The Power Of Positive Expectation

Reach down and pick up your Bibles and lift them up, wave them around, make Jesus glad, the devil mad.

And let's say this together say Heavenly Father, thank God for the blood.

My revelation of what it's done for me, what it's doing for me now, what it will continue to do for me in the future, has changed my life.

I'm no longer sin conscious, I'm righteousness conscious.

I come bold into the throne of grace to obtain mercy, to find the grace to help me every time I have a need, because the blood is paved the way for me in Jesus' name, amen.

Let's look at Hebrews, chapter 11.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

Today you can be seated, so glad you're here.

We're gonna start reading the verse one.

And also, while you're finding verses, find Jeremiah 29, very familiar verse for most of us, many of us.

Hebrews 11-1,.

Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for.

Everybody shout hope.

I mean, there's gotta have hope.

You know, when you don't have any hope, you can't have any faith, because everything starts with hope.

Now you can't stay in hope.

What is hope is futuristic and faith is now.

But you've gotta start with hope.

It's the substance.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen or not yet seen.

For by it, that is, by faith, the elders obtained a good report.

Through faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

Verse six but without faith is impossible to please God, for he that cometh to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder.

Everybody say my God is my rewarder, a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.

And then Jeremiah 29, 11,.

I know the thoughts that I think toward you, sayeth the Lord thoughts of peace.

That word peace is the Hebrew word shalom.

It means health, prosperity and peace.

Listen to what the prophet is saying in place of God, he's prophesying this to Israel.

They have a covenant with God.

We've got a better covenant with God.

Hebrews eight, six.

If it's true for Israel, it's true for me, and you, are you with me now?

I know the thoughts that I think toward you, sayeth the Lord thoughts of shalom, thoughts of health, prosperity and peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end or to give you a positive expectation.

God wants us to have a positive expectation of our futures.

Are y'all with me now?

So that's what I wanna talk about today, the power of positive expectation.

You know, faith is the doorway into the supernatural.

I mean, you know, I like what brother Weisman was saying last week.

You know, we look at things going on with our eyes and we hear things with our ears and we think things with our carnal mind and we feel things and we think seem like a certain way.

But then when you're a faith person and you meditate on the Word of God and you realize what the blood of Jesus has purchased for you, are you with me?

Now?

There's a sixth sense.

It's the eyes of faith, the ears of faith.

I mean you can touch by faith, you can taste, you can smell by faith.

Are you with me now?

A sixth sense kicks in and you see an experience in the spirit realm, which is the causative realm.

I'm gonna say that again the spirit realm is the causative realm.

You want anything that God says you can have.

You're gonna have to get it where in the spirit first.

Healing starts in the spirit.

You need healing for your body.

It starts in your spirit when faith see.

The arena of victory is the arena of the spirit, not in the flesh.

You might go to the doctor, you might have tests run, but your faith is not in the doctor, your faith is not in the test.

Your faith is what the Word says has already happened.

Well, you know.

God promised to heal me.

No, he didn't know such thing, promise is futuristic.

God did not promise you healing.

He gave it to you already in past tense.

You are, in his sight, already healed.

Well, god promised to forgive me.

No, you're already forgiven.

But in order to access the forgiveness, you've got to admit when you sin.

That's all.

He's not holding anything against anybody in this entire world.

Hitler didn't go to hell because he killed six million Jews.

Did he kill it?

Yeah, but he didn't go to hell.

But for that reason he went to hell, because he denied Jesus Christ.

He never was born again.

It's not sin.

We don't have a sin problem.

We have a problem with people receiving Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

Amen, that's what we're doing.

We're preaching the gospel.

That's the good news.

So faith, then.

You know.

The Bible says in John 1, john 5, 4, this is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith, faith.

People celebrate the victory before they see any sign of it.

This is why I believe that God's not through with America.

I don't see any sign that we're blessed.

I mean the economy is in a mess.

I mean the world is at a place of almost war and we've got psychopaths in charge of the government nuts completely out of their minds.

I think they actually believe the dribble that they speak.

I think that they've convinced them.

I said God, I just don't understand.

He said the truth is not in them.

That's what he spoke to me.

So I quit fretting about it, because they don't have the truth in them.

We have the truth in us.

That's why we're never going to be able to reach across the aisle and agree with these fools.

There's nothing to agree with.

They need to be what Defeated.

About a month from now, we're going to have a chance to defeat a bunch of them.

Oh, it doesn't do any good to vote.

Well, you know what Go back to.

Why don't you mail yourself to Russia or China?

They don't vote over there either.

We still have to vote.

It still works.

Yeah, there's challenges.

See, I don't look at all this.

I hear all this stuff.

I see the data, I hear all of it.

I'm not saying we already ignore it, but I'm saying I'm not persuaded by that, because God is greater than the devil, it gets down just to this God is bigger than the devil and good is greater than evil.

He said overcome evil with what Good?

Hallelujah, that's my faith.

Talking now, I've got a positive expectation about this nation because of God.

I believe America was God's idea.

I don't believe the CRT people.

I don't believe the communists.

If you look at the communist manifesto we're running some of these on my God votes, you know Facebook page about what the different steps of communism are, and we're headed right down the road of being having a communist takeover.

That's what's going on right now, but I'm convinced we're not going to have it.

I believe God is greater than that.

The church is here to make a difference.

Well, but I don't see it.

Well, that's what you're going to go by, what you see, or you're going to go by how big God is, how great God is, see.

That's what my whole point is.

My faith is not in Donald Trump.

My faith is not in a political candidate.

My faith is in God.

Amen, hallelujah.

Well, what about Donald Trump?

I'm not talking about him in particular.

I just use his name because he's still despite what happened in 2020, he's still hanging around pretty popular.

I don't know if he's going to make it or not.

I have no idea who God's going to use next time.

When I find out, I'll let you know.

But I don't go by the polls.

I don't go by what it looks like.

I go by what the Holy Ghost tells me.

He told me in 2016 who Donald Trump was, and I got on his bandwagon right then.

As soon as I heard from God, are y'all with me now?

So faith works on the unseen.

Your faith, according to Hebrews 11, is substantive.

Even though it's spiritual, it's substance.

It's what this whole world was made of.

God made this world with faith and we can make our world with faith.

The power of a positive expectation.

Our faith is dependent wholly on our hope or our expectation.

If you've got a negative expectation, what is that?

Well, you're believing your senses.

You're believing what the devil is saying.

You're more persuaded by what your eyes see than what God said.

That's why I tell people you've got to renew your mind with the Word of God.

You've got to get the Word of God in front of your eyes on a daily basis.

Once a week is not enough.

Now we're living in the last days.

You're being bombarded.

Your senses are being bombarded with lie after lie after lie and you've got to resist the devil and you've got to replace all of that with the truth.

You've got to be a lover of truth, no matter who it separates you from.

It's separating some of us from our family, but this just temporary.

Don't get all in a panic about it Just because your little ones don't.

They've been brainwashed.

There's been a mass hypnosis, really.

That's that a lot of people have bought into and it's disappointing to see.

But every time I see it I just go back to the Word.

God's got a plan.

He's got a plan in the end times.

I just believe we're going to have revival in the church and a great awakening in the world and then we're going to be caught up.

I believe that.

So your positive expectations that God has thoughts and plans of Shalom toward us, to give us a positive expectation.

He wrote this Word.

You know he spoke it so it could be written.

Holy men of God wrote as they were inspired by the Holy Ghost.

That's what the Bible says about itself.

So it was spoken, so it could be written.

It was written so you and I can speak it.

We've got to speak this Word.

You can tell what people are paying attention to by what they talk about all the time.

If all they talk about is the whole thing is going down the tubes, and all of that without any positive expectation, where you can kind of know that they're not really looking at the Bible, they're not measuring things the way that they could because they've missed the unseen realm, they've missed the causative realm.

I believe that God has got a plan for this end time, and it doesn't include America being down at the bottom of the heap.

Well, you know, god's just got to judge America.

He's going to have to apologize to Solomon Gamora.

That's a famous saying that people put out there all the time.

If God doesn't judge America here, we'll have to apologize to Solomon Gamora.

Then that's a bunch of bunk.

We're not all crazy.

We're not all.

You know.

The church is a large part of this country.

We've done a lot of good.

Have we been perfect?

Well, there's no nation under heaven is perfect and people aren't perfect.

If it took perfect, jesus was perfect.

He paid all the price that we need.

You're telling me that we've got to be judged because of abortion.

Well, what about France?

What about Germany?

What about all the European nations that once had the gospel and threw it away?

They've turned their churches and cathedrals.

I mean, they've got cathedrals in Germany and France.

It took five, 600 years.

Kaltradam took 600 years to build.

Somebody loved God to do that.

They might have been misguided in their doctrine, but you know what?

They weren't worshiping the devil.

They built all those churches and a lot of them have been turned into bowling alleys and discos and nightclubs.

Some of them they're just a ruins.

They don't have the budget to fix them up.

So don't tell me that America is at the bottom of the heap when it comes to God's thoughts.

No, I tell you, god's thoughts about America and God's thoughts about us are for shalom.

Are y'all with me now?

So our faith is wholly dependent upon our expectation.

Then we're gonna have to sometimes make some adjustments to our expectations, Sometimes the negative expectations.

There's different kinds I'm gonna tell you about for four kinds of expectation, all of them but one you're gonna have to adjust.

So let's get into it, shall we?

Let's check our expectation.

Let's look at our expectation about what it is that we're believing for and let's do a checkup.

Four kinds of expectation the first one, negative expectation.

Just believe in the devil, believe in your God, believe in your own senses.

That's what that is.

You think that, just because of the way things look, all things are looking bad?

Oh man, inflation, oh man, oh.

Oh my finances.

Oh, the rent went up, oh, the insurance, everything went up.

See, you're just looking, you're focusing on the wrong thing.

We have a supply, amen.

If you have a need, god has a corresponding supply.

Philippians 419.

It's just that simple.

Do you have a need this morning financially?

Then there is a supply available.

All you've got to do is adjust your expectation, because your faith begins where your hope is.

If you have no hope, there's nothing for faith to give substance to.

Now your faith is dead.

Amen.

Focus on past failures.

Well, this is feeling just like it was.

See, I'm looking at things going on right now and they look exactly like they did in the mid 80s.

And I went down in flames in my business in the mid 80s, had to move to corpus and get a job.

My business failed.

The bank took my house that I lived in.

It cost me a hundred and five thousand dollars to build that house and the people that Bought it in foreclosure bought it from the bank for eighty thousand dollars.

Twenty-four thousand dollars cheaper than what it cost me cost me to build it.

You can say I'm not even wholesale, that's just my cost.

You know, I believe coming up here pretty soon.

If you get some cash around you and not just put all your money Out in credit cards and get you some cash, you might be able to take advantage of some crashing prices.

What if a House came available here in about a year or two that was selling for two hundred and twenty thousand dollars and you could buy it for a hundred thousand dollars cash?

And you had a hundred thousand dollars cash?

It wouldn't matter what the interest rate would be, would it?

Would you buy it?

I know one thing I would.

I'd buy that sucker like in a New York minute.

Why?

Because you couldn't build it.

It was built for a lot more than that.

It's worth more than that to somebody.

I can turn that thing into a rent house and rent it for some kind of money, and Not long from now everything's in the turn.

It's what happened in the mid 80s, exactly what happened with my own house.

My own house that somebody bought for eighty thousand right now is worth about four hundred grand.

Now, a house that you live in is not an investment, but I am saying it can be an investment if you don't live there.

Oh, pastor, I don't have a hundred thousand.

Well, how do you know?

I mean, look, I'm trying to stir you up.

Let's quit looking so negative.

Let's let's get rid of these negative expectations.

You Know, I went to A&M whoop and as hard to whoop yesterday they got whooped, is what happened.

They got whooped, thoroughly whooped.

But that's nothing new for me, that's been going on for about 60 years now.

They're watching the Aggies.

It's always a lot of hope.

That's another one I'll get to misguided hope anyway.

So, anyway, I was in Mitchell Hall, which is, at that time, was a 60 year old, you know, had steam heat and no air conditioning and it was had a nice big room but it was hot in there in the, you know, in September and October and cold in there in the wintertime.

But anyway, one day I came in my room and and it's stuck so bad, I mean, it smelled like stale cigars, and I don't smoke cigar.

I didn't smoke, period, and neither did my roommate, and I couldn't figure it out and I started, you know.

So these twins, that from San Antonio, the Valentine Brothers.

They're always trying to play jokes and stuff.

And man, what happened to your room?

It stinks in here.

I, what'd you do?

And so they were laughing and making fun will come to find out one of them.

It played a trick, which is what they always did, they.

And after about a week of suffering, he said pay me a dollar and I'll tell you what I did.

So I gave him a dollar.

I was desperate by that time.

24 hours a day, wake up in the night time, just stink.

We looked everywhere so he had come in with an old, stale cigar that was out, you know, and and put Vaseline under my desk and dob that, that cigar underneath my desk, right there under my nose, literally, and it stayed in state.

And that's what negative expectation.

They color everything.

They, they sneak up your faith walk, they interrupt your, the positive expectation that your faith needs to build.

There's nothing for God to give substance to unless you want the negative, and Having faith in the negative is what fear.

But God didn't give us a spirit of fear, did Negative expectation.

You got to deal with it.

You got to adjust yourself away from negative expectation.

The second one is neutral expectation neutral.

In other words, yeah, god's word is true, but not really acted on.

You don't act like it's true.

You haven't taken action.

Yeah, you believe God's word, you're not gonna.

You know.

You're not gonna talk about Lack, you're not gonna talk about sickness, but you're not talking about health, you're not talking about prosperity, you're not talking much of anything, you just kind of stay silent.

And I was that way when my business went down in the 80s, came back to Houston after a couple of years, move back, broke, couldn't find a job.

Nobody wants to hire a guy that had his own business for ten years.

That was my experience on my resume.

Nobody wanted to hire me.

I'm overqualified, that's what they kept saying.

Mr Grinder, you're overqualified.

Really.

I would think you'd hire me quick, quicker.

If I'm over, if I'm better than what you're looking for, why wouldn't you hire?

Well, you wouldn't stay with it, you'd leave as soon as things turn around.

So they probably right about that.

So anyway, I Was at Lakewood Church in those years, you know.

I came in somebody says, hey, how you doing John?

Well, I'm hanging in there, see, I didn't tell him I'm broke, I'm unemployed.

I didn't say that I'm living with my sister.

I didn't say anything negative, I just said I'm hanging in there, I'm plugging along, I'm hanging in.

Those of my two confessions I mean neutral Kind of you know, treading water, not sinking, not swimming, you know, just treading.

Listen, there is no such thing as treading water.

With your faith, you're either increasing or decreasing Amen.

There's no standing with God where you're just holding your own.

You're either going up or you're going down.

And I was going down because what I had a neutral expectation.

And so after I'd said that for about a thousand of times, yeah, I'm hanging in there, I was right in front of Lakewood.

They, you know, had a console kind of like ours, and I was right there walking this way and the guy had walked past me and was ahead of me and he said I said yeah, I'm hanging in there.

And he kept walking.

And when I heard the Holy Ghost and I thought the whole church heard it, I mean it was loud enough for the entire sanctuary to hear it he said yeah, and your fingernails are about to break.

Well, he didn't need to tell me twice, I knew exactly what he was talking about.

He said you know you've got the wrong confession.

I said wait a minute, wait a minute.

It's better and better what?

He didn't know what I was talking about.

He'd forgotten already that he had even asked me how I was doing.

I think he didn't really care that much.

Just a figure of speech.

You know how people have a figure.

Let's be careful not to have figures of speech when we ask people how they're doing.

Why don't we really mean it and why don't we listen with both ears when they tell us?

But I had to repent right then.

I had to go back and to this day, anybody that asked me how I'm doing, I say I'm doing better and better.

That's my confession.

Why?

Because I had to make an adjustment right then and get out of neutral expectation and start calling the things that be not as though they were.

That's when things began to change.

I'm telling you, that's when things started changing in my finances and in my career.

Are you with me now?

All right, the third one, you know faith without corresponding action.

James 1.22,.

Faith without corresponding action is dead.

So that's what my faith was dead.

I had it, but it was dead.

It wasn't being used.

All right, misguided expectation.

Number three misguided.

One of the best ones examples I think about misguided expectation is found in 2 Kings 5, naaman the leper.

He was chief of staff of the armies of Syria.

I mean, this guy was an important dude and the king of Syria leaned on him and had great respect for him.

He had great honor.

But he was a leper.

And they had conquered Israel and there was a little maid that worked.

There was Jewish and she made a statement boy would the God that Naaman would go to our prophet Elisha.

He would recover him of his leprosy.

And so the king heard that and the king got ahold of the king of Israel and said, hey, what about this Elisha?

And the king was negative.

What do you mean?

I can't.

I don't know if he could do that.

Were you just trying to pick a fight with me?

He was all mad.

You know, the king of Israel was upset that somebody had heard about somebody that could heal leprosy.

And so Naaman the Syrian comes riding into town.

I mean, he comes to Elisha's house and he's ridden all the way there from Syria and he wants to get healed.

He had faith to come, he didn't doubt.

He was so desperate to be healed.

He came riding into town expecting.

He had misguided expectations because he figured, you know, here's going to come Elisha.

He's out his front door, he's going to wave his hand in the heavens, he's going to pronounce me healed and I'm going to be healed right there in the front yard and then I'm going to ride home.

That was his expectation, but that's not how it worked.

I mean, elisha didn't even go outside.

He told Giles I go out there and tell him to wash in the garden seven times and he'll be healed.

I mean, he got so mad, naaman got so angry, he was fit to be tired.

He could have just killed it.

You know, elisha and Giles and everybody else he wanted to, but he had some people that were not.

Yes, men, thank God for people.

You know, if you're going to be a leader, you're going to have to have people that will tell you the truth.

And he said you know, master, you know we've driven all this way.

You know it's a simple thing that he asks you to do.

It's not hard to go down, it's right over there.

There's the river.

You can just go dip in the river.

Why don't you just do what he asked you to do?

I mean, what have you got to lose?

Essentially, what have you got to lose?

You know.

So what did he have to do?

He had to humble himself.

He's used to being.

He's used to calling all the shots, he's used to everybody coutowing to him and bowing to him and calling him a master and everything else.

And now he's got this guy didn't even come out to see him, sent his flunky.

You know the story.

He went and marched into Jordan seven times and his skin came back on him, glory to God.

What did he have to do?

He had to make an adjustment.

You might have to make an adjustment to get what it is that you need done.

God said you could have it.

Why hadn't it happened?

Well, it could be.

You've got some kind of a little wrinkle in your expectation.

You might have negative, you might have neutral, you might have misguided.

So the last one, of course, is positive expectation.

The Bible is filled with people that had a positive expectation in spite of their status, and I guess one of the most outstanding one is the woman with the issue of blood, mark, chapter five.

It's 12 years.

She had been hemorrhaging, spent all of her money on doctors and was nothing better but rather grew worse.

But when she heard of Jesus she came in the press behind, for she said amplified says.

She kept on saying if I can just touch the hem of his garment, I shall be whole".

She had a positive expectation of healing and she had to overcome her physical weakness of 12 years of hemorrhaging.

You know she must have been anemic.

She must have had all kinds of other symptoms in her body.

She's broke.

She has no money to buy food on the way.

Besides that, she's unclean according to the Jewish law and she could be stoned for being in public with blood on her body If they discovered her and knew who she was.

When she got there the crowd was thronging him and she had to overcome the crowd.

She just would not be denied her positive expectation.

She kept on going.

She said I shall be whole, I shall be whole, I shall be whole, I shall be whole.

And when she made that contact, immediately she felt in her body she was healed of that plague and Jesus felt virtue or power go out of his body and said who touched me?

Oh, are y'all with me now?

I'm talking about making an adjustment.

Yes, sometimes we have to make adjustments in our expectation and I know all of us have things that we're believing for.

All of us have family members, we wanna get saved.

All of us have issues that we're believing for.

Sometimes it's health, sometimes it's finances.

What do we need to say about our expectations?

Because expectation is future.

Hope is future.

Hope won't get it for you.

Hope is not gonna get anything from God we can say well, you know, god has promised to heal me.

No, he never did promise to heal you.

He's already finished.

Fact, like I mentioned, you gotta find out what's already finished.

Well, you know, I know, someday things are gonna be a lot better.

Well, they never will be better as long as you're saying that.

Because that's future, that's hope.

That's not faith.

Faith calls the thing that being odd, as though it were it counts as finished fact.

Well, that's lying.

No, it's calling the things that being odd, as though it were.

Romans 4.16.

That's what Abraham did.

That's what Sarah did, abraham, when he said I'm the father, hello, my name is Abraham, father of many nations, was he?

No, he's 100 years old and his wife is 90.

They don't have a baby.

They don't have a seed.

All the other seed that he had by other women didn't count as the seed of Abraham.

They might've been his offspring, but there was one promised seed that had to come through Sarah, and that's not possible.

Well, you know, he wound up when he changed his name.

He kept calling things that being odd, as though it were and the rest is history.

They had Isaac, amen.

So positive expectation.

Let's check our expectation and make sure it's positive.

If it's misguided, find out where you've missed it.

If it's negative, well you know.

If it's negative, you know if it's neutral.

Make that adjustment and your faith will begin to happen because God, then your faith will have something to give substance to.

You'll have true, positive expectation.

You can begin to speak that and it will come to pass.

Come on, lift your hands and receive right now the power of God.

This is how God's power operates in your life.