Great Expectations
No, this blog is not about Charles Dickens. Great book, though I have never finished it.
This blog is about expectations of other people and how we can never live up to them because we were never meant to.
We have expectations of everyone around us: our friends, boyfriends, spouses, children, parents, teachers, bosses.... you get the idea. Some of our expectations are based on Biblical Truth, like expecting someone to be honest, and then others are just ridiculous notions that we have set in our head of how a person should treat us or act. The higher the expectations, the more disappointed we often are because people are fallible and will never live up to most expectations at any given point (God knew this; hence Jesus).
We are often disappointed when people don't live up to our expectations, instead of seeing that our expectations are the problem.
The thing about expectations is that we expect people not to fail, while we fail to realize that every human being is fallible and is going to fail no matter what. We then condemn and judge them for failing to live up to our expectations, instead of forgiving them for their "sins" and repenting of our expectations. It's easy to point the blame to others.
Often, we are expecting others to fill the void of our unmet needs, and when they can't do that because they were never meant to do that, we get angry and blame them, pushing them further away from us, instead of realizing that the problem is within ourselves. Not with other people.
If we have unmet needs, then we are responsible for fulfilling those unmet needs. Nobody else is. I remember a time when I expected other people to give me the validation I so desperately needed. I became a people pleaser, using my efforts to gain my validation, and when others didn't approve of me, it only made me try harder to compensate for those unmet needs. It wasn't until I realized that I could never gain the approval and validation I needed from other people that I started to turn to God for those unmet needs. And He is the only one who can ever fulfill them.
I was then able to realize that the problem wasn't other people. It was within myself.
But I have learned recently that other people have expectations, and sometimes I think that I have to live up to them, and I feel guilty when I don't. But I know now that I was never meant to live up to anybody's expectations except for God's. So when I "fail" other people, I know that I am still loved and pleasing in God's sight. Thank God He doesn't define us by our efforts, like the world does, because we would be constant failures. Thank God He has a higher way of loving us than people do. Thank God He is God.
“When we remember how hard it is to change ourselves, we begin to understand what little chance we have of changing others.”
This blog is about expectations of other people and how we can never live up to them because we were never meant to.
We have expectations of everyone around us: our friends, boyfriends, spouses, children, parents, teachers, bosses.... you get the idea. Some of our expectations are based on Biblical Truth, like expecting someone to be honest, and then others are just ridiculous notions that we have set in our head of how a person should treat us or act. The higher the expectations, the more disappointed we often are because people are fallible and will never live up to most expectations at any given point (God knew this; hence Jesus).
We are often disappointed when people don't live up to our expectations, instead of seeing that our expectations are the problem.
The thing about expectations is that we expect people not to fail, while we fail to realize that every human being is fallible and is going to fail no matter what. We then condemn and judge them for failing to live up to our expectations, instead of forgiving them for their "sins" and repenting of our expectations. It's easy to point the blame to others.
Often, we are expecting others to fill the void of our unmet needs, and when they can't do that because they were never meant to do that, we get angry and blame them, pushing them further away from us, instead of realizing that the problem is within ourselves. Not with other people.
If we have unmet needs, then we are responsible for fulfilling those unmet needs. Nobody else is. I remember a time when I expected other people to give me the validation I so desperately needed. I became a people pleaser, using my efforts to gain my validation, and when others didn't approve of me, it only made me try harder to compensate for those unmet needs. It wasn't until I realized that I could never gain the approval and validation I needed from other people that I started to turn to God for those unmet needs. And He is the only one who can ever fulfill them.
I was then able to realize that the problem wasn't other people. It was within myself.
But I have learned recently that other people have expectations, and sometimes I think that I have to live up to them, and I feel guilty when I don't. But I know now that I was never meant to live up to anybody's expectations except for God's. So when I "fail" other people, I know that I am still loved and pleasing in God's sight. Thank God He doesn't define us by our efforts, like the world does, because we would be constant failures. Thank God He has a higher way of loving us than people do. Thank God He is God.
“When we remember how hard it is to change ourselves, we begin to understand what little chance we have of changing others.”
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