The Danger of Blaming Yourself
The first danger we want to warn you of is in blaming yourself for your expectations. We’ll say again that expectations are not bad things. We may need to repent or forgive ourselves for misplacing our expectations and for looking to other people or things to satisfy what only God can, but we also have to understand that our expectations themselves are OK (within reason, of course).
It’s easy to say, “I never should have expected those things in the first place,” but to do so is to deny the desires of your heart that God wants so deeply to fill. To say so is also to claim that you did not deserve the things you were longing for.
Now, we’re not talking about expecting to get a Mercedes on your sixteenth birthday—that’s not it at all (and if that’s the grudge you’ve been holding on to, then you just need to get over it!). There are times when we can expect some pretty dumb and superficial things, but when we get to the root of it all, our deepest desires were placed there by God to draw us back to Him, and those are not meant to be denied.
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