Expectation v. Expectancy - S1E9

you're listening to the paul young podcast hi everybody today We're going to talk about a couple words that mean a lot to me. And over the course of this podcast, regardless of how long it lasts, at least I'll get this in. And I hope it resonates with you, like I hope. Pretty much everything resonates with you. But, you know, it might not. And so I'm going to talk about a couple words. And...

They're incredible. They've changed my life. The word is expectation. And it's because of this word that I know that God is never disappointed in you. A lot of people don't believe that. And I think that's a lot to do with the projection of the powerful people in our lives or the people we grew up with, whether it was a father, whether it was a mom, whether it was...

A life without a father and a mom. And somebody showed up and began to enforce their expectations. They projected on you certain kind of rules and outcomes that they wanted to have happen. first i'll talk to you a little bit about the the words themselves and you can look this up but the first definition when i went on the web and just said define expectation was a strong belief that something will happen

or be the case in the future. Reality have not lived up to expectations. And there's a whole lot of words that are synonyms like supposition, assumption, belief, presupposition, presumption. conjecture, surmise, reckoning. You know, I reckon that this will happen. Calculation, prediction, forecast, projection. The second one said, a belief that someone will or should achieve something.

Students had high expectations for their future. And then on Wikipedia, in the case of uncertainty, expectation is what is considered the most likely to happen. An expectation, which is a belief that is centered on the future, may or may not be realistic. A less advantageous result gives rise to the emotion of disappointment.

Okay, let's talk about that. So expectation has a couple things. One is it is a projection of something for an outcome that is not present but future. And this is the... fundamental reason that I have used. I thought I coined it, but you know, I don't think anything is actually coined hardly anymore. But I thought I did. I did for myself anyway, and that was future tripping.

That is creating an imagination of something that today is not real in order to find some way to control the variables that keep you somewhat comfortable. So a lot of times we would rather see if we can get control out of something that we project into the future that does not actually exist rather than take the risk of trust. And I get it.

I understand why trust is so hard. It took me decades, and I'm not perfect at it. I probably never will be, but I'm not perfect at it in terms of trust being never assailable. I can get triggered like anybody else. I can future trip, that is, leave the present to go into an imagination that doesn't exist. But the word expectation is a noun, having an expectation.

And it is the presumption that certain things will happen. So, let's think of a couple things. One is, say that you absolutely know that you had some kind of omniscient knowing. that your child who is playing little league baseball is going to strike out, right? You absolutely know it. So it's not an expectation.

It's a knowing. You know. It is not something that is, what did they say, a strong belief that something will happen in the future. And it is you know. So your child gets up to the plate. and you know your child is going to strike out, do you have an expectation that they won't? No, you know. So when your child strikes out, are you disappointed?

Well, no, because you knew that they were going to strike out. You know, it's funny. When I watch sometimes a football game or something on television and they're doing the replay of something that happened where... Maybe a wide receiver or someone did not catch the ball. And then they do the replay. Or I watch a whole game that is already over.

And somehow I get uptight and I'm hoping that they'll win. How weird is that, right? So I have this anxiety, even though I know the outcome because it's already happened. So it's not about something that's yet future. It's about something that has already occurred. So let's go back. My child is playing little league baseball. If I know the outcome of their being at bat,

then disappointment is not even on the register. It's not even a possibility unless I'm crazy or something. But if I know that I know, then there's no way to be disappointed. I just know. This is why God cannot be disappointed in you. This is not about a God who doesn't know. This is about a God who actually knows. So when you fail, when you make a really bad choice, when you harm others or harm yourself,

God may grieve with you, but he's never disappointed because he knows. And does God actually grieve? I grew up in a world where God was pretty emotionalist. He was like a stoic person. who was not in touch with emotions at all, because our assumption was that God was an unemotional being. So when God created human beings, it was like, let us make human beings in our image, but we're going to add something that we don't have, and that is an emotional side of their nature.

which would mean that we experience emotions, but God doesn't. So God actually created something that God does not have within God's nature. I hope that doesn't sound right to you because it isn't right. Or that would mean that emotions were wrong to begin with. That we somehow came up with them and therefore it was part of... the brokenness of our turning away from God, okay? I don't think that's right either. I mean, it shouldn't resonate with you as right.

The human nature is an emotional nature. It's sure it's logical and creative and all that. There's only one human nature and all human beings share that nature. And so there's no question in my mind. that in the story of Adam and Eve, when they're created, God breathed into Adam and he became a living being, that he was an emotional being. God is an emotional being. God knows what it's like to laugh. God knows what it's like to grieve.

So when you make a stupid choice, God knows that you would make that choice. God's not disappointed like, oh, maybe this time he'll catch the pass. No, God's not disappointed. But God does grieve with us. God climbs into the choices we make, even submits to the choices we make. The greatest example of that is that we killed Jesus on a cross, but...

God submits to us almost every day if we make any choices at all. And they're not good. They're not healthy. They're not the best. Well, God doesn't make that choice for you. You make the choice. And God... climbs into that choice with us to begin to work some form of redemption. God doesn't make you choose that, but God does join us. Well, you know, God lives in you.

God's right in the middle of it to begin with. So expectation. Expectations are disappointments waiting to happen, or they're prophesied trauma, or they're... prophesied disappointments. If you don't project an outcome that you hope is certain that gives you a sense of control, then you won't have disappointments.

If you have a particular goal in mind, a particular career, a particular longevity in, say, a sport or a business or whatever, then you have an expectation, then you're likely to be disappointed. You know, all those future tripping projections are not going to be helpful. So what is another way to live if it's not because of expectations?

Because when you learn to live without an expectation, everything's a gift. You remember that child who wants a specific gift at Christmas and he rips through the presents because that's the one thing that he wants and expects to be there because he kind of... when he hinted to his parents or whoever, and it's not there. Well, none of the other gifts will have mattered. Expectations draw a line beneath which nothing's acceptable as a gift.

And when you learn to live without expectations, everything becomes a gift. So how do you live? Expectations are future tripping. They're about something that has not happened that is yet to happen.

disappointments waiting to happen. What's another way? Expectancy. Expectancy is always present tense and wide open. It doesn't declare what the outcome must be. To do that, you have to future trip. You have to go into some outcome that you imagine will be the one you want or the one you don't want. I mean, we future trip. trauma and tragedy all the time. But expectancy? Ask a woman who has an unborn child in her womb about expectancy. Everything is present tense.

There is no perceived outcome. Unless they know it's a boy or they know it's a girl, it's no longer an expectation. If they know it's a boy, then they're not disappointed when it's a boy. But about that boy, about that girl? Everything's wide open. There's a whole universe, a cosmos within that child that is yet to be explored, yet to emerge, yet to unfold, living with expectancy every day.

It's all wide open. Who knows? I don't have to be a control freak in order to live within today's grace, this moment's grace, to live with expectancy as opposed to expectation. Then we can talk about how we future trip. What is that all about? And how we place expectations on other people, thereby trying to control the outcomes in their life. as well as ours a lot of times because if we think we can control them, then our lives would be better. Expectations, self-centered. Expectancy, wide open.

Thank you for listening. If you would like to connect with us with inquiries, comments, suggestions, stories and more. please go to paulyoungpodcast.com. There you're going to find resources and any notes related to any particular podcast. Today, participate with love, do the next right thing. and trust the ripples.