Quotes about Expectations

Here's the reality: most people who are angry with God are angry with him for being God. They're not angry because he has failed to deliver what he promised. They're angry because he has failed to deliver what they have craved, expected, or demanded. When awe of self replaces awe of God, God ceases to be your Lord and is reduced to being your indentured servant.

You see, God hasn't promised you a good job or great kids. He hasn't promised you an easy marriage and a comfortable place to live. He hasn't promised you physical health and a good church to attend. He hasn't promised that you would experience affluence and be surrounded by things that entertain you. What he has promised is that he will complete the work that he has begun in you.

Without knowing it, we put our identity and inner peace in the hands of the people around us. We look to them for what no flawed human being will ever be able to deliver. We ride the roller coaster of their views of us. We begin to do things not because they are right, but because we know they will please those whose opinion of us and acceptance of us mean more than they should.

If you put too many things in your need category, you will end up frustrated with life, hurt by others, and doubting God's goodness.

When my hope is in my ability to rule the day, my spouse becomes a constant threat rather than an intimate companion.

So much of our disappointment in relationships is not because we have an unrealistic view of others, but because we have a distorted view of ourselves.

Whatever sits on the other side of your "if-only" is where you are looking for life, peace, joy, hope,

I still lack humility. I still tend to make life about my plan, my feelings, my desires, and my expectations. I am still tempted to assess the "good" of a day by whether it pleased me versus whether I pleased God and was loving toward others. I still am tempted to live as if I own my life and still fail to remember that I was bought with a price.

When you think you're righteous, you expect others to be righteous as well, so you become demanding, judgmental, and constantly disappointed.

Parenting is about the condition that makes good behavior seem such a hard and elusive goal.

Our agenda, our definition of what a good God should give us, is a life that is comfortable, pleasurable, and predictable; one in which there's lots of human affirmation and an absence of suffering. But consider God's agenda,

Sweating bullets to line up the Bible with our exhausting expectations, to make the Bible something it's not meant to be, isn't a pious act of faith, even if it looks that way on the surface. It's actually thinly masked fear of losing control and certainty, a mirror of an inner disquiet, a warning signal that deep down we do not really trust God at all.