My Dec. 31st, 2019 post was about having expectations. Going into 2020 and beyond I’m still asking that you go about achieving your dreams and desires from a mindset of EXPECTING but with this article, especially for those of you that believe in God, I want you to understand something very important.
DON’T PUT GOD IN A BOX! HE DOES NOT DO THE EXPECTED.
This means don’t make decisions for God because you think you know Him. Yes some of us have a healthy relationship with God but NO ONE truly knows God. The God of the Holy Bible does the unexpected. A large reason for that is because He will not share His glory with anyone.
There are many examples of this in the Bible but for this message I’m going to point out 3x’s that God did the unexpected and if you or I lived during those times we probably wouldn’t have believed God did what he did either. Mainly because it’s not what we would have expected.
Remember God chooses us. We don’t choose God. Jesus chose all 12 apostles including Judas. You say why Judas if God knew he would betray him? It’s obvious, God used Judas to glorify Jesus by betraying him. Jesus needed to die for all of our sakes.
Example #1 (God chooses Saul)
So now we have one of the 12, Judas commit suicide and now the apostles think they need to choose someone to replace him so they chose Matthias (Acts 1:12-26) by casting lots. From a logical standpoint, Matthias makes sense because he was a disciple, the only problem was they were trying to replace a God chosen individual by using human ways to fix a spiritual matter. While they were picking Matthias, God was picking Saul (Paul).
For those not that familiar with Saul (Paul), it would be like God choosing Hitler to free the jews after he just slaughtered 6 million. C’mon why would anyone of us expect God to choose Hitler no different than how could you expect God to choose Saul, after all he was the Hitler of the day.
This is exactly why YOU MUST NOT allow your opinion of people to prejudice how you treat them. Because God will often pick someone, YOU DO NOT LIKE! But God says “That’s the one I want”
Question: Why does God do this?
Answer: Because His strength is made perfect in our weakness.
If he picked someone good, you would say they were good anyway. Instead he picks someone totally the opposite of what was expected and makes him an apostle.
So don’t feel bad if people at work don’t like you. Remember, Paul wasn’t liked by his coworkers (The Apostles) either.
Example #2 (Jesus walks on water)
When you read in Matthew 14: 22-33 we see Jesus walking on water. When Jesus was approaching the boat the apostles thought they were seeing a spirit because they were seeing Jesus in a way they didn’t expect. Jesus told the disciples to get into the boat and meet him on the other side to show that God can and does do the unexpected. The apostles in the the boat are a microcosm of those in the church. Always expecting everything to happen as they know with our limited knowledge, but we need to start being like Peter and step out of the boat and walk on the water. Open our mind to the unexpected of God and let God lead us in ways we could never imagine. This will take a combination of prayer and Fasting so God can reveal what he wants from us and also so we can understand his voice when He speaks to us.
Just like a child recognizes there father’s voice in a crowd, so should we be able to hear God’s voice when the static voices of friends and family are trying to tell us other than what God is telling us.
Example #3 (Jesus rides on a donkey)
When the angel Gabriel visited Daniel, he told Daniel exactly when the Messiah would arrive. Many that read the scriptures knew when that time would come but when that time did come (Palm Sunday) Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. Many especially the Pharisees were expecting the Messiah to be riding a stallion and be there deliverer from the Romans. Since Jesus didn’t meet the expectations of the people, they rejected him and because they did is the reason the gentiles were grafted in. That is a message all to it self.
In conclusion
We will see many unexpected events in 2020 and the years to come. Please try not to allow your preconceived thoughts or what our limited thinking tells us.
