HOPE FOR THE BEST, Prepare for the worst
‘Always under-promise and over-deliver” . Nik Hartley-OBE
Expectations are part and parcel of our daily life, whether major or minor. When we go to our mentor for advice, we expect him or her to give us real solid advice. When you make a date with someone, you expect them to show up at the right time and place of meeting. When someone professes to be a Christian we expect them to behave like a Christian. In short we always expect the obvious.
Yet most disappointments we have in life are because certain things didn’t work out according to our expectations. Because of this we should always expect the unexpected. This means that we avoid being torn apart and broken hearted. We always must leave room for the unusual, for disappointment and the negative. That way we will be able to handle matters wisely. It could be a job that we applied for and have all the assurance that it will be offered to us, or that fiancée or fiancé that we are so certain we are going to marry or get married to. Besides hoping and believing for the best, room should be left for the unexpected, in business this is called risk management. Ask me how I know? I’ve been there and I learnt it the hard way.
Proverbs 13:12 says “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.” Unmet expectations can be a huge source of frustration in life. I speak more extensively about this subject in my next book, ‘Mastering the Dynamics of Love Relationships’
They say ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket.’ In a way that is to say that is to say you need to invest in more things than one. Apart from relying on your day job for your family’s income, you need to think about creating two or more streams of income. This will not only sustain you when your job is no more but will also set you up for personal wealth creation because you will have power of the machinery that brings in the income, your business.
God also sometimes works in mysterious ways, he sometimes frustrates our expectations so that he consolidates our faith in him.
In short, you should always expect God to come through for you. But don’t expect God to work according to your thinking or according to the way He moved last time or even the way he worked for sister so and so. If you do, you might be in for a big surprise. God says, ‘Your thoughts are not my thoughts and your ways are not my ways, for as far as the heavens are from the earth, so are my thoughts and my ways far from yours.’ Isaiah 55: 9-11. This means to say that the way you expect God to move may be nothing close to the way he will move. We can see this in 2 Kings 5:1-14, Namaan, a well-respected Army General expected the Prophet Elisha to do the ‘usual stuff’ in order to cleanse his (Namaan’s) leprosy, but God had a different plan in mind, to dip in the Jordan seven times. It was only when Namaan followed God’s instructions that he got healed. So you see Namaan expected God to heal him but he went a little further and assumed things for God. Don’t live a life of assumptions and misplaced expectations, you will be very disappointed. Always expect God to move, but in His own way and not as you fancy. MOVE