Lately I’ve tried to figure out when I missed an opportunity to glorify God in challenging situations. It appears to be when I experience what I call an expectation gap. That’s when I expect something to go a certain way or someone to do the right thing, and they don’t. We can’t make them do the right thing but we do EXPECT them to do the right thing.
This recently happened to me when I figured out this gap. I was expecting a package at campground that we were visiting. We called the front desk one morning to inform them about an arrival from a delivery service, and the man at the desk said he would look out for it and informed us that this delivery service usually comes around noon. Great. So we thought. An hour later (before noon) we saw online that our package was refused. We called the front desk and they said the truck hadn’t come yet. Interesting – the status showed refused. We called the delivery company and they said the front desk refused our package (per the driver). Who’s telling the truth? Expectation gap has just occurred.
I was interested to find a scripture to help me work through this problem. I found Matthew 5:37 “But let your statement be, ‘Yes, yes’ or ’No, no”; anything beyond these is of evil.” If the man at the front desk had just said we don’t accept packages from visitors that would have been OK, and I would have made other arrangements for delivery. But instead we wasted hours of time and energy trying to track down the package. But God will use it for good. Now I can apply these lessons to my own business – give excellent customer service and give God the glory.
Whenever you get frustrated find the expectation gap, pause a moment, find scripture to back your problem, redirect yourself and know that Jesus is with you always. Go in peace and love everyone.
God is love. So above all else, let love be the beautiful prize for which you run (1 Corinthians 13:13 TPT). Jesus is Lord.