Lynn Mosher

Encouraging the Heart~Uplifting the Soul

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What Do I Expect of the Lord?

January 12, 2017 By Lynn H Mosher

“My soul, wait silently for God alone,
for my expectation is from Him.”
Ps. 62:5 NKJV

“There is no waiting on God for help, and there is no help from God…” What? Ahhh, wait for it. The rest of Spurgeon’s quote goes like this, “without watchful expectation on our part.”

Do you live out the year in watchful expectation for the answers to your prayers, for a word from the Lord? The word in the opening verse for expectation actually means hope and anticipation.

Will you join me in my quest? My pondering? I write this to myself and invite you to join in with me and read it as if it is to you.

Okay, Lynn (insert your name). This is a New Year. You stand here, on the precipice of new…new beginnings for all things. What will you see? What will you hear? What will you do? And what will be an influence on each of those?

What do you want to do the most? Think the most? Say the most? Have as your attitude the most? What then must you absorb to produce the best of what the Lord desires of you? Will it be the world’s cacophony of sights and sounds? Or will it be the sight of God’s Word and His precious voice?

Will you hear anything from the Lord without expectation? Spurgeon once said, “He whose expectation does not lead him to be on the alert for its coming will get but little. Watch for God in the events of your life.” He also said, “Unless you put out your water jugs when it rains, you will catch no water.”

How much water of God’s voice, that flowing water of life, do you desire to hear, to drink in? What will be the size of your expectation vessel? The size of a teacup? Or a giant water jug? Is it already filled with self or is it empty and waiting?

David Wilkerson once said, “He who expects little from prayer will not have much power and authority in prayer.”

Are you praying in faith, asking in power and authority? Are you waiting in hope and expectation for His answers? James says, “But when you ask him, be sure that you really expect him to tell you, for a doubtful mind will be as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind…If you don’t ask with faith, don’t expect the Lord to give you any solid answer.” (James 1:6-8 TLB)

Another version says to those who waver, “Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do.” (James 1:7-8 NLT)

Those who have prayed effective prayers, prayed boldly because they expected God to reply.

James wrote one of my favorite verses, “The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” (James 5:16 NKJV) The Greek translation says, “The prayer of a righteous one has great strength, having been made effective.”

Lord, I don’t want to waver. I want fire-breathing faith and to be like Paul in his letter to the Philippian church, “For I fully expect and hope that I will never be ashamed, but that I will continue to be bold for Christ, as I have been in the past. And I trust that my life will bring honor to Christ, whether I live or die.” (Phil. 1:20 NLT)

What are you expecting from the Lord?

Hooking up with…
Jennifer Dukes Lee
Holley Gerth
Carissa Shaw
The Missional Call
3-D Lessons for Life
Equipping Godly Women
Sandra Heska King’s Still Saturdays

2 Comments

If only…

June 23, 2016 By Lynn H Mosher

If only

If only…

Another blogpost actually triggered this post.

One of my very favorite decorating/DIY bloggers is Karianne on her site Thistlewood Farms. Love her her site. Her house. Her upbeat attitude. Her red lipstick! And love her writing. In fact, she just announced she is writing a book and it will be out in the fall of 2017. Yay!

In one of her recent blogposts, she wrote about the “extremely premature and fetal distress” of the early birth of her twin girls, who are now teenagers. She wrote…

“If only.

If only I had known in the middle of the darkest hour the joy that was waiting just around the corner.”

Oh, how I love that. That ignited the spark! (Will get back to Karianne in a minute.)

If you’ve never watched the movie You’ve Got Mail, you’ve missed it. I started to write a synopsis of the movie, but if you haven’t seen it, I decided not to spoil it for you. Just watch it! It’s one of my favorites.

Tom Hanks character Joe Fox and Meg Ryan’s character Kathleen Kelly have met online in a chatroom: he known only as NY152 and she as Shopgirl. This conversation takes place close to the end of the movie. By now, they have met and Joe has fallen in love with Kathleen and she with him, though she doesn’t yet realize his true identity as he has hers.

The conversation goes like this:

Joe: You know, sometimes I wonder…

Kathleen: What?

Joe: Well… if I hadn’t been Fox Books and you hadn’t been The Shop Around the Corner, and you and I had just, well, met…

Kathleen: I know.

Joe: Yeah. I would have asked for your number, and I wouldn’t have been able to wait twenty-four hours before calling you and saying, “Hey, how about… oh, how about some coffee or, you know, drinks or dinner or a movie…(pause)…for as long as we both shall live?”

Kathleen: Joe…

Joe: And you and I would have never been at war. And the only thing we’d fight about would be which video to rent on a Saturday night.

Kathleen: Well, who fights about that?

Joe: Well, some people. Not us.

Kathleen: We would never.

Joe: If only.

If only…

We have those if only moments, don’t we? Usually, we mumble hindsights…if only I hadn’t done this or if only I hadn’t done that. Or if only that wouldn’t have happened. Or if only I could have…

Oh, we can fill an ocean’s worth of if onlys! But do we have more rearview-mirror-regrets like Joe and Kathleen or more foggy-windshield-experiences like Karianne, not knowing the awesomeness to come?

And that’s how I read Karianne’s comment. Not as a boo-hoo-why-didn’t-I-know kind of thing but as an ooo-what’s-waiting-for-me kind of thing. An opportunity to expect. How many opportunities to expect goodness, joy, and blessings pass us by every day?

So, what if we embraced the if onlys as a chance for positive possibilities? If only…

* we would expect the best of others…
* we had a positive attitude instead of a negative one…
* we praised God rather than grumbled and complained…
* we would expect the next great thing just around the corner…

…then, how would our lives change? What would happen to our circumstances? To our attitudes?

Rather than doom and gloom, we would experience excitement and enjoyment. Say, like having the great expectation of our Lord’s return?

“If only I had known in the middle of the darkest hour the joy that was waiting just around the corner.”

How many positive if onlys can you think of?

“Now we live with great expectation.”
1 Peter 1:3b NLT

Hooking up with…
Jennifer Dukes Lee
Holley Gerth
Carissa Shaw
The Missional Call
3-D Lessons for Life
Equipping Godly Women
Sandra Heska King’s Still Saturdays

4 Comments

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...writing to encourage others on their journey Home!

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