Glorious Way Church
Glorious Way Church equips believers for the work of the ministry and stands for God’s truth in our culture. We serve as a regional center, where people from all backgrounds find refreshing worship and true communion of the saints.
Glorious Way Church
The Power Of Positive Expectations
Discover how you can transform your life by harnessing the power of positive expectation and faith. Imagine stepping into 2025 with an unstoppable mindset, aligned with God's thoughts of peace, health, and prosperity. Our latest episode promises to equip you with insights from Hebrews 11, Psalm 40, and Jeremiah 29, demonstrating how faith is not just a belief but a powerful force that shapes reality.
Pick our Bibles up, as our custom, and just wave them around. Make Jesus glad, the devil mad. Let's say this together say Heavenly Father, I'm so glad for Wednesday night. It comes right on time and I'm hungry for more of you. I believe in 2025, I will walk closer to you than ever before. I'll bring forth fruit for your glory. I have the victory because my faith is growing exceedingly. In Jesus name, Amen, amen, all right, let's turn in our Bibles to Hebrews, chapter 11. And also we'll need Psalm 40 and Jeremiah 29. A couple of more verses to one verse out of each of those books.
Speaker 1:Hebrews 11. You'll know that this is very familiar. Verse 1, now, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, For by it the elders obtained a good report. Through faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so the things which are seen are not made of things which do appear. Verse six, for without faith it is impossible to please God, for he that cometh to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. And then, in Psalm 40, I want you to see this one, but psalm 40, verse 5. Many, oh lord, my god, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done and thy thoughts which are to us. They cannot be reckoned up in order unto thee. If I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered. Notice what the Bible says that God's thoughts toward us are more than can be numbered.
Speaker 1:And then in Jeremiah 29, 11, very familiar verse. A lot of you can quote it and I'll read it out of Jeremiah, verse 11. For I know the thoughts that I think towards you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace. That word peace is shalom, health, prosperity and peace. Thoughts of shalom and not of evil, to give you an expected end, and my margin says an end and an expectation. And so tonight I wanted to share a message entitled the power of positive expectation. The power of positive expectation. You know God's thoughts, you know God's thinking, his thoughts. The Bible says in Isaiah that his thoughts are higher than our thoughts, his ways higher than our ways. But here are his thoughts and here are his ways, and so we can know the thoughts of God. And besides that, anything that's not written, something specific that he thought about you, that's more specific to your life, that's not written, god is still able to share with you what he's thinking is on anything concerning you. He loves you, he's got so many thoughts towards you and he thought a lot about you, and so we're talking about positive expectation.
Speaker 1:A lot of times, if we're not careful, our thought life interferes with our faith, because if we allow the world to get a hold of our thinking, if we listen too much to our flesh or we care too much about other people's opinions, you know, then we can get in a place where we don't have positive expectations. Faith is a substance of things that have a positive expectation. Hope is a positive expectation. Of course, you don't hope for sickness. You don't hope for, you know, poverty. You don't hope for tragedy. No, you hope for good things. Hope is a positive. The definition of hope is definitely positive, and so faith is what gives substance to that which we hope or that which which we expect. And so I like to give you faith food, because you know we're starting off this new year. You know God honored us with a prophetic word on Sunday that I did not have ahead of time. I mean, I had some bits and pieces of it, but I didn't know that I was going to prophesy until praise and worship, and suddenly God came upon me and started talking about 2025 and how it's the year of milestones, and it's also a milestone year. The year itself is a milestone, so I'm expecting great things. I've got positive expectations about things that are going on concerning Glorious Way Church and concerning your life and concerning our mandates and the things that we're doing in the kingdom of God. So it's really important, then, to have our expectation settled in our thinking. And so, jesus, you know your faith is the doorway to the supernatural.
Speaker 1:Jesus said that all things are possible to him that believe it. In first John, five four, it says that this is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith. And Mark 11, 23,. It says whosoever can have whatsoever. I like what, brother Mark? He just shortens it down whosoever can have whatsoever. I like what, brother Mark, he just shortens it down Whosoever can have whatsoever. And so we're whosoever Now.
Speaker 1:It's true positively, but it's also true negatively. I mean, if you have a negative expectation, then you can get that, because you know Jesus said out of the abundance of the heart the man speaks. So if you've got a negative internal dialogue, I call it, if you have a track running across your mind of negativity, and that means that you have a negative expectation. That means that you're going to have trouble. I mean, it's finally going to come out of your mouth what you're thinking is going to come out of your mouth at some point, and now you've got a bad confession and you kind of believe it and so it's going to come to pass. Now you've got the negative working for you. No, my job is to get it turned around so that you can have a positive expectation, especially going into this year. I just believe that this is a very strategic year. We're going to strike while the iron is hot and I just believe that God has got great things in store for us.
Speaker 1:So your faith releases God's supernatural power on your behalf in any and every circumstance. So faith works according to the word of God here in Hebrews 11. Faith works on the unseen. If you can see it, you don't need faith for it. When you can't see it, that's when you need faith. When you can't see your health, when you can't see the finances, when you can't see the breakthrough in your marriage, when you can't see the peace in your home, listen, that's when you need faith. That's when you need a positive expectation, and that's when you need your faith to start working.
Speaker 1:Your faith is substantive, it's real. See, it's not just ethereal, it's not just a thought, it's not just a. You know it's, it's a sub. The Bible says faith is a substance of things hoped for, it's the substance of a positive expectation, and so your faith is, is evidence of the unseen. See, you have the faith instead of the thing that you're believing for. You have the faith for it. It hadn't showed up yet, but in the meantime you have the faith and you have a corresponding uh dialogue, or you have a corresponding positive uh confession, uh, a, a, uh.
Speaker 1:What do we call it? Uh, uh, a systematic discourse is what we have, where we're not just saying a good thing every now and then, we're saying it constantly. What we believe, we say constantly Uh, so, but when you have that, you know Jeremiah. He said I've got, I know the thoughts that I have towards you. Psalm 40 said there's so many thoughts towards you he can't even number them. So God has really thought about everything concerning you, everything that you hadn't even thought of yet. He's thought about things about you and for you that you haven't even encountered yet and uh, and so that, uh, that alone ought to tell you, man, there's a whole lot left for us to receive from God. All we need to do is seek him diligently and he'll begin to uncover those things that he's got prepared. So he's got thoughts and plans of shalom toward us, to give us a positive expectation. So your faith is, then, wholly dependent on that positive expectation, and it's it.
Speaker 1:You've got a. You've got to end these in internal dialogues that are negative. You know, I've taught this before, but your brain is a is a wonderful organ. It's electric, electronic. It's got electronic cells in it neurons they're called and once you think, it's easy for you to think that thing again and you can think it again and again. It will travel around your brain in a pattern, kind of like an eight-track tape, and if it's negative, you will just keep recurring. This thought will recur, it'll recur, it'll recur, It'll recur, and pretty soon. If you allow it to keep going, then it's going to come out your mouth and that's going to affect your life. It's going to impact it negatively. So we've got to get a. You know, take authority over our expectations. Sometimes we need to make adjustments to our attitude in order to position ourself for God's power to move. Just make a little adjustment, that's all. Sometimes you just have to make a little adjustment, that's all. Sometimes you just have to make a little adjustment.
Speaker 1:You know, the other day I mean it seems like nowadays I was talking a couple of weeks ago about how complex life is now but it seems like I've got so many remote controls in my house. I seem like I've got remote controls laying everywhere. I've got one for a fan on my patio. I've got one, you know, for my bed. I've got a number bed. You know that sleep number that you adjust the sleep number, you adjust the head and the feet. And then I've got another remote for the bed that adjusts the temperature of the bed. You know I can get it warm, like the last two nights I put the heat on man and I slept like a baby because I had warmth. You know it was, and uh. And I've got all these remote controls that have batteries and I've got one little flashlight in my house.
Speaker 1:It takes six triple a batteries and it's tedious to put six little triple a batteries in this little phone, you know, and and it seems like every time I have to replace those batteries. That's a lot of money. Six AAA batteries, I mean. It costs like $5 just to put new batteries in this little phone. This phone's about that big, that big around six, and if you put one battery in wrong, it won't work, you know, it just doesn't work. And so then you've got to go and fiddle around with it and figure out what you did wrong, and that's kind of the way it is with our expectation.
Speaker 1:Let's check up on our expectations. So I've got four things that you can think about going into 2025. Here we are already launched off into 2025. God's got a plan. He's got a multitude of thoughts toward you personally and toward us collectively that he wants to perform for us in this year. I think one of the points of that prophecy Sunday was this is the year of grace upon grace and it's the year of exceeding abundantly above. You know, I know God's got some great plans for us. So here are four ways that we can check our expectation.
Speaker 1:Let's try to identify if we have which of the four we have and then make the appropriate adjustment if it's not a positive expectation. Of course, the first one that I'll talk about is number one negative expectation. Negative expectation, which is really just believe in what the devil says or believe in what our flesh tells us or believe in what our five senses tell us? That's a negative expectation because, again, faith works on the unseen. So if you don't see something, it's easy to reason oh, I don't have that, I don't have that, I don't have that, I need a car and I don't have a car. Oh, I've got car trouble. And you know you're negative, negative, negative. No well, let's identify the negative expectation. You know focusing on past failures will rob you of your bright future. Woulda, coulda, shoulda regret, you know it can be a downer for your faith.
Speaker 1:I remember when I was at A&M I lived in an old dormitory called Mitchell Hall. They tore it down right after I graduated. That's how old it was. I think it was built in 1905. And I was there in the 1960s I graduated. I'm class of 69. So it was pretty old when I was there and they tore it down. But anyway, it was cheaper and that's why I live there, because I paid my own bills. My parents didn't pay my way through college. I worked and I paid my own way, and so, since it's my money, I opted out of air conditioning and the heater was an old steam radiator in the corner of the room.
Speaker 1:But anyway, getting back to my room, I had some guys that lived on my floor from San Antonio. They were fraternal twins and one of them was boisterous he's always playing jokes and one day I got home from class and I came into my door in my dorm room I had a roommate and he wasn't there and it stunk in there so bad I could hardly stand it. It smelled like stale cigars and I thought who's been smoking a cigar in here and leaving it, you know? And I started looking for this cigar. Looking up and down everywhere, I could find I don't smoke cigars and I don't smoke period. And it stunk so bad it was terrible and I couldn't find the source of the smell. It just smelled and smelled. And then my roommate gets down and says what's wrong? You've been smoking and no, I can't find the source. We turned the room upside down and, as you know, a week went by and it never got any better. It stunk for a week and I was griping to these two guys one day because I kind of thought, you know, maybe they'd done something and they couldn't contain themselves, they couldn't wait to own it. They said, yeah, we played a trick on you, let me show you where it's at. And they had smoked a cigar down and put it out underneath my desk and smeared Vaseline under there and it made that smell stay. And I mean I had to clean that. I had to put soap and water on it. I mean it took a lot of elbow grease just to get that smell out of that room.
Speaker 1:So that's what happens with a negative expectation it colors, it taints your spiritual atmosphere and it will rob you of the good days that you have. That God has planned. He's got good thoughts, he said. I know the thoughts that I have. They're not of evil, but they're of shalom, and it'll interfere with those. So let's identify those negative expectations and let's get rid of them. And you know, sometimes it takes a little doing. If you've got the habit of thinking negatively, see, you'll just have to ask the Holy Ghost to help you, all right.
Speaker 1:The next type of expectation is a neutral expectation. You know it's like this yes, god's word is true, but but, uh, you know I, whenever God's ready for me to have that, I'll, I, he'll, he'll cause me to have it. Well, no, that's not how it works. I mean you'll be waiting a long time. If you're waiting on God to do something, he responds to what he responds to faith. He's a faith God. He's waiting on you to appropriate what he's already allowed you to have and has already given you. It's not just going to fall on you just because A neutral expectation See, someday never comes. Yeah, I know God's going to do that for me someday. No, he's never going to do that until you believe him for it, until you have a positive expectation.
Speaker 1:You have a neutral expectation. You're not saying he won't do it, but you're not saying he will do it. Really, it's dead faith. James 1.22 says faith without corresponding action is dead being alone. So you've got dead faith. In fact, it's no better than negative expectation.
Speaker 1:To be honest with you, you get the same results. You have the same results. Maybe you're not negative, but you're not positive. You're just neutral. You just kind of case a Ross or whatever God wants will be fine with me. I don't care, I don't have to have that thing. Well, yes, you do. There's things that you have to have to to fulfill God's plan on your life. He's got a plan for your life and there are things that you need to believe him for to receive, and so just blast neutral expectations out. That's not good to have neutral. Neutral is no better than negative as far as results. All right, hope you're getting something out of this tonight. Just, most of us know these things, but we need to be refreshed. And again, it's the early part of 2025, and I don't want you to miss one thing that he's got in store for you. I just know he's got something great, all right.
Speaker 1:The third one is misguided expectation Misguided, see, we've got negative expectation. That's no good. It's going to cloud what God wants to do. It's going to release a bad vibe, if you will, a bad aroma, and it's going to cloud your faith up to where you're not going to receive. And then the neutral expectation you're just not acting on the Word, you're just acting like it's just God's going to do it someday, when someday never comes. And then this last one, this next one misguided expectation. What in the world is misguided?
Speaker 1:Well, the best example I have is, I believe, is like second Kings, chapter five, naaman the leper. Naaman was a Syrian. He was head of the. He was a head of the armies of Syria. He was a very high ranking military officer in charge of all the Syrian military, but he was a leper and a little Jewish maid happened to say to some of the people that she worked with. She said oh, I wish Naaman would get in touch with our prophet in Israel, he would know there's a prophet of God, because he would recover him of the leprosy. And I mean it went right to the king and the king found out about Elisha and he man I mean he sent for Elisha and Elisha said what are you trying to pick a fight? You know the king, he sent for the king of Israel and the king of Israel said he's trying to pick a fight with us. Who can recover somebody from leprosy? And Elisha said well, I can't.
Speaker 1:And so the long story short is that Naaman the Syrian, with his entourage, they come all the way down from Syria, damascus and all the way to where Elisha the prophet was, and they're outside. They sends one of his guys up to the door and Elisha doesn't even come out. He says go, go, gehazi, find out what they want. So Gehazi, elisha's servant, goes out and says what's going on? What do you need? Well, our boss here has got leprosy and we heard that you healed the sick. So he goes in and tells Elisha Elisha doesn't even come out of the house. He just said, oh, go tell him to dump, go tell him to dip in the Jordan seven times and his flesh will come back on him new. And so Gehazi went outside and says go dip in the Jordan seven times.
Speaker 1:Well, you know this man, naaman. He might have been a leper, but he was a powerful man and he's used to have it his, you know, himself respected, and he felt disrespected. I mean, this prophet didn't even come out. He expected the prophet to come out, he expected him to wave his hands over him and make a big thing, a big dramatic prayer over him, and nothing like that happened. He told him to go dip in the muddy Jordan. He said, man, we've got better rivers than that in Syria. Why would I go dip in that old dirty river? And so thank God he had some people with Syria. Why would I go dip in that old dirty river? And so thank God he had some people with him, he had a chief of staff that was with him.
Speaker 1:He says now, wait, master, you know we've come all this way and he didn't ask you to do something hard. It's really easy. It's just the river's right over there. Can't we just do what he said? Can't we just do what the man of God said? He just said go dip in the. What have you got to lose? We got to go all the way back without you getting your healing. Why don't you go over there? And so they talked him into humbling himself and getting over himself, you know. And then he goes over there and dips in the Jordan seven times and he's completely cleansed of his leprosy, completely cleansed of his leprosy.
Speaker 1:So what was about to happen? Well, he had misguided expectations. He expected God to do it a certain way. You know, if you're not careful, you can have the misguided expectations. You can think that God is going to do this thing for you the way he did it the last time. Well, he might do it, done something different. I mean, one time David was going against the Philistines and he asked God what's your plan? Do I go down? He said, yeah, go down, I've given them to you. And he went down and defeated the Philistines in the Valley of Rephaim. But then they came back a short time later and he didn't have misguided expectations. He prayed again. He said, okay, they're back again. Now, what's your plan this time? You want me to go down again, or what he said? No, don't go down. He said, go and wait in the mulberry trees until you hear the sound of marching in the top of the mulberry trees. And then so he had a different plan.
Speaker 1:See, we know God doesn't have to do it the way that you think. So let's, let's, let's let God govern our expectation. Just have expectation that God will perform his word in the way that he chooses. He. He's got a lot of ways to heal you. He's got a lot of ways to meet your financial need. He's got a lot of ways to take care of your marriage, take care of your family. I mean, you know, he doesn't have to do it your way, he can do it his way. See, part of this is humility. Let's be humble enough to let God work the way he wants to work. So, negative expectation you don't get any results. Neutral expectation no results. Misguided expectation no results. The last one, of course, is positive expectation. And you, you know we've got lots and lots of wonderful examples.
Speaker 1:I guess one of my favorites is in mark, chapter five, the woman with the issue of blood who had been hemorrhaging. She'd been bleeding from her body for 12 years and had spent all of her living on doctors and was nothing better but rather grew worse. But when she heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, for she said and Amplified said, for she continually said. In other words, she had a systematic discourse. If I can just touch the hem of his garment, I shall be whole. Just think about it. She overcame her weakness. She did was hear of Jesus. Somebody told her what Jesus would do, somebody told her about a healing Jesus and she believed it and she started walking and she overcame the weakness of 12 years. I mean she must have been, you know, very weak from all that hemorrhaging, if you will.
Speaker 1:The doctors back in those days, one of the treatments they gave you was they would bleed you, they would open your veins and take blood out of you. So I mean, if she's hemorrhaging, plus they bled her, I mean she, she's anemic at the very least, and no telling what else was wrong with her. And so here she is sick and she's just walking every step. She's saying I shall be whole. Here she is sick and she's just walking every step. She's saying I shall be whole, I shall be whole.
Speaker 1:And then, of course, she had to overcome the religious stigma of being unclean, because a person bleeding with open wound is, or blood on their body is, unclean, and she had the obligation to say unclean, unclean. She didn't do that, and so if she had been caught she could have been stoned. And then, of course, the fact that she's a woman traveling by herself that's a stigma all by itself. And then, when she gets to where Jesus is, there's this crowd fronging him and we like to say she got down on her hands and knees. You know what? I got to meditating on it again after all these years, and you know what I saw her do. I saw her crawl on her belly, Hands and knees. She's still too tall. She had to get all the way down on the ground and, just you know, crawl on on her belly to his, to him of his garment, and reach up, and she touched the hem of his garment and immediately she was made whole.
Speaker 1:Why? Because she had that positive expectation, she continually said. She put aside every negative expectation, every neutral expectation, every misguided expectation. She had a positive expectation based on what she heard of Jesus, based on the testimony. Our testimony is so important, our testimony, what Jesus has done for you is so important, and so the bottom line tonight is that I just urge you here, in early 2025, let's check our expectations. Let's make sure that we have a positive expectation. Let's make sure that we have a systematic discourse and a confession, a constant confession of victory. Let's get rid of any internal dialogue that's negative, that will color and hinder our faithful operating, and let's watch God do great and wonderful things. Let's watch God do a year full of grace upon grace and a year full of exceeding abundantly above. Come on, lift your hands and receive tonight. Glory to God. Thank you, lord, for the power of positive expectation. I trust you got something out of this tonight. I enjoyed preaching it myself, I'm preaching it to myself and we have a positive expectation. Praise God.