Speaker 1: Here’s what I want to include that I think you missed. Faith is revealed in expectation. If you want to know what you have faith for – ask yourself – what do I expect will happen? Expectation is the revelation of faith. I think this is what Goddard refers to as assumption, and I think this is also a good word. What do I assume is going to happen (after I pray)? Do I assume that God is faithful and will do what He said? Or, do I assume that the devil is strong and obtaining God’s promises are difficult and even rare. Faith is not stepping out in spite or our feelings. It is not acting contrary to our expectations or assumptions. Faith is when our feelings, expectations, and assumptions come into alignment with the Word of God (Jesus). It is when the Word becomes Flesh. When our entire being comes into alignment and agreement with what God has said. We rarely allow that to happen because we fear disappointment. What if I put all of my hope in this outcome/answer, and God doesn’t move? We believe that would be worse than stepping out of the boat. Or we expect that we’re going to drown, and step out of the boat anyway. We always get what we expect. Our prayers are always answered in alignment with our BEING – not in opposition to it.
Speaker 2: Yes — that belongs near the center, not as a side note. I’d revise the framework around expectation / assumption as the diagnostic of faith.
One qualification I would preserve when you eventually turn this into the full article: your line “we always get what we expect” is stronger than I think the biblical case safely allows as an absolute law. I think the underlying insight is excellent, but I’d frame it more like “our expectations reveal and powerfully shape the faith from which we pray and live” rather than implying every outcome is mechanically produced by expectation.
That keeps your central insight without accidentally making a suffering person responsible for every unwanted outcome simply because they supposedly “expected it.”
Speaker 1: Experience, though, tells me that often (90+% of the time), my prayers are answered exactly according to my expectations. Can God sovereignly surprise me in spite of my expectations? Yes. He can and He does. But, more times than not, God allows us to receive the fruit of our agreement.
Speaker 2: That’s a much more careful formulation, and I think it strengthens the article because you’re no longer presenting it as an absolute metaphysical law. You’re describing an observed spiritual pattern:
God can sovereignly act beyond our expectation, but more often than not He allows us to experience the fruit of what we have actually come into agreement with.
I’d distinguish three things.
First, expectation reveals agreement. If I pray for healing but internally expect nothing to happen, that expectation tells me something important about what has actually taken root in me. The prayer may express what I want to believe; expectation exposes what I currently do believe.
Second, agreement tends to bear fruit. Scripture repeatedly uses this agricultural language: sowing and reaping, abiding and fruit, seed and harvest, the mouth speaking from the abundance of the heart. So your point doesn’t have to be framed as “my mind magically manufactures whatever I expect.” It can be framed relationally and spiritually:
What I continually agree with eventually bears fruit in the way I perceive, pray, speak, choose, and receive.
Third, God remains free. Grace is precisely why expectation cannot become a mechanical law. God sometimes breaks through unbelief, surprises us, gives what we weren’t expecting, and acts before our understanding catches up. Otherwise everything would ultimately depend upon the perfection of our faith rather than His goodness.
I think your 90%+ observation belongs in the article explicitly as testimony rather than doctrine:
We Often Receive the Fruit of Our Agreement
In my own experience, I have noticed something that I cannot easily dismiss: more often than not, my prayers seem to be answered in remarkable alignment with what I actually expected when I prayed.
I cannot turn that observation into an absolute law. God is sovereign, and He has surprised me many times. He can move in spite of my unbelief. He can give when I was not expecting to receive. His goodness is greater than the perfection of my faith.
But those exceptions have not erased the pattern.
Again and again, I seem to experience the fruit of what I have actually come into agreement with.
That leads me to ask a question I believe is extraordinarily revealing:
What do I expect will happen after I pray?
Not what did I ask for?
Not what did I say?
Not what do I doctrinally believe God is capable of doing?
What do I expect?
Expectation exposes agreement.
If I pray for healing while expecting sickness to remain, I should at least be willing to acknowledge the contradiction.
If I ask God to provide while internally preparing myself for lack, something within me has not yet come into agreement with the prayer coming out of my mouth.
If I ask for wisdom while expecting silence, my expectation may reveal a deeper belief that God does not actually speak to me.
If I pray against the work of the enemy while assuming the enemy is extraordinarily powerful and God’s promises are difficult to obtain, my expectation reveals which kingdom presently appears more powerful in my imagination.
This does not mean that expectation makes something true.
God makes it true.
Nor does it mean that God is imprisoned by the quality of my faith.
He is not.
It means that God often allows us to receive the fruit of our agreement.
And perhaps this is why renewing the mind is so central to the Christian life. God is not merely trying to persuade us to say different words. He is bringing our entire being into agreement with Truth.
- Our thoughts.
- Our imagination.
- Our expectations.
- Our assumptions.
- Our emotions.
- Our words.
- Our actions.
- Our prayers.
Until the Word we once merely heard becomes the reality from which we live.
Expectation Is Faith Becoming Visible
Faith itself is unseen.
Expectation is one of the ways it becomes visible.
If I want to know what I really believe, I can ask:
What am I assuming is going to happen?
Goddard calls this assumption. I think the word is useful, provided we locate the source of the assumption correctly.
Christian faith does not say:
“I assume whatever I desire to be true, therefore it becomes true.”
It says:
“God has spoken, therefore I assume God is telling the truth.”
- I assume His character is trustworthy.
- I assume His promises reveal His heart.
- I assume Jesus accurately revealed the Father.
- I assume the cross actually accomplished what Scripture says it accomplished.
- I assume the Holy Spirit really does dwell in me.
- I assume I really am a son and not a beggar.
- I assume God is for me.
- I assume the Father hears me.
- I assume the enemy is defeated.
- I assume the authority of Jesus is greater than the circumstances confronting me.
And as those assumptions move from theology into BEING, something changes.
I begin expecting differently.
Faith Is Not Courageously Expecting Failure
This also challenges the way we sometimes speak about “stepping out in faith.”
Suppose Peter steps out of the boat while thinking:
“Jesus told me to come, so I guess I’ll obey—but I’m almost certainly going to sink.”
There is obedience in that action.
There may even be tremendous courage.
But something is still missing.
Faith would increasingly sound like:
“He said come. If He said come, then His word is sufficient for me to come.”
Faith is not merely acting contrary to my assumptions.
Faith transforms my assumptions.
It is not simply stepping forward while fully expecting God not to come through.
It is allowing the Word of Christ to become so persuasive that my expectation itself begins changing.
- The wind says, sink.
- The waves say, sink.
- Experience says, people cannot walk on water.
- Jesus says, come.
Faith is the moment His word becomes more authoritative inside me than everything screaming from outside me.
Why We Protect Ourselves From Expectation
I suspect one reason Christians resist this is that expectation makes us vulnerable.
Hope exposes the heart.
If I genuinely expect God to move and He apparently does not, I risk disappointment.
So we protect ourselves.
We pray while withholding expectation.
We ask while emotionally preparing ourselves not to receive.
We say:
“God can…”
while quietly avoiding:
“I expect Him to.”
Because if I never truly expect anything, I cannot be deeply disappointed.
We think that protects faith.
Perhaps sometimes it actually protects unbelief.
We would rather stay safely inside the boat believing Jesus could enable someone to walk on water than step onto the water believing His word will actually hold us.
And sometimes we do step out—but carry the expectation of drowning with us.
That raises a harder question:
What if faith requires us to risk disappointment?
Not presumption.
Not demanding that God obey our desires.
But becoming genuinely persuaded of what He has revealed about Himself.
The alternative is a Christianity in which we affirm enormous promises while carefully arranging our expectations so that nothing supernatural actually needs to occur.
Prayer and BEING
This leads to something deeper.
I increasingly suspect that prayer cannot finally be separated from the state of BEING from which we pray.
Two people can speak exactly the same prayer and yet pray from entirely different internal realities.
- One asks from union.
- The other asks from separation.
- One asks as a son.
- The other begs like an orphan.
- One asks expecting the Father’s goodness.
- The other asks hoping to overcome His reluctance.
- One recognizes the enemy as defeated.
- The other prays while inwardly assuming darkness has the stronger hand.
The words can be identical.
The agreement is not.
So perhaps our prayers are often answered in remarkable correspondence with our BEING because our BEING reveals what we have truly received as reality.
This is not a formula for controlling God.
It is an invitation to become one within ourselves—to allow what God says, what we believe, what we expect, what we feel, what we speak, and how we live to cease contradicting one another.
That is wholeness.
That is agreement.
And perhaps that is a much fuller picture of faith.
Faith is when the Word of God becomes so completely received that the whole person begins expecting accordingly.
The other thing I would add to your overall thesis is this distinction:
Expectation is not the cause of God’s faithfulness; it is the fruit of becoming persuaded of His faithfulness.
That keeps God as the source while still giving expectation the enormous diagnostic importance you’re describing.