The Tragedy of Living with Low Expectations
Acts 3:1-9
Introduction
I am constantly surprised and bewildered and honestly sometimes even disgusted at how persons who claim to love God and claim to have accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior and even testify of the moving of the Holy Spirit in their lives, live so far beneath their privilege as children of the king.
I am disturbed over the fact that many of us have been in church longer than we have been in anything else and yet while we excel and achieve and grow and enhance in other areas of our lives we keep flunking out of spiritual development 101. We are seemingly hooked on holy happy meals and addicted to spiritual junk food. So much so that whenever an attempt is made to wean us off of the bottle so that we can be introduced to table food we rebel and must be given a nipple, I mean a pacifier to suck on. I am disturbed. So I have tonight to talk to you about the tragedy of living with low expectations.
If we are honest tonight many of us who have entered into this holy place, this place that is sanctified and set aside unto the worship of our God have come in satisfied with our present spiritual level. Even though this place, the church, is a place that is pregnant with possibility and potential many have come tonight not expecting to get anything and have absolutely no intention of taking anything with us.
Oh yes, we came ready to hear good singing, we are prepared to hear powerful praying and some are even hoping that the preacher will put on a good show, but few have come expecting to leave here tonight challenged, changed, different, stronger, better, more stable, more secure, more confident, loosed, healed, delivered, set free. Few have come saying God, “my storage is empty and I am available to you.” Few have come saying.” Is there a word from the Lord.” Few have come saying, “ Lord, I come to you knee bent and body bowed before thy throne of grace and I am asking you to fill my cup Lord, and let it over flow.” Sadly, for one reason or the other we have become content to live our lives daily with low expectations.
Now, I am not suggesting that we don’t go to church.
I am not suggesting that we don’t love the church fellowship.
I am not suggesting that we don’t read our bibles from time to time.
But what I am suggesting is that over a period of time we have become accustomed to not seeing much, so therefore we don’t expect much. Then the enemy comes in and tricks us into believing that not much is to be expected anyway and that this is just the way it is supposed to be.
Perhaps I have shared this story with you before, but it fits good right here. (tell story of man and bird)
This lame man reminds me of the bird.
He had become so accustomed to doing what he had always done, that even when an opportunity to came to change his direction and destiny, he was content to stay where he was.
So I have come tonight to challenge someone here to move out of your spiritual comfort zone. I just wanted to create an atmosphere that will make someone uncomfortable with where you are and cause you to become with dissatisfied with your current low level of living.
I would tonight that someone would admit that you are tired, I mean sick and tired of always having your head hung down, tired of always being broke, alone, contemptible, miserable, insignificant, inadequate, insufficient, incapable, imperfect, sad, despondent, defective, deplorable, disgraceful, depressed, in despair, mad, flawed, substandard, pitiful, pathetic, poor, defensive, bringing up the rear, never the head and always the tail, always on the bottom and never on the top.
Tired of always moaning and groaning, tired of always crying and complaining, tired of getting life’s left over. Is there anybody that is tired of living with low expectations?
This text tonight is a very familiar one and I won’t dare tonight to try to unpack it all. You know this story (summarize it)
However, on my way to my seat, let me lift just a few points for your closer consideration and so that you might be aware of the symptoms of and suggested solutions to living with low expectations.
I read an article on yesterday that was entitled 7 signs of a stroke. The writer suggested that knowing the signs of a stroke may save someone’s life. I want to tell us tonight that understanding both the symptoms of and the solution to living with low expectations could very well save someone’s life and in fact the life you save just may be your own.
1. THE CRIPPLE ARE NOT ABLE TO STAND ON OWN TWO FEET
Now, when we investigate this text this man’s condition is clear. He is lame. He is a cripple. He is handicapped. His legs don’t work. His legs appeared to be just useless limbs stretched out on the blanket in front of him. They were attached to him but he had never felt them. He had never moved them. He never ran as a boy and nor had he walked as a man. Simply put, because he was lame he could not stand on his own two feet and I have discovered that even in the church we have some who are spiritual cripples and their lameness will lead to their living with low expectations.
Maybe not physically cripple, but they are spiritually cripple. Don’t look now but there is a good possibility that you are sitting next to someone who is spiritually crippled.
They sing in the choir but they are singing cripples. They serve within the usher minister, but they are ushering cripples. One of the clear symptoms of their crippled condition is the fact that they can not spiritually stand on there own two feet.
They are always living under their circumstances instead of living victoriously above their circumstances.
They have to be carried all of the time. Now we all need to be carried sometime but there ought to be sometimes when you can carry someone else. We all need to be helped sometimes, but there ought to be sometimes when you are able to help somebody else. When you are a spiritual cripple someone else has to pray for you, worship for you, praise for you, shout for you, seek for you, fast you, ……….
But there ought to come sometimes when you say hey I don’t need anybody to do this for me. God has been too GOOD!
You can’t tell it like I can tell it, what the Lord has done for me.
When I look back over my life and think things over, I can truly say that I been blessed.
All of my good days out weigh my bad days so I won’t complain.
In spite of all I been through I still got joy.
May not have any money, but I got joy.
May not have any honey but I got joy and this joy that I have, the world did not give it and the world can take it away.
2. ALWAYS BEEN THIS WAY – THIS WAS NOT JUST A BAD DAY - HE WAS BORN THIS WAY AND BECAUSE HE WAS BORN THIS WAY AND AS FAR AS HE KNEW HAD ALWAYS BEEN THIS WAY, THIS WAS NORMAL.
A. Begging for him was normal. Being pitied for him was normal. Being helpless and ignored was normal. In other words he had gotten use to this way of life. This was just his life. He had been captured and seized by his current conditions. He was use to living with low expectations.
B. I don’t know who you are, but there is someone here tonight who has been down so long that as far as you are concerned down is normal. You been sitting in the back of the church because deep inside you don’t feel worthy to be up front. You have been doing this so long it just feels normal. Others of you;
C. You are mean and hateful
D. You are conniving and back biting
E. You are whore or a whoremonger
F. You are a lier
G. You are bossy –Pharisees - you think the church belongs to you
H. You are nosey
I. You are a snob
J. You a envious and jealous
Like the man in our text you are living with low expectations. Some folk would know what to do or how to react if they had a cable guide being mailed to their home because they are so use to stealing it.
3. IT WAS NOT HIS FAULT – YOU DON’T ORDER THIS STUFF – IT JUST HAPPENS – SOMETIMES THINGS JUST HAPPEN
4. YOU DON’T HAVE STAY IN THE SHAPE THAT YOU ARE IN
A. He was brought to the church daily, but never got any better
B. HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN COMING TO CHURCH????
C. What should be our attitude when we come to church??
D. An attitude that says I came for a rendezvous with God.
E. I did not come for the pastor……………….I came to get with God.
F. Peter and John had seen him before
G. Peter and John said if God was able to help us He can help him
H. Peter and John exercised a contagious faith that caused the cripple to elevate his perspective.
