a higher life that we are going to reach; but as we move on the dream of better things moves on before us also. It is like the child’s running over behind the hill to catch the rainbow. When he gets on the hill-top the rainbow is as far off as ever. Thus does our day dream of a higher Christian life keep floating away from us; and we are left to realize what frail, unreliable creatures we are when we rest our expectations of growth and of victory over evil in ourselves.” My soul, wait thou only upon God! My expectation is only from Himr
God never deceives us and never disappoints us. I do not say that God never allows us to be disappointed in our darling plans of life, in our children, or in our most cherished projects. What I mean is, that we are never disappointed in God. When we study the Almighty, whether in His glorious Word or in Nature, we find our utmost expectation overtopped by the stupendous and magnificent reality. Read such a book as “Ecce Caelum,” and see if you are disappointed in your Creator. When, too, we obey God, we always find our reward, either sooner or later, — just as surely as light comes with the sunrise. When we trust God, He never deceives us. When we pray to Him aright, — that is, with faith, with perseverance, with submissiveness, and with a single eye to God’s will, — He answers us. He always returns the best answer possible. Our
Heavenly Father makes no mistakes in His dealings with suppliants. He is a sovereign, but not a despot. If it pleases Him to keep us waiting for the trial of our faith, then we must wait.
But delays are not denials. God’s longdated promises are honored in His own good time. If we had hut to demand from God just what we desired, and when we desired it, we should be stealing His sceptre and ruling the Almighty Ruler. Uid you ever know a child that ruled its pai’ents without ruining itself? And, if it spoils our children to let them always have their own way, I am sure that it would be my ruin if I could bend my Heavenly Father’s will to all my own wishes. If this be your “expectation” from God, He will very soon teach you better.
God fulfils no foolish, greedy, presumptuous requests. But He does keep His promises. (He never promised to let you or me hold the reins.) He always answers a right prayer, and in the way and at the time which His all-wise love determines. And with what unexpected deliverances and blessings He often loves to take us by surprise! I never went through a revival in my congregation without discovering that I could not trust God our Saviour too much, or my fellow-man too little. Are you Christ’s, my brother 1 Then all things are yours. In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Go(^head. “Of his fulness have all we received,” said that beloved disciple who leaned on the Saviour’s bosom. John was never disappointed in his Lord; nor was Paul either, when he found himself “filled with all the fulness of God.” There is a fulness of sufficiency in Christ as a Divine Kedeemer. His blood cleanseth from all sin. There is a fulness of justifying merit in him; for “there is no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus.” There is a fulness of power in him who “is able to save to the uttermost all who come unto God by him.” There is a fulness of love in him who “having loved his own who are in the world loveth them to the end.” In my Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ is a fulness of grace and strength and peace and consolation that no man has ever been able to explore, and all the needy sinners in the universe could never be able to exhaust.
To little brooks men have often gone in seasons of drought, and found only a parched bed, cracked open with the heat. But who ever saw the Atlantic low? What ship ever failed to set sail for Liverpool through lack of water ] Oh! the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge and grace of God! When some one urged old John Jacob Astor to subscribe for a certain object, and told him that his own son had subscribed to it already, the old man replied, very dryly: “Ah! he has got a rich father.” Brother, you and I have got a rich Father, too. You are an heir of the King of kings. Then ask for great things, for “all our expectation is from Him.”
God must take it ill in us that we ask for so little, and with such a puny faith. He says: “Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.” He must wonder that we expect so little from Him. “The Lord taketh pleasure” — in whom’? Why, in “those that hope in His mercy. He loveth to be inquired after.” Oh, if we would only expect enough, and strive after enough, and ask enough from our infinitely rich Father up yonder, who can tell what blessings we might obtain!
Paul only expressed the unanimous judgment of all the heirs in God’s household when he exclaimed: “I Tcnow whom I have believed.” He summed up his glorious past and his expectations for the future when he cried out with rapture: “I have finished my course; I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the righteous Judge shall give me in that day!” Paul “looked for” that magnificent inheritance. So do I. So may you, if you are a follower of Jesus. I expect that if I endure to the end I shall be saved. I expect, and confidently, too, that through faith I shall be kept by the power of God unto salvation. I expect that when
I walk through the valley of the shadow of death He will be with me; His rod and His staff will comfort me. Heaven is to me only an expectation. So is to-morrow’s sunrise. I have not yet seen either of them; but they are coming. Behind this day’s midnight lies to-morrow’s dawn. Behind that night called death lies the day-dawn of Heaven’s exceeding weight of glory!
I expect that, if I hold fast to Christ, I shall see it. Beyond all that human eye hath yet seen or human ear heard is that glory to be revealed to me! I expect a joy that shall be to me as a “harp,” and a triumph that shall be to me as a “palm,” and a glory that shall be as a “crown unfading.” Figurative or not though the words may be, I expect the substance which they describe. My soul, wait thou only upon God; my expectation is from Him!
“Our knowledge of that life is small, The eye of faith is dim; But ’tis enough that Christ knows all, And we shall bo like him!”