May 1 Devotion: Lowered Expectations

Lowered Expectations

Hebrews 13:8

Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.

This past week, it was voted on to expand the NCAA basketball tournament to 76 teams. No doubt, the college football playoff will also follow suit soon and expand again as well. Most certainly, this is nothing more than money grabs. However, no doubt it also has a little to do with the so-called big conferences wanting more of their teams to participate. All this does is water down the postseason of these sports. That, in turn, lowers expectations for the regular season. College football used to be that if you lost more than 1 game, you had no chance of making the playoff. Now you can lose 3 or 4 games and still make it. You aren’t expected to win all your games or even most. With 76 teams in basketball, we will surely see a team that goes .500 make the tournament at some point. It’s just a continuation of what we see in society. We place no expectations on people. We just continue to lower standards to allow people to not have to be the best they can be.

Unfortunately, that has made its way into the church. We seem to think God has no expectations of us. We are so busy that surely the Lord doesn’t expect us to pray or study. If we get behind during the week, we’ve convinced ourselves that God is okay with us just skipping services to get caught up. Those things are just not true. Our text tells us Jesus never changes. That means His Word also never changes. As a Christian, there are certain expectations on how we should live our life. Those expectations haven’t changed in the eyes of the Lord. However, to the world, it seems that they have. Somewhere along the way, it’s become accepted to dabble in the world a little. A “little” sin seems to be okay. It’s become accepted to think that God just understands. Does He?

What’s wrong with expectations? We expect to receive good service if we go to a restaurant. We work and have an expectation of getting a paycheck. We order from Amazon and expect to receive that package the next day. If we are then going to call ourselves Christians, then shouldn’t the Lord have the expectation for us to live like it?

He hasn’t lowered those expectations of us. Have we lowered them for ourselves to help us feel better about ourselves?

God bless,

Bro. Josh Richardson