Expectations vs. Expectancy: Letting Go of Control

In my life, things have rarely ever gone how I expected them to. I always love to make plans and try to foresee how things might turn out, but in the end, I can really only guess. It is okay to make plans and try to be prepared for whatever may come, but I think we have to be very careful how tightly we hold onto our plans and our expectations.

Over the last 4 or 5 years, I have really seen how little control I have over anything, and how my life really isn’t even in my own hands. Whether it was an issue in my family, at school, at work, or whatever it may have been—I started to see that stuff happened that I was not ready for and certainly wouldn’t have chosen.

While I have been working on letting go of expectations over the last couple of years, God has put it on my heart to remain expectant. I know that might sound a little confusing, so let me explain. When I was in situations that were less than ideal and wanted so badly for things to change, God showed me that I needed to let go of what I wanted or expected to happen and start being expectant for Him to move however He chose to. For me, expectations usually entail expecting something to happen in a certain way, expectancy is just knowing that God is going to move, whatever that ends up looking like.

So instead of creating endless scenarios of how something might turn out for the good or for the bad, I can just place it all in God’s hands and say, “I don’t know what will happen, but I know that you are in control and that you are going to move.”

This way of thinking, though by no means have I perfected it, eliminates so much potential anxiety in me. I used to ask so many “what if” questions until I was spiraling out of control and feeling crushed over things that didn’t even end up happening.

I would expect something to go horribly, but instead, it would turn out fine. I would expect something to go smoothly, but instead, it was a mess. In the first scenario, I had spent all this time worrying about and feeling sad about something that actually ended well. In the second scenario, I set myself up to feel disappointed and frustrated. When I stopped allowing myself to dwell on the details of a future situation, and instead decided to just pray about it and trust that God would take care of it—so much of my anxiety and emotional distress dissipated.

As I said, this is definitely not something that I am perfect at doing, but it is something I have been working on for a couple years now and I have seen so much growth. The peace of just knowing that God is in control and expecting Him to do what He does—that has changed my life.

Realizing that not only do I have zero control over so many things but that God has 100% control over everything, that is a game-changer. As someone who wants to control everything, that first realization is a hard one. It is something I have to keep realizing every day and that I am learning to lean into. Having zero control over the way things turn out is something that can feel so scary and maddening. But when we realize that our lack of control means that God has total control, that makes up for everything. Because what better, more capable hands could there be?

Jeremiah 29:11-13 says this, “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.’”

Instead of panicking about how little control I have in a situation, I can instead find comfort in knowing that God has good plans for me and that whatever happens will be for His glory and my good. He promises that His plans are meant to give us hope and a future, that they are meant to prosper us and not to harm us. After this, He says that when we go to Him in prayer He listens to us, that when we seek Him with all our hearts, we will find Him. Wow. There are so many good promises in that passage!

These words so clearly show that we have absolutely nothing to worry about. We may not know the details of God’s plans for us, but we can be confident in the fact that He has it all figured out for us. Praise the Lord for that, because if I could plan out my whole life on my own, I would end up messing it up! If things always went the way I had hoped or wanted, you can be sure that it wouldn’t have been for my good and I would have been harmed. I am so thankful that we are known so intricately and deeply by God that He knows what’s best for us far better than we do.

Another verse that I’d love to share on this subject is Proverbs 3:5-6 which says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight.”

I love that passage so much, and I think it just so clearly states how we are supposed to sort through our lives in general and specifically our expectations. The most important part is that we are supposed to trust the Lord. We hear it said so often and see it repeated in God’s Word and many other books over and over, but that is because it needs to be drilled into our heads.

Trusting in the Lord is a simple concept but an extremely difficult thing to enforce in our everyday lives. It requires constantly re-evaluating our thought patterns and re-surrendering to Him. It takes committing to lay down our reflexive need to worry, wonder, and question and choosing instead to calm our minds enough to just say, “I trust you Lord, and I know that you are working this out for me.”

The next part of the verse says that we should not lean on our own understanding, which again, is extremely difficult. We tend to search our minds for all the answers and with our limited understanding, we then make wrong assumptions, come to wrong conclusions, and formulate wrong expectations—because we know very little. When we lean on our own understanding, we make fools of ourselves.

The next part of the verse says we should submit to the Lord in all our ways, and He will make our paths straight. Again, this verse is coming at us with simple concepts that are actually extremely difficult to apply in our daily lives. Submission can be so hard, especially because it is the very opposite of what our sinful flesh would like to do. Not only are we called to submit to the Lord, but we are also called to submit to Him in ALL our ways. Not just sometimes, not just most of the time, not just in certain areas of our lives—we are to submit to Him all the time and in every area of our lives, including in our expectations.

If we combine all these things—we trust the Lord, we do not lean on our understanding, and we submit to Him in every way—our lives would completely change. If we apply all of these things to our expectations, our capacity for peace would grow abundantly.

Instead of expecting something to go one way because we think that way is best, we can trust that God has the best for us. Instead of searching our own understanding to create expectations, we can instead go to the Word of God and go to Him in prayer and create our expectations from the truth. Instead of fighting for control and needing things to meet our expectations, we can surrender our need for control and submit to the Lord, knowing that even if He doesn’t do what we expect, He will do what is best and make our paths straight.  

These truths have literally changed my life. It is so, so easy for me to slip back into this pattern of expecting a certain thing and then falling back into fear and worry based on those unrealistic expectations. It is my tendency to desperately grasp for control and try to know how things will turn out. But I am learning to see when I am slipping back into these patterns and notice when I am grasping for control again.

When I notice myself doing these things, I have to remember to place everything back into God’s hands. Obviously, everything is already in His hands, and even if I don’t acknowledge that, it remains true. But when I choose to recognize that God is in control, and I don’t need to keep grasping for control—that brings so much peace. When I choose to acknowledge His sovereignty and His good plans for me, then I can let go of my anxiety.

So, what are you expecting? Have you been creating endless scenarios in your head of the way something should or could go? Are you inviting God into your expectations? Are you trusting the Lord with the outcome? Are you having an expectancy that God will move however He sees fit?

We have to ask ourselves these questions. If you are willing to deconstruct your bad habits when it comes to expectations, it could truly change a lot for you. If you begin to release your expectations and instead trust that God will show up however He needs to, you will start to see your anxieties leave and your peace increase. God has good plans for you, and He may not always do what you want Him to, but He will always do what He needs to.

This is something that God has been teaching me and I really hope that it can benefit you as well. I hope that you and I can be in this learning process together, figuring out what it looks like to let go of expectations and instead cling to an expectancy for God to move. I hope that we can be confident in every situation that God is in control and that He is going to make our paths straight as we choose to submit to Him. Thanks for showing up,

-Elena ❤