holy expectancy

April 11, 2005

i had a chat with a friend of mine about worship last week. he was asking me if i ever got distracted by things that took place on a sunday morning, which in turn hindered my worship experience with God. my answer was yes. and in fact, it happens a lot for me, especially with regards to music. since i listen to tons of music, i've developed an idealistic view of how i'd like to see music done in the church. this can be summed up in one word: excellence (i'll discuss this more at length in a later post). when this doesn't happen, i start to analyze what can be done to improve the current situation. and it can become distracting for me, because i'm in analyzing mode, rather than worshipping God freely.

after our discussion, i was reflected on the topic some more the next day and an interesting thing happened. i was stopped at a red light, driving home with bobby in the passenger seat. he noticed that the driver stopped beside us was trying to get our attention, so i opened the window. he was asking for directions. i didn't think much of that, but the next day it struck me. if bobby hadn't been sitting there beside me, i probably wouldn't have even noticed the driver beside me. windows closed, eyes forward, music up, i was in my own space, waiting for the light to change.

for many of us, i think the same thing happens when we go to church on sundays. we've got our windows rolled up tight and eyes forward while God tries so desperately to get our attention from the car beside us. that's the heart of our loving Father. He longs for us to know Him and be with Him. but we don't hear Him. we don't notice Him. we're too busy caught up with our own stuff. maybe we're holding on too tightly to our lives and only looking ahead to what's in it for our us, our goals, our ambitions. or perhaps we're listening to something, the voice of the world, the voice of western culture, the voice of mass media. from this, we wonder why we don't seem to be able to engage with Him and experience Him. God seems distant and far to us, like an abstract concept that we just can't grasp.

there's a concept called holy expectancy that i learned it back in high school. in sum, if we want to meet with God, we must expect to meet with Him. it is not enough to simply want to meet with God. wanting to meet with God and expecting to meet with Him is not the same. wanting, is simply a desire, a drive for something. it does not imply action. expecting means action. when you expect, you prepare yourself, you get ready.

say you were a parent and were expecting your child to be home at 11 pm. it's now 11:15 pm. your child was late. being the concerned parent that you are, you'd be up waiting for their return. you might make some calls to find out where they were. you might even go out and look for them. the bottom line is, you'd take action.

while we take physical action to go to church on sundays, do we really expect to meet God? if we're honest, i think some of us would answer no. church can become very ritualistic and legalistic. we go because we should. or sometimes we get to church with so much going in our minds, that even if God did show up, we'd completely miss Him because our focus and attention is elsewhere. for latecomers, they stumble in at some part of the service. most people forget to take the time to refocus and simply join into the activities right away without thinking.

when was the last time you expected to meet with God? when i don't expect to meet with God, i don't meet with Him. it's as simple as that. if we went to church expecting to meet with God, the whole process would be different. we'd arrive early, prepare our hearts and possibly meditate on His Word. we'd do things differently. we'd be in the proper frame of mind to meet with Him. and if He moved, if He wanted to get our attention (like the driver who wanted to get my attention), we'd be ready for it, because we were expecting it.

holy expectancy is a lot like prayer. if we pray without expecting God to answer, He doesn't answer. praying without expecting God to answer is a grave insult. what we're really saying is that we don't believe God is able. we belittle God because we don't believe He has the power or the authority to do what we ask of Him.

so the next time you go to church, and you start wondering why God isn't meeting with you, ask yourself this: are you expecting to meet with Him? or are you acting like the way i did that night when i drove home, eyes forward, windows rolled up with the music turned up, unable to have your attention captured by someone else?

"you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart" - jeremiah 29:13 [NIV]

Posted by Leo Chan at April 11, 2005 2:31 PM