Expectations

A good conversation requires speaking and listening. God desires communication with all of us. We have to make sure we are listening. Let's look at the dialogue in Jeremiah 8:18-22. It tells us that there are certain actions to getting and living well. Jeremiah starts the conversation in verses 18 and 19. You who are my Comforter in sorrow, my heart is faint within me.  Listen to the cry of my people from a land far away.

When you are lamenting or asking God for something, make sure you are focused and clear with your request to Him. Jeremiah's request was two-fold. First he wanted the Lord to hear how sorrowful and heartbroken he felt. Next he wanted to make sure God had not forgotten His people, and heard their cry (troubles).

We can make request like that as well: tell Him how sick, lost, stressed, angered, troubled you are. Make sure you ask God what you want to happen. Now it isn't that God doesn't already know what He is going to do. He wants you to think it over before you ask. Remember the story about the man who could not walk? Jesus wanted him to say what he expected of Him.

Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. ² Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades.  Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. ⁶ When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” - John 5:1-6

Sounds like a strange request of a lame person, but he didn't answer yes. He said he needed help to get in the pool to be healed when the angel came. Jesus said, Pick up your mat and walk, and he did! Maybe we need to to do less complaining. Listening and obedience is what will make us well in the long run. Amen?