Freestyle Friday: Husband Material

Several weeks ago I wrote about expectation. Since then I have told my wife on two separate occasions that I would be ready to submit my follow up for her to post on the upcoming Friday and two Fridays have gone by without me following through. Needless to say, I did not meet her, or my own, expectation. The list is long of reasons why.... but at the end of the day it doesn't really matter what the reason(s) were.

Picking up where I left off, uncovering both human and Godly expectation, I will tackle Godly expectation first. What does our Creator expect of us? Well, He uses Moses in the book of Deuteronomy to give us some insight. Moses has gone up Mount Sinai bringing with 2 stone tablets on which the Lord wrote the 10 Commandments.

Upon Moses' decent from the mountain top, he saw the Hebrew people, the very people he was intervening for, defying the God that had delivered them out of slavery, had provided for their needs in the desert and shown them His mighty power. In his anger, Moses threw down the stone tablets, breaking them into pieces. In Deuteronomy 10 we find the Lord instructing Moses to once again chisel out 2 more tablets from stone that He would again write His commandments on, replacing the first set that were broken. Then Moses sums up what God requires starting in verse 12:

"And now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the Lord's commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good? To the Lord your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it. Yet the Lord set His affection on your forefathers and loved them, and He chose you, their descendants, above all the nations, as it is today. Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, might and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes.

He continues in chapter 11, verse 1 with: Love the Lord your God and keep His requirements, His decrees, His laws and His commands always. 

It would seem that God's expectation of his people is to love Him, obey Him and serve Him. The last one rings clear for most of us. We want to be served. When we go to a restaurant we expect to be served, to have our needs/wants fulfilled. The Lord is much the same way, He desires for His children to serve Him; however, unlike us, He is exceedingly patient.

If we have unmet expectation at a restaurant we do things like leave a lousy tip or complaint to a manager, maybe even swear to never patronize that establishment again. But if we don't met God's expectations, what does He do? He makes a way. From the beginning God knew that man would rebel against his Creator. He knew that we would not be able to "live up to" His expectations. He knew it and He loved His creation anyways. That's a far cry from throwing a hissy over unmet earthly expectations, isn't it? I purpose that we all would be a lot better off if we were able to look at expectation from the lens of our Lord. Perhaps we would find a bit of grace and mercy and maybe even no expectation at all.