by Rev. Gina Johnson
So here we are in our fourth week of cultivating vision and gratitude, and the message today is living with expectation and experience. And so I want to start off by asking you to imagine a farmer planting seeds in a field, and I know for many of you this isn't too far of a stretch.
And so though we have questions, as that farmer getting ready to plant seeds, he cannot plant with doubt. He cannot plant wondering why am I doing this, is anything going to grow? He has to plant with expectation. He has to plant trusting that the rain, the sun, the soil will all work together.
That he's not laboring in vain, that in the working together a harvest is going to come to fruition. And when you hear that story, can you relate it to your own life? And knowing that in the same way God calls us to live with that confidence, that the rain and the sun and the soil in our life are all going to work together. That we can be confident in our expectations, that we can trust that he's going to fulfill the promises for our lives that he's given to us.
As we turn the scriptures today to Romans, we are looking at verse 15, 13. And it says, I pray that the source of hope will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.
When we read Romans 15:13, it reminds us that the source of hope comes when we put our trust in God. And that always sounds easier said than done because we can put our wavering trust in God. We can put our convenient trust in God.
We can put our trust in God when everything is sunshine and rainbows. But can we remember to put our trust in God in every moment that we live and breathe? As we are coming to the close of a year and coming into the next year, are we walking into that year with trust and confidence? Are we walking into it with fear and doubt? I just want to explore with you all this morning some ways that we can remember to be in expectation of our mighty God that promises to deliver. And if you all remember last week, I talked about how can you know the fullness and the greatness of your God and still have doubt? Well, when you answer that question, let me know because I still fall into the same category.
We can read story upon story. We can look at our own life and yet those those tiny seeds of doubt or maybe sometimes those big seeds of doubt, they still continue to creep in. God wants us to look to him with expectancy.
He wants us to position ourselves to receive what he has to give to us. And with that, we don't just receive but we return and we renew and we give to others. And so I just want to look at a few places where we can say, how? How do we live with this expectation? How do we live in this trust? How do we continue to move forward knowing that our God is present and will make good of every promise that's been given to us? The first thing is just trusting in God's character.
You know, expectation begins when we can say we know who God is. Now, I have to give a disclaimer. God is.
I've tried to say multiple times if we want to describe God, we could sit here and we could talk for hours about God and we still wouldn't even come close to the remarkable, incredible God we serve. The God that some of us call father, the God that some of us call source, the God that some of us acknowledges the universe and creation. We can never fully understand, comprehend, or even speak about the magnitude of the character and the presence of the divinity of God.
But just because we can't get that perfect definition or that complete understanding, and I say this about God and I say this about love, because it's so epic, it's so powerful, it's so divine that we can only catch the glimpses. And sometimes those glimpses are huge. And when you see them and when you feel them and you embody them, that's what you need to share.
That's what you need to embrace. That knowing of this is our God. God is faithful, God is loving, God is powerful, and God's promises will never have never failed.
At times doubt is going to creep in and it creeps in when we base our expectations on our circumstances instead of basing our expectations on God's unchanging nature. The Bible says that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And so when we can walk into things without expectancy of wow, what is God gonna do today? Instead of man, I hope God shows up today because I don't got anything on my hands.
When we walk into those places of saying hey, this looks like a challenge, I see an opportunity because I know who has my back. I know who is living in me and through me. So there is no struggle, there is no limitation, there is no doubt, there's only that knowing of I am created in my Father's image.
I am empowered with the Holy Spirit and because I know who my God is, I know who I am, and I know who you all are. And if I truly know that, if I truly embrace that, what can stand against me? When God is for us, who, what can stand against us? Have you thought about Abraham at times where we've heard the story of Abraham and Sarah? As Sarah was there in her barrenness and she still doubted in God's promise, as the angel of the Lord showed up and said, hey, you're gonna be with child, she burst into laughter. And that's why when you hear the name of Isaac, it is about having that laughter and that doubt.
Because she was told and though she had been believing what her husband had been saying and though she had been moving forward with that hope, she still wasn't expecting it. She didn't trust in God's character even as the angel of the Lord stood in front of her. But guess what? That changed quick because she was with child.
And if you look just a little bit further in that story, Abraham was called to then sacrifice that very child, that child they waited for all that time. But they trusted in God's character. They knew their God.
They loved their God and they followed their God. Can we do that same thing? Have we faced those type of circumstances where we were looking and looking and things were still barren? Where we waited what felt like a hundred years and things were still barren? Can we trust that the angel of the Lord has said to us, you are going to have these things? God's promises are real. Seek ye first the kingdom.
And so when we look at Sarah and Abraham's story and we look at many stories throughout our life, can we remember where God revealed himself in unexpected ways and all it took was us believing in the fulfillment of his promises? One of the ways that you can do this is just going through the Bible and finding God's promises, writing them down, reciting them, meditating on them. The more that you say them and speak them, the more that they will ring out in your heart, especially when those challenging times come. Another thing to do is just remember his faithfulness.
We talked about this in the previous weeks. When you're having those challenging moments where it's like, you know, the wind is still blowing. I can still hear the rain hitting the windows.
We're not sure how this house is going to survive, but remember your house has been built on the rock and that rock is Christ Jesus. So just know that when you know God's character, you can place your trust in him and he never fails. The next thing that I want to encourage you to do is to anticipate God.
Anticipate God. God is not limited. God is often in the illusion of limitation because we place God there.
God's power is not limited by our imagination because what we tend to do is move through our daily life thinking that we can imagine and we can perceive what all God's going to do. Well, for one, we haven't been there yet. So we can sit here and we can do a vision board and we can dream and we can talk about all the great things that God is going to do in 2025.
Well, times it by 10. Times it by a hundred because the truth is we can't even speak of the total greatness that God is bringing our way. And a lot of times we sit there and we say, well, where is this greatness? This didn't quite look as I thought it would.
And there is where you get caught because as you are visioning the future, you're still allowing the past to say, you know, you can hope for that. But if we look back, we see it never really quite became that. We never really received all those things that we thought we were going to receive.
Well, stop allowing the past, stop allowing the limitations of your imagination, stop allowing your doubts and fears to limit what you can perceive because God is always providing in abundance. Long time ago, Travis wrote a song called Quiet Blessings. And guys, I've asked him multiple times to find the song, write the song, sing the song.
It's a beautiful song. You're just gonna have to take my word for it. But it was about those blessings that are quiet.
They're almost silent. And you have to be present. You have to be here now with your eyes open, your hearts open, and your hands not clung to anything, but in that posture of receiving all that God has intended for you.
And again, I can't even explain that because it's too vast for my comprehension. And so anticipate God. Remember when Peter and the disciples were out fishing all night and Jesus comes along and he says, hey, throw your net on the other side, throw it on the right side.
And they're looking at him and they're like, Lord, we've been out all night. And even in that moment, excuse me, they're not even sure. They have so much doubt.
We've been here all night and you want us to do this again? But they recognize something in his authority, something in Jesus' presence, something that says, all right, whatever. And even as they're saying whatever, there's that little bit of faith. There's that mustard seed of faith.
And so as they throw their nets back in, the catch is so abundant, it starts to break the nets. And from there they know if we can have faith like this, if we can have abundance in this, in fishing, imagine now if we would set ourselves out to be fishers of men. And in becoming fishers of men, the place that we need to start is the fishing within our very own soul.
And you know, sometimes you cast that line into the water. I've never had this happen, but I saw it on cartoons all the time. And you pull up that old boot, that boot that's all been in the water and it's now starting to corrode and it's gross and it's like, man, but that's the thing.
That's the part of being fishers of men, you have to start with yourself. And you might get a boot, you might get a candy bar wrapper, you might get something gross that you don't even want to touch so you put your gloves on, but you get through all that and you start to catch, you start to find those things in you that you know are of God. And that is the same characteristics that I said in the beginning when we were talking about God's nature.
As you fish for your true self, as you expand in your consciousness, you recognize that I too am faithful and loving and just. I too am filled with grace and mercy, abundance and hope for others. And so when you have those moments where you can't necessarily see what's out ahead of you, do not be limited by what you've seen in the past.
Do not be limited by your imagination, but be motivated by what you know about God and anticipate all the goodness that's to come. I say to people that I mentor that when you're holding something out at arm's length and you're trying to figure out, gosh, why am I holding this out at arm's length? Exactly. Why am I holding this out at arm's length? Whatever it is you are hoping for, whatever it is you are yearning for, whatever it is you know that is an alignment of the trueness of who you are, you don't have to hold it at arm's length.
Bring it close. And the more that you embrace the fullness of who you are and all that God has in store for you, the more it will come to life, not only in your life, but in the lives of those around you. It was just the other day where we talked about being better together.
And so the more that you can recognize that you are never separated from God and we are never separated from one another, then we can walk boldly with that anticipation. What is God going to do today? How is God going to show up in me so I can show up in this situation? So as you anticipate God, anticipate yourself. What is in store today? And lastly, in those steps of what can we do to live in this expectation, it's that partnering, partnering with God.
When we partner with God, it means that we live in expectation, that we align our hopes and our plans with God's vision for our lives. We don't just set goals in isolation. We don't just keep to ourselves and look at our own agendas and just keep pushing forth, but we lean into the Spirit.
We lean into the Word. We lean into community. We lean into Sunday morning service.
We lean into meditation and affirmation. We lean into looking back at all the great ways that God continues to show up in our lives, all the ways that we have been His instruments, His conduits, all the ways that we have got to bring hope to despair, that we've got to bring light to darkness, that we've got to bring love in places where we thought there was nothing but hate. And when we lean into those things, we can recognize that trusting God in every step of the process means partnering with God.
It's not just locking arms with one another. It's locking arms with one another, locking arms with God, and locking arms with the trueness of ourselves as we move into the future. If you remember a little ways back, we talked about the rebuilding of the temple.
And if you remember, Nehemiah had this vision, as well as many other prophets, that we were going to rebuild. It was the walls of Jerusalem. It was the temple structures.
And they were not able to just act impulsively. They didn't just jump out and do something. As they heard God's call in their life, they would take time to pray.
They would fast. They would seek God's guidance every moment, every breath. And as a result, God continued to open the doors.
Not that he ever stops. Not that he ever stops. A lot of times, as we are partnering with God and the vision that God has for us, we have a tendency to wait and think, when are these doors going to open? When is this going to arrive? When are we going to get there? But if we just stop and be present here in the now, and we can see all of God's provision, and we can see that all along, we had the ability to open the doors.
We had the keys to unlock the locks and open the doors and step boldly into the promises. But it's us that sometimes loses sight of what it means to be in partnership with God. Those two greatest commandments, right? Love God and love your neighbor.
When you're loving your neighbor, you can't help but loving God. When you're loving God, you can't help but love your neighbor. That is the true direction for partnership with God.
As Nehemiah and many of the other prophets went throughout the country-land, went throughout different places, asking people, turn to the Lord. Have faith. Have hope.
Lock arms us and let's rebuild. Let's claim God's promises. It wasn't just wishful thinking.
It was trust. It was anticipating. It was partnering.
And it was aligning with the true God, with Christ Jesus. And so as we move forward into this next year, I want to ask you, are you going to let your abundance flow? As we conclude this year, are we going to be able to lock arms, celebrate this great season of Advent and have the hope and the joy and the peace that the best is yet to come? That when you worship and you love a God like ours, man, we can't even begin to know all the greatness that is coming our way. And so I ask you in this time to lock arms with me and know that God is our source of hope.
We are filled with joy and peace as we trust God and as we step forward. As we live these days ahead with expectation and anticipation, we can trust that our partner, our God, knows the plans that we have and has always given us plans to prosper us, not to harm us, to lead us. So may we walk in faith, may we walk in hope, and we may remember what Jesus tells us.
You will do greater things than I. If we can put our trust in that, the remainder of this year and the years to come will be far beyond what we could ever imagine. And they will be a gift from our God. Let us pray.
God, we are so thankful that you are beside us, that you are within us at every step. We are so thankful that we are not limited by our own understanding, that we are not limited by our own imagination. We are so thankful that you continue to stretch us and to reveal to us and to help us claim who we are.
We are so thankful for you, God. We're so thankful for Jesus and we are thankful for the Holy Spirit. As we continue in the conclusion of this year, as we step boldly into the beautiful Advent season, help us, God, help us to remember you.
And as we look to you, we will remember who we are. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Comments