Expectation: An Attitude that Pleases God

I had a lesson on faith this week …

I lost my keys. Not for a few hours or a day, but for four days. I didn’t share the good news right away, because I knew there were a couple costly-to-replace keys on that ring and I was hoping they would just show up, but I finally fessed up. That initiated much mental backtracking and a house-wide search more thorough than the two I’d already conducted. No keys.

Well, maybe when taking the groceries out of the back of our car, I’d laid the keys on the bumper, and they’d fallen off when I made a later trip (using a spare key of course!). So I headed down the driveway and up the road, head down, scouring the sides of the road. And as I walked uphill, my attitude slid down. I lost those keys four days ago. How likely is it that they will still be lying around here? Cars go by, joggers go by, people walk their dogs past here…

Then the Lord seemed to speak to me. You don’t really expect to find those keys. You’re asking Me to do something, yet you have little hope. And a verse popped into my mind: “Whatever does not come from faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23).

Now I don’t think God was necessarily calling my lack of expectation sin, yet I felt a little chided, and deservedly so. Without faith it is impossible to please Him, so I certainly wasn’t a pretty sight to Him, trudging up that road, asking for something I doubted I’d receive, and looking for something I didn’t expect to find.

Alright then, I would trust that if God had led me down that road, He could supply the answer exactly if and when He pleased - and now was as likely a time as any! I turned to come home the opposite side, and had nearly reached our driveway, when I saw Dave coming out of the house, giving me the thumbs up. He had thought to call my mom, who discovered she’d accidentally put my keys in her purse when visiting several days earlier. The lost was found.

All that to say this: We at FAC are looking for some answers. We are headed down a road, looking for a senior pastor. It’s not a one-day search, not even a four-day! As the process unfolds, we may have growing fears and misgivings. We may find ourselves questioning the likelihood of finding, or agreeing upon, the “key” person. We may fear that a key prospect will be discovered by another and stolen from us, or the process somehow interfered with so that God can’t provide His answer. If we succumb to such fears, we’ll find ourselves trucking up this hill with our heads and attitudes down, no pretty sight to God, no source of pride or joy to His heart.

Instead, may God quicken our hearts with growing confidence in Him. We’re asking for His will; we’re waiting for His timing. His answer may not lie just where we’re looking, but we can search in expectation that somewhere down this road, we will look up and see His “thumbs up” – the lost is found, our senior pastor is here.