X-Treme X-Pectation

X-treme X-pectation

What to Do in the Waiting Room of Life

I. Introduction

Billy’s mom asked him for a small favor. Usually her favors include driving somewhere and picking up something. And to Billy’s surprise, this favor was exactly what he expected – driving somewhere and picking up something. “Billy, Can you go to the store and pick up some chocolate chip cookie dough for me?” “Sure, mom,” he said as he grabbed the money she was holding out and raced out the door to hop in his Toyota 4Runner. Billy loved driving, so running up to the store was no big deal for him. He did it all the time.

But on this particular day, something was different. He had this strange feeling that today was going to be a big day for him. Maybe he’d meet the girl of his dreams, or get hit on by the checkout girl. Or maybe he would find some cash on the ground before he walked in. He knew something good was going to happen to him on this particular trip to the store.

He walked in to the supermarket and noticed there was nobody in line, so he rushed over to the cold food aisle, grabbed a tube of cookie dough and headed back to the checkout counter. When he got back, every line was full, backed up halfway down the aisles, even the Scan-it-Yourself line was packed. So Billy found the line that he thought was the shortest, and proceeded to wait. Everybody in Billy’s line was very grumpy. They all made off-handed comments about the cashier being too slow and that if she didn’t hurry their ice cream was going to melt. Everybody was upset except Billy. He didn’t have a care in the world, but he still had this strange expectancy that something cool was about to happen to him.

After twenty minutes of standing in line, he was finally next. And as the cashier scanned his tube of cookie dough, a loud siren sounded, confetti and streamers came down from the roof with a loud bang, and Billy hit the deck as quick as he could. The cashier assured him that everything was okay and he could get up and claim his reward. “Reward?” said Billy. “What’d I do?” “You’re this week’s one millionth customer and we’re giving you a $200 shopping spree!” Billy was shocked. To him, it seemed like there was one million people ahead of him in line, but the whole time he knew something good was about to happen to him and he waited patiently with expectation.

Tonight we’re going to talk about X-treme X-pectation, What to Do in the Waiting Room of Life. Throughout your lifetime you’ll wait in a ton of lines. Just think about how many lines you’ve waited in up to this point in your life. Supermarket lines, mall lines, cafeteria lines, fast food lines, theme park lines, bathroom lines, doctor’s office lines and the list goes on and on, not to mention other things you have to wait for.

Patience is a key factor here, but it’s going to take more than patience if you want to move beyond just standing in a line until it’s your turn. If you want to get the reward of a one millionth customer, you’re going to have to have extreme expectation.

II. What It Is

Expect – 1. To look for as likely to occur or appear, 2. To look forward to, count on, plan on, hope for, or lean on

When you expect something, you have a good feeling that it’s going to happen. If you expect to win your baseball game, then you count on beating the other team.

How many of you have heard the phrase, “Don’t get your hopes up”? That’s the exact opposite of expectation. Expectation is getting your hopes up and keeping them up.

I used to think that if I have low expectations, then if what I want happens, I’ll be happier, but if what I want doesn’t happen, then I won’t be disappointed because I didn’t really expect it to happen anyway. With that kind of attitude, what I wanted rarely happened. But when I found in God’s word that expectancy plays a big role in getting what you ask for, it changed the way I viewed things, and it changed my expectations about getting the things that I wanted.

III. Don’t Just Sit There, Wait With Expectation

John 5:1-4 “1 After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 2Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda, having five porches. 3In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. 4For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had.”