Expectancy!

I LOVE, love, love The Holidays! Late October it starts coming on...that wonderful sense of expectancy. As soon as the humidity starts to improve, and the days get shorter. I am ready to start baking, putting up decorations, wrap presents. I love the baking, the company, and the indescribleable specialness of the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Season! Above all, I love the sense of expectancy!

Expectancy: 1 a: the act, action, or state of expecting. b: the state of being expected. 2 a: something expected [their belief led to an expectancy].

I have always been the sort that goes to church with a similar sort of expectancy. A book which I am still reading "What is Your God Language, Dr Myra Perrine", says this type of trait is called an enthusiast. I pray with this sense of expectancy. Sometime this summer I started beginning the week with a prayer of expectancy. Recently, prior to attending the monthly ladies' meeting at my church. I felt a strong sense that God was correcting me about attending it without that sense of expectancy. In other words, I was pretty much getting ready to do what I truly abhor...punch the time clock. Go do what I do. Attend, see friends, hear some good teaching, then go run errands...ya...da..ya..da..NOT the way to approach life, really no matter what we're doing. Especially not in spiritual matters. So, properly chastised, I began cultivating that sense and praying over it. Guess what? I did NOT get to go! Scheduling sanfu here at the Pondersosa prevented it. So, I just decided to go with the flow, pray with expectancy for those who would be attending and go on about Ponderosa business! The meeting turned out good, good enough that Pastor Kathy shared the message with the rest of the congregation Thursday night at mid-week service. It was on Spiritual Armor, and she reminded us how boxers go to their corners and are reminded to "put their guard up". And these are times we all need our spiritual armor in place.

Any who, I guess the point of this is that sometimes our expectations don't go the way we pictured. Sometimes it even looks like the complete opposite, even what we would call a failure. Life happens. Life can be disappointing. The Holidays can be disappointing. But, God is our sure thing. Our constant hope, source and everlasting gift. He, as our Father, is pleased when we come to Him with expectancy, and then we don't throw it away, don't abandon hope in Him, regardless of the circumstances. Hebrews 11:16 talks of this "But the truth is that they were yearning for and aspiring to a better and more desirable country, that is, a heavenly [one]. For that reason God is not ashamed to be called their God [even to be surnamed their God--the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob], for He has prepared a city for them." Troubles can come, and even be devastating, but what they can't be is permanent. The worst that life brings can not take away our eternal nature. Our future with Him! And He is so pleased when we believe Him for good! Hebrews 10:23 " So let us seize and hold fast and retain without wavering the [c]hope we cherish and confess and our acknowledgement of it, for He Who promised is reliable (sure) and faithful to His word."

I am not going to be disappointed this Holiday, because my hope is anchored in Him!