{"id":6368,"date":"2019-09-30T04:15:16","date_gmt":"2019-09-30T04:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/churchedge.com\/illustrations\/index.php\/2019\/09\/30\/what-do-you-expect\/"},"modified":"2019-09-30T04:15:16","modified_gmt":"2019-09-30T04:15:16","slug":"what-do-you-expect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/what-do-you-expect\/","title":{"rendered":"What Do You Expect?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Are our expectations divinely appointed?  Scripture presents a viewpoint we naturally resist: reality.<\/p>\n<p>  1. Many Christians experience dashed expectations.<br \/>\n      a. We continue to struggle in the faith.<br \/>\n      b. Non-Christians don&#8217;t respond to the gospel.<br \/>\n      c. Prayer is not answered.<\/p>\n<p>  2. Why doesn&#8217;t God answer my prayers?<br \/>\n      a. In Bible, struggle is usually portrayed as a normal part of life.<br \/>\n      b. Many unseen variables, apart from us, determine how people respond<br \/>\n           to the gospel.<br \/>\n      c. What we view as problems are often the vehicles God uses to teach us<br \/>\n           lessons we otherwise might never learn.<\/p>\n<p>  3. The fruit of faulty foundations.<br \/>\n      a. Inventions of an evangelical subculture.<\/p>\n<p>  4. The blessing of Biblical expectations.<br \/>\n      a. Reshaping expectations by Biblical criteria.<\/p>\n<p>  5. How to identify and re-adjust expectations:<br \/>\n      a. Pray.<br \/>\n      b. Objectively analyze and condense expectation into one sentence.<br \/>\n      c. Assess the fruit of your expectation.<br \/>\n      d. Study your Bible.<br \/>\n      e. Restate the expectation.<br \/>\n      f. Pray to internalize God&#8217;s expectation.<\/p>\n<p>  6. Is God enough?<br \/>\n       Real question: On what or whom will I base and focus my expectations and hopes?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Are our expectations divinely appointed? Scripture presents a viewpoint we naturally resist: reality. 1. Many Christians experience dashed expectations. a. We continue to struggle in the faith. b. Non-Christians don&#8217;t respond to the gospel. c. Prayer is not answered. 2. Why doesn&#8217;t God answer my prayers? a. In Bible, struggle is usually portrayed as a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[279,1600,278,1632,1633,1594,191],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6368"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}