When speaking to new cross-cultural workers, one piece of advice that my husband and I often give relates to expectations. Specifically, to lower them. 

It’s not that we want people to assume everything is going to be terrible or that their ministry will be a failure! But so much disappointment, confusion, disillusionment, frustration, and stress come merely from having expectations that are too high, too specific, or too time-sensitive. New workers might envision huge successes in ministry even within the first year and can be left feeling unsettled when relationships move very slowly or when their efforts in the community are met with resistance. Even seasoned workers fall into the trap of overly-elevated expectations.

While our expectations for ourselves and our ministry naturally tend to be too high and too focused on our personal victories, our expectations of God are often too low. We place ourselves at the center and forget about Him all together, or we pray for His blessing or His action but don’t really expect Him to do anything. Whether ministry-related or personal, we offer requests to Him with the subconscious attitude of “I’m sure this won’t actually happen.” 

But the God of the Bible is not weak. He certainly does not always answer His people’s requests in the way they imagine, but we see over and over in Scripture people who come to God boldly and expectantly and a God who acts mightily on behalf of His people. 

We serve the same God today, the God who brought His people out of Egypt, who parted the Red Sea, who brought water from a rock, and who defeated enemy armies with very few fighting Israelites (just to name a few examples). He doesn’t necessarily act today in the same ways He did for Old Testament Israel, but His power and might haven’t changed. We can pray to Him in humility, asking Him to act for His glory, not for ours, and we can pray expectantly, knowing that He might not act according to our ideas but that He will act. 

So, let’s lower our expectations of ourselves and our greatness, and enlarge our views of what God can do!