One thing that is extremely important to consider about expectations is that we need to form them in the right way. It is easy to observe the culture and society around us and to come to expect our lives to line up with it. False expectations can easily build up in our minds, resulting in major disappointment. Hollywood and the media are experts at building false expectations in people’s minds. They tell us how we should look, what we should eat, what we should wear, who is the standard for “sexy,” how we should talk, what is acceptable sexually, need I continue?
As Christians, I think it is CRUCIAL that we consider the expectations that we have and weigh them against Scripture. I think we often have worldly expectations about things without even realizing it. But we need to be very careful about this and weigh what we desire and expect with what God says about the particular subject. Better yet, Christians need to learn to ignore the expectations that the world says that we should have, and instead, go directly to God’s word and form our expectations from what He says.
Because we can form our expectations in the right way (based on Scripture) and in the wrong way (based on the world), expectations have the potential to be wither very helpful or very harmful.
When it comes to dating, it is very reasonable to have high expectations. We know what we would like to see in a partner, and it is foolish to lower our expectations. Instead, we should be patient and prayerful, trusting that God is preparing just the right person for us and that He will bring this person to us in His time (which is rarely when we think it should be!) Our expectations for this person should be based on the qualities and characteristics of a Christian.
However, in some situations, expectations have the potential to actually destroy us and/or our relationships with those that we love the most. A good example of this is marriage. Even when God blesses two Christians with one another and the two are living as God desires, expectations have the potential to really hurt a marriage. A good example of this is the sexual relationship. God lays out how this is meant to be in Scripture. However, in our over-sexualized culture, it is easy for to pure Christians to enter a marriage with falsely high expectations about how and what sex is supposed to be. Our culture emphasizes sex to such a degree that pure Christians often expect it to be something far greater than it is, and it can lead to utter disappointment. Unless communication regarding this is exceptional, this can lead to a lot of pain and disappointment in the marriage.
I’ve used some pretty clear examples that show how expectations rooting from God’s word can be very good and how examples rooting from the world can be disastrous. If you find yourself experiencing disappointment because your expectations have not been met the way that you thought they would, I think this is the time that you need to work at going from “expecting” to “accepting.” This has really been helpful to me over the past couple of months of my marriage.
I think in the beginning of a marriage, we have expectations about everything regarding our partner. How they should treat us, how they should act, how they should help us, etc. I think it is easy to expect a lot out of the other person and then when he or she does not meet that expectation, we start blaming them for not “fulfilling our needs.” This is what happened to me. But when I got to that point, I began questioning whether I should be blaming myself or blaming my husband. The reality of the situation was that I was expecting my husband to be someone that he isn’t rather than accepting my husband for the wonderful man that he is. Realizing this has led to more contentment, joy, and happiness in our marriage.
I pray that, whoever you are, if you are disappointed because of unmet expectations, you can learn to “accept” rather than “expect.” Focus on changing what you can change(yourself) rather than on what you can’t (others).
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