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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
But those exceptions have not erased the pattern.<\/p>\n
Again and again, I seem to experience the fruit of what I have actually come into agreement with.<\/p>\n
That leads me to ask a question I believe is extraordinarily revealing:<\/p>\n
What do I expect will happen after I pray?<\/p>\n
Not what did I ask for?<\/p>\n
Not what did I say?<\/p>\n
Not what do I doctrinally believe God is capable of doing?<\/p>\n
What do I expect?<\/p>\n
Expectation exposes agreement.<\/p>\n
If I pray for healing while expecting sickness to remain, I should at least be willing to acknowledge the contradiction.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
If I ask for wisdom while expecting silence, my expectation may reveal a deeper belief that God does not actually speak to me.<\/p>\n
If I pray against the work of the enemy while assuming the enemy is extraordinarily powerful and God\u2019s promises are difficult to obtain, my expectation reveals which kingdom presently appears more powerful in my imagination.<\/p>\n
This does not mean that expectation makes something true.<\/p>\n
God makes it true.<\/p>\n
Nor does it mean that God is imprisoned by the quality of my faith.<\/p>\n
He is not.<\/p>\n
It means that God often allows us to receive the fruit of our agreement.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
– Our thoughts.<\/p>\n
– Our imagination.<\/p>\n
– Our expectations.<\/p>\n
– Our assumptions.<\/p>\n
– Our emotions.<\/p>\n
– Our words.<\/p>\n
– Our actions.<\/p>\n
– Our prayers.<\/p>\n
Until the Word we once merely heard becomes the reality from which we live.<\/p>\n
Faith itself is unseen.<\/p>\n
Expectation is one of the ways it becomes visible.<\/p>\n
If I want to know what I really believe, I can ask:<\/p>\n
What am I assuming is going to happen?<\/p>\n
Goddard calls this assumption. I think the word is useful, provided we locate the source of the assumption correctly.<\/p>\n
Christian faith does not say:<\/p>\n
\u201cI assume whatever I desire to be true, therefore it becomes true.\u201d<\/p>\n
It says:<\/p>\n
\u201cGod has spoken, therefore I assume God is telling the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n
– I assume His character is trustworthy.<\/p>\n
– I assume His promises reveal His heart.<\/p>\n
– I assume Jesus accurately revealed the Father.<\/p>\n
– I assume the cross actually accomplished what Scripture says it accomplished.<\/p>\n
– I assume the Holy Spirit really does dwell in me.<\/p>\n
– I assume I really am a son and not a beggar.<\/p>\n
– I assume God is for me.<\/p>\n
– I assume the Father hears me.<\/p>\n
– I assume the enemy is defeated.<\/p>\n
– I assume the authority of Jesus is greater than the circumstances confronting me.<\/p>\n
And as those assumptions move from theology into BEING, something changes.<\/p>\n
I begin expecting differently.<\/p>\n
This also challenges the way we sometimes speak about \u201cstepping out in faith.\u201d<\/p>\n
Suppose Peter steps out of the boat while thinking:<\/p>\n
\u201cJesus told me to come, so I guess I\u2019ll obey\u2014but I\u2019m almost certainly going to sink.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is obedience in that action.<\/p>\n
There may even be tremendous courage.<\/p>\n
But something is still missing.<\/p>\n
Faith would increasingly sound like:<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said come. If He said come, then His word is sufficient for me to come.\u201d<\/p>\n
Faith is not merely acting contrary to my assumptions.<\/p>\n
Faith transforms my assumptions.<\/p>\n
It is not simply stepping forward while fully expecting God not to come through.<\/p>\n
It is allowing the Word of Christ to become so persuasive that my expectation itself begins changing.<\/p>\n
– The wind says, sink.<\/p>\n
– The waves say, sink.<\/p>\n
– Experience says, people cannot walk on water.<\/p>\n
– Jesus says, come.<\/p>\n
Faith is the moment His word becomes more authoritative inside me than everything screaming from outside me.<\/p>\n
I suspect one reason Christians resist this is that expectation makes us vulnerable.<\/p>\n
Hope exposes the heart.<\/p>\n
If I genuinely expect God to move and He apparently does not, I risk disappointment.<\/p>\n
So we protect ourselves.<\/p>\n
We pray while withholding expectation.<\/p>\n
We ask while emotionally preparing ourselves not to receive.<\/p>\n
We say:<\/p>\n
\u201cGod can\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
while quietly avoiding:<\/p>\n
\u201cI expect Him to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because if I never truly expect anything, I cannot be deeply disappointed.<\/p>\n
We think that protects faith.<\/p>\n
Perhaps sometimes it actually protects unbelief.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
And sometimes we do step out\u2014but carry the expectation of drowning with us.<\/p>\n
That raises a harder question:<\/p>\n
What if faith requires us to risk disappointment?<\/p>\n
Not presumption.<\/p>\n
Not demanding that God obey our desires.<\/p>\n
But becoming genuinely persuaded of what He has revealed about Himself.<\/p>\n
The alternative is a Christianity in which we affirm enormous promises while carefully arranging our expectations so that nothing supernatural actually needs to occur.<\/p>\n
This leads to something deeper.<\/p>\n
I increasingly suspect that prayer cannot finally be separated from the state of BEING from which we pray.<\/p>\n
Two people can speak exactly the same prayer and yet pray from entirely different internal realities.<\/p>\n
– One asks from union.<\/p>\n
– The other asks from separation.<\/p>\n
– One asks as a son.<\/p>\n
– The other begs like an orphan.<\/p>\n
– One asks expecting the Father\u2019s goodness.<\/p>\n
– The other asks hoping to overcome His reluctance.<\/p>\n
– One recognizes the enemy as defeated.<\/p>\n
– The other prays while inwardly assuming darkness has the stronger hand.<\/p>\n
The words can be identical.<\/p>\n
The agreement is not.<\/p>\n
So perhaps our prayers are often answered in remarkable correspondence with our BEING because our BEING reveals what we have truly received as reality.<\/p>\n
This is not a formula for controlling God.<\/p>\n
It is an invitation to become one within ourselves\u2014to 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.<\/p>\n
That is wholeness.<\/p>\n
That is agreement.<\/p>\n
And perhaps that is a much fuller picture of faith.<\/p>\n
Faith is when the Word of God becomes so completely received that the whole person begins expecting accordingly.<\/p>\n
The other thing I would add to your overall thesis is this distinction:<\/p>\n
Expectation is not the cause of God\u2019s faithfulness; it is the fruit of becoming persuaded of His faithfulness.<\/p>\n
That keeps God as the source while still giving expectation the enormous diagnostic importance you\u2019re describing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[3],"tags":[22,16,6,12,9,31],"faithco_speaker":[],"class_list":["post-69","faithco_working_note","type-faithco_working_note","status-publish","hentry","category-faith-prayer","tag-agreement","tag-expectation","tag-faith","tag-prayer","tag-renewing-the-mind","tag-unseen-reality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodtree.us\/faithco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/working-notes\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodtree.us\/faithco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/working-notes"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodtree.us\/faithco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/faithco_working_note"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodtree.us\/faithco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodtree.us\/faithco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/goodtree.us\/faithco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/working-notes\/69\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70,"href":"https:\/\/goodtree.us\/faithco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/working-notes\/69\/revisions\/70"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodtree.us\/faithco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodtree.us\/faithco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodtree.us\/faithco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"faithco_speaker","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodtree.us\/faithco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/faithco_speaker?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}