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Pastor Thom Keller: Give your expectations to God. You don't want to have expectations. Having expectations will ruin your day. I had managers that would come to me at 10:00 in the morning, and they'd say something like this: "I can't believe this happened today. I can't believe this. I had a great day going, and this customer came in and just ruined my day."

I said, "Look, here's the problem. You had an expectation that your day was going to go a certain way. This is what we get. For you to have an expectation that you're not going to have a problem day, you're setting yourself up for failure. Don't have expectations."

Guest (Male): We're delighted to share the next half hour with you as together we study the Word. Right now, Pastor Thom Keller is leading a discipleship class. Today we're talking about authority and expectations. We'll be in 1 Chronicles chapter four. Let's head there now for Study the Word.

Pastor Thom Keller: The Bible says that children are God's reward to those who reverence him. Children are God's reward to those who reverence him. Well, Sue and I reverence God, not as much as some, maybe more than some others, but we're probably in the middle there somewhere, and yet we don't have children. So if that's a promise, why didn't God keep it to us? Again, the realization came that God can and does and will cancel any promise to bring a greater blessing than the promise.

Imagine someone coming to your door on a Saturday morning, 8:00 in the morning. He rings the doorbell, you come out, and someone you've never met, never seen the guy before, says, "I'm going to be back next Saturday and give you a $20 bill." You're looking around. "Where are the cameras? What's this about?" "No, I'm serious. I'm going to be back next Saturday and give you $20." "Why?" "I just want to give you a $20 bill." "Sure, right. Okay. Whatever."

The next Saturday, you forget all about it because he's a lunatic. Next Saturday, the doorbell rings, you go back, you're not even thinking about it, and there he is again. You say, "Wow, you came back." He said, "I said I would." He takes out his wallet and takes out a $100 bill and gives you a $100 bill. You look at it and you say, "You liar. You cheat. You deceiver. You said you were going to bring me a $20. Well, this is 100. This is better." "Don't you lie to me. You promised me a 20. Get out of here."

What just happened there? He brought you something better than he promised. You should know it was better than what he promised. Instead, you're fighting him over it. That's what God did with Sue and me with the child. He gave us a greater blessing. Let me tell you something. I've seen a lot of things some of you haven't seen yet, but let me tell you something that I've seen as someone that's just because I've been a pastor.

When God entrusts a great trial to people and they come through it with the right heart, this is many times what they'll say. When God entrusts a great trial to some people and they come through that in the right spirit and heart, they will say something like this: "I feel honored that God would entrust this to me because I don't think everyone could have handled this, but he knew we could." Special needs child, a spouse that gets a disease and illness and needs to be cared for for the rest of their life.

I know a man who discovered that his wife had been—as a shock to his wife, as a shock to him—when they were maybe 30, she discovered, he discovered that she had been horribly abused as a child: physically, sexually, mentally. It was all unknown to her until 30. He said to me, "I feel so honored." I knew what was coming. He said, "I feel so honored that God would entrust Carol to me because he knew that I would be able to take care of her through all of this." Do you get it? That's how Sue and I feel. We feel honored that God would entrust childlessness to us, and we see how he's blessed us on the other side of that.

Every person says, "You have lots of children," and we do. I get all that. What's funny about this is people, now that I'm 70, but even at 60, sometimes people come up and say, "We're praying that you have children." I go home and I say to Sue, "I think we better slow them down on that one. I'm not sure we want to be an Abraham and Sarah here. Not that we turn it down, but there's a point where that no longer..."

Just apply that in your own life. There may be something that you feel that God—it would be the minimum that God would want to give to any believer, and he hasn't given it to you. Just remember, God can cancel. Someone challenged me in that one time and said, "Prove it in the Bible where God broke a promise that he made to accomplish a greater good." I said, "Jesus dying at 30."

"Children, obey your parents in the Lord because this is the first of God's ten commandments that ends with a promise: a promise that if you honor your parents, you will live a long life full of blessing." Jesus didn't live a long life. He lived a life full of blessing, but not a long life. How do you explain it? God accomplished a greater good than the promise that was made.

Child in your hands. The right one to leave, the right one for Sue if I leave for home first, if someone... I'm going to pray for that a while. If I die young—this meant more at 30, 40, 50 than it does at 70, but it still means something—I'm concerned that if I would die, I would not want Sue to marry the wrong person because when you're 20, you marry for love. I wouldn't want someone to take advantage of her that would have ulterior motives for being with her. I pray for that. That means a lot to me.

Who do you pray that would go first? My prayer is that Sue would die before me. The reason is, I think she'd agree with us, although I think she would disagree in words. I would be horribly lost without my wife. I can't imagine that. On a technical basis, I think I could function better than she could. Does that make sense? I really think emotionally it'd be harder on me than it would be on her. You'd have to know us. I think it'd be harder on me emotionally, but I think on a technical level, I could wrap things up. I could handle that. I could deal with that.

I pray, "God, if your will, take us at the same time." I pray that, if possible, Sue and I, God would take us at the same time. I started praying this when I was 35, and it probably wasn't until I was 50 that I realized that this meant an accident because how else do you both go at the same time? You both have a heart attack in the same minute? It doesn't happen. You both have a car accident. Well, you could have a car accident. It's going to be an accident. I'm not really praying for an accident, but I am praying that, if possible, he takes us at the same time.

If my wife died, it would be really hard on me. If she died first, it would be really hard on me. But I've been praying this for 35 years every day. If she died first, it would be hard on me, but I would be able to go to God in prayer and say, "God, I've been praying for 35 years that, if possible, take us at the same time. But if you have a better plan, then I would want that better plan." Obviously, by what just happened, you've answered that prayer. Surrendering that to the Lord for all those 35 years, if that happens that way, I know I asked for it, but he did something different.

The danger is that there's something that you're so concerned about God could let happen that you never address it with him. Then it happens and you're unprepared. Dan Van Vleet is probably the second wisest man I ever knew. Dan said one time that what you entrust to God, God takes very good care of. Satan gets everything else. What you entrust to God, God takes very good care of. Satan gets everything else.

Why that's so scary: we are willing to give things to God, entrust God with, turn things over to God, surrender to God those things that are of low value or middle value. My car, my apartment, my dog—some, not my dog—those things that are low value. But my child? I entrust to God to do whatever he wants, even if that means taking their life? No, I can't do that. My wife? I entrust my wife to God, that whatever he'd want to do, if it means taking her life at 35, I can't do that.

Well, what I entrust to God, he takes very good care of. Satan gets everything else. You see the price there is on the fear that goes with not entrusting something to God. You haven't put it in his possession, his control, his right to reign over. By trying to not give that to God, you're actually putting that situation in the most dangerous, most harmful place. I don't have children, but I could see where with children, this could be a really hard thing to do.

Finney was an evangelist in the mid-1800s. He said something like this: "There are a lot of mothers who have unsaved children that are praying for their little Johnny, their precious little boy, would get saved because they don't want to see them go to hell and die." He said—and I'm not going to sugarcoat this—"this is in essence what he said: 'What you're doing when you pray that way, the imagery is, God is over here, a cruel God is over here, and your son, who is just misguided and misunderstood, and you're with him against God on that side, not wanting God to do to him what you don't want God to do to him.' He said, 'The imagery should be you are with God looking at your son and saying, "My son is a rebellious son against God, and God, do whatever you need to do to bring my boy to Christ."'" That's where that surrender comes in, that I surrender that child to God instead of trying to protect him. You're actually taking him out from under what God may choose to do.

If you will, take us at the same time. 1 Chronicles 4:10 says, "God, I pray that you would wonderfully bless me and help me in my work. Please be with me in all that I do and keep me from all evil and disaster." It was prayed by Jabez. Since I started praying this, maybe 10 years later, David Wilkerson wrote a book called The Prayer of Jabez. I don't like the book because it kind of reduces us to some kind of a formula, in a way like, push this button and this happens.

But when I first read this, this is what it says in my Bible: "I pray that you would wonderfully bless me and help me in work. Please be with me in all that I do and keep me from all evil and disaster." And then it says, "And God answered his request." And I remember reading that two decades ago and I thought, if God answered his request, why wouldn't he answer mine? If he asked for that and God answered, why would I ask for it and not get it?

We're supposed to pray scripture, right? The best prayer you can pray is scripture. So I started praying that prayer. I think it's a prayer that God answers. Sue and I went to the Billy Graham School of Evangelism. If you ever get a chance to go to that, they're free. They have them in different places. We went to two of them. Billy spoke the one day and he talked about this prayer. I'm sitting there thinking, "Wow, I didn't know." I'm so dumb. Sometimes you think you're the only person that stumbled across something, and so hearing him talk about this, I'm thinking, "Someone else knows this."

He was talking about it and after it was over, Clyde Barrows—you know who Clyde Barrows is? He was a singer, deep voice. He came up to us, and I said, "Wow, that was really neat hearing Mr. Graham talk about that." I said, "I've been praying that for a couple of years." And Clyde says, "I've been praying that every day for years."

Sue and I were at a Linda Ronstadt—remember the name Linda Ronstadt? She was a singer, a famous singer. Sue and I were at a Ford dealer convention meeting in some big city. They had a banquet that night, all dressed up gala in a big convention center, and Linda Ronstadt was going to sing. She was the entertainment that night. All these dealers are in this big lobby waiting for them to open the eight sets of double doors to go in. Big open lobby into the thing. The people are all jammed up against the doors to get the best seats because it's open seating.

The doors open, and Sue and I are pretty much toward the back of the pack. They start herding in like cows. I mean, you picture cows that haven't eaten for 13 weeks and there's food on the other side of those doors. Those cows are going to get in there. They're pushing against each other. To see women in sequence dresses fighting to get in—I stood back and I said, "We're not going to do this." I said, "You know the Bible says when you're invited to a party, don't rush in to get the best seat because the host will come in and you get the best seat and he's going to come up and say, 'Hey, someone more important than you is here. You go to the back of the room because I want to bring them to the front.'"

I said, "Let's go to the back. That's what the Bible says." Ever since then, when we go to those things, I go to the back. I've been so blessed by going to the back. No one ever came up to me and said, "Oh hey, we have a better seat for you." They always let me in the back, except at the Billy Graham thing. We came in and sat in the back. It was so wild. We went to sit because the place was full. Sue and I went and sat in a big hall in the very back, and Clyde Barrows comes up. I didn't know him, never saw him before. I mean, I saw him on TV, but never saw him. He comes up and says, "We have a better seat for you." He brought us right up to the second row. It was so wild. Never happened again.

I encourage you to do this because we've been so blessed by the people we had met in the backs of all those places. We go to a Haggai Institute meeting once a year with donors and missionaries they support. All the donors, it's a big gala and everyone sits at big round tables, 10 people to a table. They all sit around the tables and the missionaries sit in the back. That's just what they do.

So Sue and I sit in the back. We never really realized that all the missionaries sit in the back because it's just where they end up. But now we're sitting with all the missionaries hearing all the stories. God will bless you doing that. He really will. The music's too loud anyway, right? Get away from the speakers because you can't really talk to people when the music is loud. It's just a nice place to be. I encourage you, look that up. 1 Chronicles 4:10, the prayer of Jabez. You might want to add that to your prayer list.

The next one: I give my expectations to you. I give my expectations to you. This is huge, folks. Give your expectations to God. You don't want to have expectations. Having expectations will ruin your day. I had managers that would come to me at 10:00 in the morning and they'd say something like this: "I can't believe this happened today. I can't believe it. This guy—I had a great day going and this customer came in and just ruined my day."

I said, "Look, here's the problem. You had an expectation that your day was going to go a certain way. This is what we get. For you to have an expectation that you're not going to have a problem day, you're setting yourself up for failure. Don't have expectations."

The story's told of a husband that came home late every night from work, and his wife was so upset. He'd come home, the food would be cold and his wife would be hot. It just got worse and worse. Someone said to her, "The problem is you have expectations. You expect your husband to be home at a certain time." She said, "Well, my father always came home at 5:00 on the button." He said, "Well, you can't have that expectation for this job and this husband. It's not a fair expectation. Your whole problem is because of your expectations. Give up that expectation."

The next night, he came home late. The food was warm and she was warm. He said, "What's going on?" She said, "Well, I realized I had expectations of you being home at a certain time and I don't have those anymore." Well, guess what? He started figuring out ways to get home earlier because of that.

Again, like I said, when God shows this to me, you think he's going to show that to me every week that I shouldn't have expectations? No. That's not a thought that comes all the time to you, "Don't have expectations." But I need a reminder of it every day, not to have expectations. I don't want to have expectations of the staff in the church. I don't want to have expectations. I mean, I want to influence them. I want to be a positive influence, but I don't want to have expectations that are not realistic.

"God, give money to what ministries? God, what ministries would you want us to give money to?" What Sue and I have always done is we've always talked about it, and we've almost always agreed on the ministry and the amount. She'll say, "What do you think about helping this ministry?" and I'll say, "Sure, how much do you think?" She'd come up with a number, and we're almost either exactly the same or if one is higher than the other, we go with the higher one.

"Maybe be calling us into set apart ministry?" I still have that on my prayer list, even though he has called me into set apart ministry. Just as a reminder that he called me into set apart ministry. That's not a prayer to be called into set apart ministry. It's that, if that's your will, I would be willing to go into set apart ministry because the truth is you can do ministry wherever you are. No one calling is higher than another. They're equal callings based on what God wants you to do.

When I talk about set apart ministry, what I would mean is that God would be calling me into a full-time ministry position. For me, it was a pastor. For her, it was counseling and ladies' Bible studies. The next one is going to take some explanation, so we'll look at that next week.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Study the Word with Pastor Thom Keller and part of a discipleship class that Thom delivered at Calvary Chapel Lebanon over the course of a year. We thought it might be helpful to you and your walk with Christ. Hear this study again at our website, ccleb.com, or visit our YouTube page. Subscribe to our channel at Calvary Chapel Lebanon, and you can watch our services live or on demand. For a CD copy, call 717-273-5633. Once again, 717-273-5633.

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