OPINION:
When our family was getting ready for Christmas when the kids were little, they had a hard time waiting as they counted down the days. You too?
Sweet Maria and I would take one of our little Santa decorations and set him at the end of the hallway. We would inch him forward each day, and by Christmas Eve, Santa would be under the tree. This worked great until the anticipation became just too much for our kids, and they started moving Santa all the way down the hallway to speed up the arrival of Christmas. Every day, Sweet Maria and I would patiently move Santa back to the right spot and inch him forward again. We didn’t say to our kids, “You aren’t doing this right. Stop trying to fast forward to Christmas.” Instead, we delighted in knowing they were living in absolute anticipation and delightful expectation. God feels the same way about us.
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God doesn’t just like you. He delights in you and wants you to delight in Him. I like more things than I don’t by a wide margin. I like sunny days and surfing and puppies, but the idea of delighting in something the way God delights in us simply doesn’t compare. How God feels about us is far beyond happiness, pleasure, or approval.
The Bible is filled with many terrific stories that show us the way God delights in us, including one about spies. After a generation of wandering around in the desert, 12 spies were sent out from the Israelites’ camp to check out the land God had promised them. Ten of the spies came back bad-mouthing the land. The Israelites were filled with fear as the 10 reported how much bigger and more fortified everyone was in the promised land and how they wouldn’t be able to take it.
But Joshua and Caleb returned with a completely different take and were brimming with hope. They didn’t bemoan their condition; instead, they rejoiced in it. Here’s why. They knew God delighted in them and in the land He had led them to. In their words, “Because He delights in us, the land is as good as ours already.” They were full of faith and vision.
Sadly, the Israelites listened to the 10 spies who were afraid to enter into what God had promised them. Forty years later, after the 10 spies had passed on, Joshua, who by then had taken over for Moses, led the next generation into the promised land.
I remember in junior high school I hoped for a date — but it never happened. What I wanted in high school was the same — a date — but it never quite happened then either. I squeezed four years of college into five years, and I still wanted the same thing, but once again, it never happened.
When I met Sweet Maria, it was like all the decades of waiting collapsed in one moment. As soon as what I’d been longing for arrived, all the waiting didn’t matter. This is the stuff eternity is made of.
People who lead beautiful, purposeful lives live in constant anticipation. But it’s hard living in anticipation if you are in a continual state of consternation, frustrated with many things that happen from day to day. That’s why the mindset we bring to each day matters.
Every day we get to decide how we will show up. Will we overindex those disappointments that will predictably come our way, or will we entirely ignore them and pretend they never existed? These unhealthy extreme reactions bracket a good one.
What if, instead, we lived in anticipation and expectation that God will do terrific, amazing, unanticipated things? Some of those things will be unexpectedly painful and others remarkably beautiful, but we can rest in knowing God can make something of either.
In one of the opening scenes in the New Testament, people began looking for Jesus, and the Scriptures say the people were in great expectation of what was to come. They had heard about a person named John who was out in the wilderness and thought to themselves, “Is this the One?” It wasn’t much later that Jesus showed up and changed everything. Expectation was the precursor to Jesus’ arrival, and it still is. His arrival and our anticipation are usually closely linked. So, let me ask you, are you living in great expectation and anticipation?
Or are you shuffling your feet through life?
Paul captured this anticipation when he said that “creation waits in eager expectation” (Romans 8:19, NIV). In a beautiful word picture, one translation says “the entire universe is standing on tiptoe, yearning to see the unveiling” of what God is going to do for His kids (The Passion Translation).
What about you? What are you living in anticipation of? If you can’t see it right now, get up on your tiptoes and look a little harder.
Figure out what you’re hoping for, and then get comfortable living in expectation. Santa didn’t move as quickly down the hallway as my kids hoped, but he was still moving in the right direction and eventually got there every time. God doesn’t always give us specifics about how things will work out, but what He will often give us is a direction He hopes we will move toward. Live in constant expectation of what God might have for you today.
What seems improbable, perhaps even impossible in your life right now? What are you leaning away from? Don’t allow your joy to be skipped by a generation or two.
Know what you’re hoping for and have confidence in what you haven’t seen yet, knowing that God is over the moon about you. God delights in you, and He loves keeping His promises.
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Excerpted from “Catching Whimsy: 365 Days of Possibility” © 2024 Bob Goff. Used by permission of Thomas Nelson. May not be further reproduced. All rights reserved.
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