Understanding the Power of Expectations, Part 1

What we’re going to learn today is, the distance between your expectations and your experience is the level of frustration and anger and disappointment you have in life.

Let me give you a quick, positive picture.  Let’s say you’re a hypothetical couple, Dan and Sally.  Dan and Sally are newly married; they have built their brand-new house.  They waited to have children.  They have an 18 month old; they are absolutely crazy about him.  They live in a nice area; everything is perfect.  They have finally made it.  She has been a little overprotective.  So, the baby is 18 months old; this is their first date since then.  They go to an exclusive restaurant.  He’s got a great job.  Life just couldn’t be more wonderful.  They get a phone call.

Scenario number one, hypothetical situation: They get a phone call from an honest friend: “Hey, there’s smoke billowing out of your house.  The babysitter just ran out.  The fire department is on the way.  There are flames leaping out. We know you put burglar bars on the back to protect your little boy.  We don’t know if he got out or not.  You need to come immediately.”

They drop their expensive meal, get in the car, rush home, and their only thought is what?  Is our little boy alive?  That’s their only thought.  Their expectations that have been framed are, this is a very serious situation: Smoke, fire, police departments – and they are crazy.  And they come; their house is engulfed in flames.  No one can find the child.  Babysitter doesn’t know what happened.  She fell asleep; when she awoke, there was smoke.  She looked; she couldn’t get there.  Terrible situation.  Their home is burning, and now, it’s ashes.  And they are absolutely distraught.  Forty-five minutes, as the ashes are beginning to cool, and the wife is uncontrollable in anguish, a big, strong fireman comes up, with an 18 month old in his arms, and says, “I think he must have crawled out through the bars.  You all are very fortunate.”  And they are ecstatic.

Scenario number two – same couple, same situation, same child – 18 month old – same job, we got the whole scene.  They are now eating.  They get another phone call.  They get a phone call from a friend who thinks, We need to protect them from this.  “Hey, it’s just a little kitchen fire.  A little smoke came out.  I saw the babysitter running out.  I’m sure the fire department is here.  It’s not a big deal, probably a little grease fire in the kitchen.  But you probably ought to come, because we don’t want them to worry.”  They come with the expectation, Boy, I hope our home is okay.  Boy, I hope it’s okay.  We just spent all that money, and we redecorated.  We did the whole nine yards!  And they come, and the house is on fire!  And they assume, obviously, it wasn’t a very big fire.  Someone must have had their child; it can’t be a big deal.  And they start looking around; they can’t find him.  And they are distraught and angry and absolutely ticked off, because all they worked for went up in flames.

Same situation, two different expectations.  They drive home, in scenario number one, thinking they may have lost their child.  And they have a home in ashes, and they are bouncing like little kids off the wall with joy.  They come, in scenario number two, assume everything is okay.  The exact same thing happens, and, instead of rejoicing that they have a child that is alive, they are devastated because their home is gone.  You get the picture?

The principle that you need to remember is very, very simple: Disappointment equals the distance between our expectations and our experience.  You might want to jot that down.  Disappointment equals the distance between our expectations and our experience.  If you push it a step farther, disillusionment occurs when unrealistic expectations meet normal, predictable reality.

I was totally disillusioned for about a three to four-hour period in my marriage, not because what happened isn’t normal, healthy, predictable, and happens in every marriage!  I was disillusioned because disillusionment is always the child of an illusion.  I had an illusion about what marriage should be like, and then, when reality set in, I was devastated.

I think there are a lot of people that go into marriage and realize, This is going to be tough.  We’ll probably have a lot of fights.  We really love each other.  People communicate – we’ll probably knock things around a lot.  And they have their first or second or third fight, and thought,  Yep, pretty normal.

I’ve got this idea that running backs that go into the NFL think they’re going to get hit.  It’s just a thought.  And so, when they come through the hole, and there’s a blitz set up, and there is some free safety about 6’2” and a half, 225, who runs the 40 in 4.5, and this guy gets set up, and he goes – Boom! – and Barry Sanders wonders where life went . . . And they give him the smelling salts.  It hurt.  But he expected it.  You go play in the NFL, you’re going to take some hits.

And what the apostle Paul basically is going to tell us, “You want to play in the NFL, you want to be a man or a woman of God, you want your life to make a difference, you want to draw close to the Savior in a fallen world? Fasten your chinstrap.  Fasten your chinstrap.  Because you’re going to take some hits, and that’s normal.”  But if you naïvely believe that it’s not, you are going to be frustrated, disappointed, disillusioned, giving, “Why, God?  Why me?  What’s the deal?  I don’t understand.  I thought You were good.  I thought You loved me.”  That’s all the things I was asking about my wife.

Where we have been, by way of review, is a divine formula, for four weeks – C + P = E, right?  Circumstance plus your perspective equals your experience.  How much control do we have of our circumstances?  Very little.  How much control of our perspective?  A hundred percent.  It’s how you choose to look, empowered by the Holy Spirit, on what you go through.

We learned, in week one, that the key is “focus.” Is it upward and outward, or is it inward?  In week number two, we learned “purpose,” that God use my adversity, leverage it.  In week number three, we talked about “hope,” learning it’s from where you look, through a divine or eternal perspective.

And, with that, if you’ll open your study guide, I have put the passage within, or if you’d like to open your Bibles to Philippians chapter 1.  We’re now going to look at the final lesson from the apostle Paul’s life.  End of chapter 1, he is basically going to say the fourth key is “expectation.”  And you and I need to ask this question, when life really gets up and down, and relationships get frazzled, we need to ask, “Well, what did you expect?  What did you expect?  What did you think, you were going to go through a marriage and tiptoe through the tulips for 35 years, and life be perfect?”  I did.

Boy, when I look back on that, that sure was dumb, wasn’t it? And so, we need to ask the question, “What are our expectations?”

And what the apostle Paul is going to do for us, in verses 27 through 30, is, he is going to lay out clear expectations.  You want to know?  He’s going to say, “Look,” in verse 27 and 28, “do you want to know what God expects from you, as a son or a daughter of Jesus Christ?”  He’s going to just make it as clear as he can.

And then, he is going to stop, and he is going to flip the coin, and he says, “Now, do you know what you can expect from God?”  See, life is hard.  And unlike the commercial, therefore, get all the gusto, or play hard – no.  Life is hard, therefore, know what God expects, and know what you can expect from Him, because when your expectations and your experience are closely aligned, you don’t get disappointed.  You have grace and strength.

See, I think when one of those NFL running backs shoots through a hole, knowing that he is going to get his head knocked in, I think he learns to position his body, and he learns there are certain cuts you take, and certain cuts you don’t take, and I think when he can sense and feel that, I think there’s a linebacker coming, I think you kind of tuck your head, and you take a shot, without getting hurt.  But if you don’t think you’re ever going to get hit, boy, you can really get nailed.

And I meet Christians all the time that have really been nailed: “Well, I thought when I asked Jesus to come into my life that my marriage would get all better in a couple months.”  “It was through our business that failed, and I asked Christ to come into my life, and I knew I was desperate for the first time, and you know what?  We went bankrupt.  He didn’t send a check in the mail.”  “Well, I thought when I asked Christ to come into my life, and I made a decision to really follow Him with all my heart that everything would get better, and now, my parents think I’m nuts.  My kids are saying, ‘Hey, what happened to you, Dad?’  And the people at work are giving me a hard time.  This isn’t exactly what I was expecting.”

So, what can we expect?  Let’s look at what the apostle Paul says.  Verse 27 – what does God expect?  First and foremost, a consistent conduct.  He says, “Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.”  In essence, this new little phrase: “Whatever happens,” it says, “only,” or, “now, getting to the final issue.”  It says, “Walk in a manner worthy of the Gospel.” Live in such a way that your life reflects, by what you say and what you think and what you do, this Good News, this brand new life that you have in Christ.

And Paul, he’s a shrewd guy.  This phrase, “conduct yourselves,” there are a couple of different words in the New Testament Greek he could have used, and one means “to walk in a circumspect way so that there’s consistency.”  But he doesn’t use that word, like in Ephesians.  He uses the word that we get our word for politics. The Philippians were a Roman colony, and they were proud of it. If you were a Roman citizen, in that day, everywhere you went, membership has its privileges, trust me, if you were a Roman citizen, you could walk in any town, any colony.  You could demand things as a Roman citizen.

We find it with Paul.  Remember when they beat him up one time, and they were ready to sentence him?  And he says, “Oh, is this how you always treat the Roman citizens?”  And the guy goes, “Oh, I was just kidding, man.”  You know, “Can we get you a drink of water?”  You know?  But a Roman citizen had a set of privileges, but there was also a set of responsibilities.  And Philippi was an official Roman colony, and there was a sense of prestige.

And the apostle Paul uses that word, and basically, what he says is, “You know, the sense of privilege and responsibility you feel at being a Roman citizen?”  He says, “I want you to act like citizens of heaven.  I want you to understand that there is even a higher calling.  That’s great.  But when you walk around town, and when you travel, you have certain privileges.  You have access to the eternal God of the universe.  His Son died for you.  He raised from the dead.  His Spirit lives within you.  You have privileges like no people on this planet.

But you also have some responsibilities.  And everywhere you go, what comes out of your mouth, and how you treat people, and what you do with your stuff and why you do it – it needs to reflect a consistent conduct.  Live according to your calling.  That’s God’s expectation.  Be the man, be the woman, that God saved you, forgave you, and empowered you to be.”  That’s what he’s saying.  That’s what God expects.  Not of super Christians, not of missionaries, not of pastors – us, regular people.

And then, the apostle almost thinks, in his mind, I wonder if they’re wondering, there in Philippi, what exactly does it look like to live a consistent life? How would you know for sure whether you’re living up to God’s expectations or not?  And so, in the second half of verse 27, and here in verse 28, he lays out, precisely, when he says, “live a consistent life,” or, “in a manner worthy of Christ” – he lays out, in the next little section, exactly, exactly what living a consistent life looks like.

Let’s look at it – verse 27 – the second half – and 28.  He says, “Then, whether I come and see you” – meaning, he feels like he might get out of prison, and he’ll get to visit them – “or only hear about you in my absence” – he remains in prison – “I will know that you stand firm in one spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you. This [response] is a sign to them that they will be destroyed” – “a sign to your opponents,” he says.  And the word for opponents, here, and a sign to them, is the same word used for “people who are against Christ.”  It’s used other places in the New Testament for the Antichrist.  And then, he goes on to say, “But that you will be saved – and that [too] by God.”

As you read through, Paul says, “Look, when I come – if I hear about you, if I get to come, I want to know that you’re living a consistent life.  I want you to know, as a Kingdom citizen of being related to Christ, I want to know, or I want to hear, that you are really living up to the privileges and the responsibilities of your calling.  That’s what God expects.”

And if you want to know, specifically, what that looks like, let me give you three action words.  In fact, if you got a pencil, you might pull it out.  We do Bible study here together, so if you don’t bring a pencil or pen, you might bring it in the future.  Circle the words stand firm, and then, in parenthesis, “in one spirit.”  Then, circle the word contending, and then, you might put in parentheses “as one man for the faith of the gospel.”  And then, circle the word without being frightened.  Paul focuses on three terms to explain the evidence of a consistent conduct.  And you know why?  Because I think the apostle Paul – here’s a man in chains.  Here’s a guy that’s been left for dead.  He’s been beaten up.  You talk about a guy who has been through a hard life because of his relationship with Christ.  He knows there are three temptations, when life gets hard, for Christians.

The first temptation is to give up, isn’t it?  “I quit.  I just give up.  I didn’t know it was going to be this hard.  I thought things would be better.  I thought they would be easier.  I’m getting flak at work; I’m getting flak at home.  I’m getting financial flak, flak, flak, flak, flak, flak – forget it!  I quit, God!”

The second temptation is to give in.  Just compromise.  Just don’t stand as strong.  When a topic comes up at the office, and you know God gives you an opportunity, and you need to step through it, just shut up.  Just don’t be a leader in your house.  Just kind of back off.  Don’t take that kind of stand in school.  Then, people won’t get on you.  Just melt into the woodwork.

The third temptation is to shrink back, to lose courage, to lose confidence, to just go through the motions and be paralyzed, not to live a consistent life.  And the apostle Paul knows that, just like his pressure, when we get under pressure, we want to give up, we want to give in, or we want to shrink back.

And so, look at the key words.  The first thing he says is that we should hang tough in tough times.  That’s what it means to “stand firm,” here.  He says, “Stand firm.”  It’s, “Be steadfast in the storm.  When it gets really hard, hang tough in tough times.”  He said, “That’s how you live and demonstrate a consistent manner of life.” Don’t give up.

And then, he tells us how to do it.  Notice the little phrase, “in one spirit.”  Now, the scholars have a little debate on this little phrase.  They don’t know whether “in one spirit” is, you stand strong, empowered by the Holy Spirit because there are no capital letters in the text. Or is this the idea that you stand strong in the storms of life “in one spirit” drawing on the strength and the encouragement of other brothers and sisters in Christ?  And I think this is one of those times where, grammatically, either could be true, and theologically, both are true.  God wants you and me to stand strong.  Don’t quit.  Don’t give up.  Where are you going to get the strength?  Depend on the Spirit: “Oh, God, fill me with Your Spirit.  Give me the strength to go on.”  And just admit, “I don’t feel like it.”