How to break free from our destructive expectations

Last year, our oldest daughter brought home a cabbage to grow for a school project. To help us understand, she pulled up an image of the world’s largest cabbage and matter-of-factly told us that all cabbages look like this one, and her plant would get that big too. She was sorely disappointed.

We clearly saw that her cabbage-growing expectation was unrealistic. And, yet, we have similar expectations we can’t identify.

Our unrealistic expectations weigh us down, wear us out, and drive us to exhaustion, but today, we can begin breaking free from their destructive hold so that we can live from a place of grace. Let’s start by answering a few questions.

What’s wrong with having expectations?

Nothing.

For example, when I order lemonade, I expect lemonade. Expectations by themselves aren’t bad. However, they become a problem when they turn from anticipation into unrealistic standards that we use to prove our worth.

My daughter’s expectation turned from anticipation into an unrealistic standard of cabbage growth. We have expectations too, but ours revolve less around cabbage and more around finances, career success, and our kids.

We’re trapped in a legalistic world of our own making, and we’re dying to break free.

Why do we want to break free from our expectations if we’re the ones setting them?

It doesn’t seem to make much sense—we customize our standards yet feel enslaved by them. But we can’t just stop setting them…

Because we don’t know how not to.

When we live under the weight of our self-imposed standards, we’re living under the law. As Mark Buchanan writes in The Rest of God, “Legalism is the reduction of life to mere technicalities. It substitutes code for conscience, ritual for worship, rectitude for holiness, morality for purity.”

We believe that if we could simply meet our own standards, then we’d have value. We’re convinced that our worth and safety are found in keeping the law.

But our God is not One for code, ritual, rectitude or morality. He’s got something better in mind.

What does God say about breaking free from our expectations?

We believe that if we meet all of the standards we’ve set that we’ll finally be safe and good enough, but God knows that we already are.

We’re safe because we’re in Christ.

Standards don’t save us, but being in Christ offers us safety (Psalm 46:1). His everlasting arms are always underneath us (2 Samuel 22:3). God fights our battles, and He is the only One who can drive out and destroy our enemies (Deut. 33:27).

God drowned the pursuing Egyptian soldiers to rescue His people from Egypt. He crushed our enemy, a.k.a. our expectations, when He sent Jesus to fulfill the law. So when we feel like the law of our standards is about to take us under, we can simply pour out our hearts to Him, and He’ll protect us (Psalm 62:8).

But we’re not just safe, we’re valuable.

We’re good enough because we’re in Christ.

Meeting standards doesn’t make us Good Enough—we’re already better than Good Enough. We’re fully forgiven and clothed in righteousness (Romans 5:1), we’re complete and fully loved.

Friends, let’s quit striving for what we already have: His love, blessing, and joy. We don’t need to work to meet standards when we already possess the love of Christ, when we’re already adopted as His children (Ephesians 1:5). But understanding that we’re both safe and good enough still leaves us with an important question…

What do we do next?

If we’re not busy keeping our standards, what do we do? God never asks us to let go of something to leave us empty-handed—He always gives us a far-better action plan.

We’re asked to trade our discouraging heaviness for rest, and our busyness for focus. When we grasp the truth of who we are in Christ, we can find rest in Him and focus on the good works He planned in advance (Ephesians 2:10).

We’re asked to replace condemning ourselves with receiving grace. It’s easy for us to condemn ourselves, and we’ve got an enemy hell-bent on making us feel guilt. But there is no condemnation in Christ (Romans 8:1) since our Judge has already declared us righteous in Christ (Romans 8:33).

God knows our hearts, and He’s greater than any standards our hearts might be holding us to (1 John 3:20).

Last year, our daughter brought home a cabbage to grow. She expected a record-setting cabbage, but she got one that died on the back porch. Our expectations don’t typically revolve around cabbage, but they’re present and destructive. And today, God’s inviting us to let them go and rest in who we are because of who He is.