Expectant Without Expectations
Acts 1:1–11
"Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?"
The question reveals how little the disciples actually understood about what would happen next. Even after forty days of being taught by the resurrected Jesus, the disciples were still thinking in old categories. A national hope. Political and perhaps military restoration. Of ethnic Israel.
They were not totally wrong. But they were mostly wrong.
They expected Jesus to restore a kingdom to Israel. But he had come to restore the Kingdom to the world. Israel was not the recipient but the messenger. And the Israel who would carry the message was not the Israel they knew - but an Israel that had died with its Messiah and had been raised and opened to all the nations of the world. And Jesus would not restore the Kingdom himself. Not directly at least. The Spirit would do it, through Jesus’ people.
"You will receive power,” he tells them, “when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
It is helpful for us to reflect on how little the disciples understood.
Because the reality is we all carry expectations. We all have our own ideas about what God is going to do and how he’s going to do it. We all don’t know things and we don’t know that we don’t know them. We pray for revival and we think we know what it will look like.
Perhaps only one thing is certain about God’s Kingdom when it comes. It comes in ways we aren’t expecting. The disciples misunderstand what Kingdom breakthrough will look like in their day…but they also model something very important for us.
They are adaptable. They are teachable. They are holding onto the wrong roadmap, but they are not holding on so tight to their own ideas that when the Spirit leads them places they don’t expect, like to Cornelius’ house, or to go south on the road to Gaza, they are willing to follow the Spirit.
Revival is for those who are willing to admit we don’t know what we don’t know. For those of us who are willing to be expectant without expectations. Because it is likely we understand as little about what God will do in our time as the disciples did in theirs.
Rev. Greg Johnson
Director, Revive New England