Expectations are incredibly powerful. They can be a force for good or evil. Why do we have failed expectations with God? How can we harness the power of expectations when it comes to God, and how can we stay out of trouble in avoiding mistaken expectations with Him.

<p>Expectations are incredibly powerful. They can be a force for good or evil. Why do we have failed expectations with God? How can we harness the power of expectations when it comes to God, and how can we stay out of trouble in avoiding mistaken expectations with Him.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Freedom Health Ministries

Gabriel Arruda

Failed Expectations with God

So I'm going to talk about failed expectations.

I spoke about that the last time I preached, and I've just been really impressed how either powerful or dangerous they are.

And we're going to talk about failed expectations with God.

But, you know, there's failed expectations with organizations.

There's failed expectations with family members.

There's failed expectations with our spouses.

But the worst of all the failed expectations are the failed expectations we encounter with God.

And expectations, as I started looking into it, I was just fascinated by the topic, but then I realized this is more than fascinating.

Expectations are extremely powerful, either in a course for good or in a course for evil.

I wanna share with you how powerful they are.

There was a book called The Expectation Effect by an author David Robson.

He's an award-winning writer who specializes in talking about psychology and neuroscience.

And the main point of the book, let me just share the main point.

It was when it comes to health, your health outcome as you get older, generally speaking, you get what you expect.

He started the book with a story, true story, of a man who had cancer and he was treated for the cancer and the cancer went into remission.

The next doctor visit, I don't know, 6 months later or something, the doctor said, I'm so sorry to tell you the cancer is back.

And to be honest, I don't even expect you to last a year.

Obviously the man was absolutely devastated by this diagnosis.

He actually did survive the year but just a few months after the new year he passed away.

They did an autopsy on the man and guess what they found?

They could not detect any cancer in this man's body.

And so they started this discussion, what did this guy die from?

He died because he was told he was going to die.

That was the only, there was no physiological reason why this guy should have died.

He was still in remission at the time of his death.

Obviously, that's a bit of an extreme story, but it goes to show you the potential power of expectations in a positive or negative way.

There's an article that cited all these studies that have been done on the power of positive attitude when it comes to your health.

They found that positive attitudes about aging are correlated with how we age and how long we live.

They took a group of people, did a questionnaire, and they asked them several questions.

They say, as you get older, do things get better, worse, or stay the same?

People who said it gets better or it stayed the same, as they followed these people, they found they were more likely to enjoy better health as they aged.

They had worse health outcomes compared to the people that said better.

Question number 2 on the survey said, which words do you associate with retirement?

What words do you associate with retirement?

They experienced better health outcomes as they aged than the people said idle, dependent, unable.

Those that answered in a positive direction had more positive outcomes.

When does middle age end and old age begin?

That's, that's a, you know, people draw the line at different places.

The people who thought that old age started after 70, some place in your 70s, they lived longer than the people who said old age starts in your 60s.

The people who said it starts in 60s, They had shorter lifespans than the people who said no, old age, that's at least after 70.

They got data from this study, the Ohio Longitudinal Study of Aging and Retirement.

They followed a thousand people starting in 1975, followed a thousand people, and they followed them for a long time.

And at the average age of the survey when they started was 63 years old.

And they asked them at this time, give us your views on aging.

Those who said, yes, as you get older, you're less useful.

They lived on an average of 15 years after the study began.

Those who said no, no, because you get older that doesn't mean you get less useful.

They lived 22.6 years from the time when the study began, almost 7 years longer than the people who said old age meant you get less useful.

You know, the interesting thing, they controlled for all these risk factors, so there was no health advantages from the people who said yes to the people who said no.

What they thought about what their expectation was about what life is going to be like when you get older that was the main difference Multiple studies have found this This 1 was shocking.

They Surveyed people in their 30s who agreed with the statement old people are helpless.

38, they followed them up to 38 years later.

They had a greater increased risk of cardiovascular disease than other people who didn't agree with that statement.

They had more heart issues, more heart, just more heart problems, which we know are could be a fatal issue when they follow them.

There was a study where they followed 4700 people.

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Failed Expectations with God

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