“Earnest expectation” is a phrase used in Romans chapter 8 and Philippians chapter 1. This expression, which was first used in the King James Version of Romans 8, is very meaningful to us in this day. The language of the King James Version of the Bible often expresses ideas with an extraordinary perception. This phrase hits the mark of what is really meant, as we will see shortly.
What is an “earnest expectation”? It is good to have hope, but it is better to have hope with such an expectancy that it becomes an earnest hope. We must have within our thinking and within our spirit an expectancy and a yearning for victory. This is a time in which we are earnestly expecting something significant to happen.
It is amazing how certain verses become increasingly alive to us from day to day. The Bible has a way of having one significance to the scholar, and quite another to the believer. When the scholar reads the writings of Paul, for example, he observes that Paul suffered much, that many difficult things happened to him. He was put in dungeons and prisons; he was beaten, shipwrecked, and stoned (II Corinthians 11:23–27). But the believer has a way of identifying those experiences, not so much with Paul, as with his own present experience.
How did Paul relate to his sufferings? For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. Romans 8:18. Many of us, like Paul, encounter one spiritual battle after another. In the things that we go through, we develop an attitude of spirit like that of Christ, when He “endured the cross and despised the shame, because there was such a wonderful joy set before Him” (Hebrews 12:2). In the same way, any hardship or battle we go through now is not even to be considered when we realize the great breakthroughs before us.
When we reach that new level, we will understand Paul’s words more than ever before: For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared (not even worthy to be considered) with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the anxious longing (the King James Version reads “earnest expectation”) of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. Romans 8:18–19.
The Greek word for “earnest expectation” is apokaradokia, meaning “anxious looking with outstretched body.” Three Scriptures in the Bible express this attitude of earnest expectation (though the Greek word is actually used only twice). The first speaks of the “anxious longing—the earnest expectation—of creation, as it waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God.” It takes revelation to see that. If you go to the garden and look at things as they appear, it is very difficult to see those weeds as having any earnest expectation. Instead, it looks like a struggle of the weed jungle to take over. It seems that the milkweeds and the foxtails, rather than Satan, are pursuing us! But they are not our enemies. Creation wants to be delivered from its futility. Within creation, even though there is no conscious thought about it, there is a reaching for the blessing.
If you really love God and have a desire to bless plants, they will flourish under your blessing. If you smile at them, bless them, and talk kindly to them, they will grow faster. This has been scientifically proven. Researchers have experimented with plants by giving them all the same care, except that they consciously treated one plot kindly and blessed it, while they spoke harshly or violently to the adjoining one. The scientists observed a significant difference in the plants’ fruitfulness. Do you know what accounts for that difference? In all of creation there is an earnest expectation. They are waiting for your hands to bless them. They are waiting for your hands to loose them from futility. They are waiting for you to bless them. That is what we are reaching for too. We are trying to break into a new dimension, a new level where we are not a part of the futility; rather, we are the total answer to it. We will loose creation (Romans 8:19–22).
When people receive ministry in their futility or need, they may not always know the names of those who are ministering the blessing to them. Thus we return to the scriptural pattern that Christ established in John 9. When the blind man was healed, the Pharisees asked him, “Who healed you?” He only knew that the man was called “Jesus.” (Only later did Jesus reveal to the man that He was Lord-verses 35–38.) When the Pharisees found out that He was Jesus, they told the man, “Well, He is not of God or He would not have healed on the Sabbath. You had better just give the glory to God, because this man is a sinner!” (verses 16, 24.)
Similarly, in the future day of the greater works (John 14:12), an entire hospital may be emptied without anyone knowing who did it. Religious authorities will look around and ask, “Who healed all those people?” When they finally trace back and learn the man’s name, they too may respond, “Well, you had better give the credit only to God, because we have that man’s name on our ‘false prophet list’!”
Notice that selfless dedication is the quality which God emphasizes. When He finds a people who will not take the glory or the gold as did King Saul (I Samuel 15) and Achan (Joshua 7:20–21), but instead will be “faithful stewards” of His fullness and His richness (Luke 12:42; I Corinthians 4:1–2), He will then move to loose creation from futility.
Do not anticipate that this deliverance will be easy, but once it is started, we will see God move upon people so that they will listen to us. At present, it is doubtful that many people would come to us, even if they heard that there was deliverance for them. When we first learned these truths, several people turned away from me and caused some problems. God spoke to my heart that He would use me to deliver those who had turned against me. I thought to myself, “They wouldn’t let me touch them with a ten-foot pole—let alone lay hands on them!” However, within the next year or so, I was called upon to pray for them. When I prayed for them, the Lord healed them. At the time when the Lord spoke that I would pray to deliver them, I could not see how they would even consider it; but one by one, the Lord put them in a place where they wanted prayer.
God may minister judgment. Then those who have faith—even though the enemy may have succeeded in discrediting them and locking them into the pattern of futility—will have the answer. The answer will come from them because they have “despised the shame” (as did our Lord) of the things they go through (Hebrews 12:2), to receive “the glory that is to be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18).
Paul continued in his letter to the Romans: For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope. Romans 8:20. Even in the predatory law of the jungle, there is a hope that something will change. Even the predatory nature of the wild beasts is not irrevocable. In circuses we see men handling full-grown tigers and lions, which in the jungle would normally tear those men to pieces. We also see peaceful elephants in circuses, but in the jungle there is no rage like that of a bull elephant as he stomps and kills. The animal kingdom is not committed to its futility and its predatory nature; it can be delivered.
The day will come when the prophecy of Isaiah 11:9 will be fulfilled: “They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain.” The lion will lie down with the lamb (Isaiah 11:6). Can you believe that? Right now there is very little evidence of this. When a lion lies down with a lamb, it is very likely that only the lion will stand up again! Yet this is what Romans 8:20 tells us: Creation will be delivered from its futility. We are looking for it to actually happen!
That the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. Romans 8:21. We are reaching to break through these oppressions into that “freedom of the glory.” We are not looking for this only for ourselves; we want the “freedom of the glory of the children of God” to become a real experience for all of creation. We are weary of being oppressed by Satan in mind and emotions. We are tired of the access the enemy has to us. We are tired of the assault of demon power that comes when we are dedicated and serving, as it tries to wipe out our effectiveness. We deplore the effect which circumstances have upon us. We reject Satan’s manipulation of the lives which belong to the eternal God (Deuteronomy 33:27). All of these oppressions must be broken! We must break into a realm in which God not only orders our steps, but His wisdom through us actually orders the whole course of creation!
Romans 8:22: For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. Although the travail of childbirth is painful, yet there is no element of futility in it. There is pain only until the child is delivered. All the spiritual travail and suffering that we labor under is not meaningless pain leading to our destruction. Like childbirth, it is leading to new creation, to new life. These pains are purposed by God to bring forth His will, to bring forth another age.
Your travail for the minister to open the door for you has been the key of your own growth too. More has been born through this travail of intercession than we imagine. We do not comprehend the depth of what God has been working in us and through us. It will be years before we are able to evaluate the importance of what we have been through. God has been working His plan in our lives even when we felt shaken, almost to the point of disaster.
Brother after brother has moved up rapidly to become a “success in the ministry”—only to see God shake him (Hebrews 12:25–29). God does not want you to be locked into some church limitation. He wants you to be flexible to grow. God will put pressure on you; and if He must, He will uproot you so that you will maintain spiritual flexibility and continue to grow. Not once has God allowed me to be set or fixed into a level that we could call a “successful ministry.” Each time we reach a certain level, He stirs us up, and the travail begins again.
It is not enough that we be half-born. There will be a complete birth of the sons (Isaiah 66:9). There must be the “strength to deliver” the “sons come to birth” (II Kings 19:3; Isaiah 37:3). Be aware of the difference between your seeming futility (i.e., God frustrating your objectives and purposes) and the true futility that is in the world. They are totally different. The only explanation to the futility you feel is that God frustrates you on every level so that He impels you to reach for more. This is different from the futility on creation.
Romans 8:23 is the second of three Scriptures that refer to “earnest expectation,” although it does not use that phrase. It contains the key for our receiving this victory. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly (in “earnest expectation”) for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. It is significant that from the very beginning of our walk into sonship—right up until this time—the major thrust of demonic attack has been against the physical body. The pains and agony that you suffer are satanically designed to make you abandon the anticipation that the next step is the redemption of your body.
The Word that we have been taught has dealt extensively with the oneness of spirit and soul. When we first started walking in the Spirit, the Word turned our focus entirely to sanctifying the human spirit. We also experienced many struggles on the soul level. This involved the emotions, the frustrations, the struggle to reason things out, the subconscious, the memory banks and mental conditionings, as well as the responses to personality clashes and relationships. We all became alert to those things, as God brought us out of that soul realm and into the realm of spirit.
We reach the spirit level so that we can go back and incorporate the soul level with it. This is in accordance with the teaching of I Thessalonians 5:23: “Your whole spirit, soul, and body will be preserved blameless—sanctified entirely, completely—unto the coming of the Lord.”
The physical body will continue to be the battleground, because it is Satan’s last stronghold (I Corinthians 15:26). The Lord will reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet, and the last enemy to be destroyed (and this is in His sons too) is death (I Corinthians 15:25–26). The Word has promised us that “the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead shall also quicken these mortal bodies” (Romans 8:11). This is our battleground. We are eagerly waiting, we are “earnestly expecting” the redemption of our body.
This word is God’s directive for us to receive a breakthrough into victory today! Do not give assent to the concept of waiting for the enemy to die. We are in earnest expectation of our breakthrough to the victory of the Lord. We do not struggle through to victory; we believe God’s promise that He has “given us the victory” (I Corinthians 15:57), and we appropriate it with earnest expectation.
Romans 8:24–25: For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one also hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it. Perseverance. Earnest expectation. We wait eagerly for it. We have that eagerness, that earnest, eager expectation that God will break through for us! It is coming. God will not withhold victory for any reason; the problem is that often we do not take possession of it!
We do not want God’s visitation to this age to end up in the “dead letter office” of heaven because we failed to call for the mail! This is the time for us to claim it. If you go to your “post office” and the postman says, “Sorry, it did not come today,” then you should go back tomorrow and the day after that. He may be annoyed with you, because every day you are right there, eagerly expecting it, waiting for it. Each day you keep asking for it, because when it does arrive, you are going to claim it! There must be an earnest expectation that a visitation is soon to come! What do we do? We stand waiting eagerly, saying, “Lord, we are ready for it!” When it comes, we will not be walking in the other direction so that the Lord—the “mailman”—will stand there saying, “Well, I had it for you.”
How many blessings are still up there, all wrapped with a nice ribbon, with your name on them? Is it possible that you prayed for them, but you never reached up with expectation to claim them? Do you think that there are some overdue blessings waiting for you? You may be thinking, “Yes, but they will come eventually.” Do not be so sure. When I think about “earnest expectation,” I recall the prophet Elijah. He knew that God was going to send rain. Even so, with his head bowed between his knees he prayed. Then he sent his servant to the bluff of Mount Carmel, telling him, “Look out over the sea—do you see any cloud?” His servant came back and answered, “No, I don’t see anything.” Seven times Elijah said, “Go back and look again” (I Kings 18:42–43).
God told Elijah to cause the famine, and God told him to end the famine (I Kings 17:1; 18:1). Why, then, did he have to go through all that? Elijah knew that God has a way of working, wherein the man who receives the “mail” is the man who has earnest expectation. Otherwise, the delivery often does not come. Jesus later recounted, “There were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah during that famine, but only one of them received a miracle” (Luke 4:25–26). There must be a particular quality present to receive a miracle.
Like Elijah, we are waiting with earnest expectation for God to send the blessing down upon us. The moment his servant’s sharp eyes barely could see a little cloud the size of a man’s hand, that was enough for Elijah; he knew that the miracle had started. Now God would bring the rain. In fact, before he even prayed, he told King Ahab, “There is the sound of abundance of rain!” (I Kings 18:41.) He sent word to the king, “You had better hurry to your palace before the heavy rain stops you” (I Kings 18:44).
Elijah had such an earnest expectation that he then girded himself and outran the king’s chariot (verse 46). That was a wonderful manifestation of the fact that Babylon, with its finest horses and chariots, still is not able to outdo the achievements of only one man who moves in God—if he has earnest expectation! If he believes that it will happen! If he is waiting for it, and he is even urging it on.
There is a difference between impatience and persistence, which is difficult for the human mind to discern. When a man is persistent with me, I study him to see if he is in fact actually impatient. If he is impatient, he does not get as much consideration as he would if he were persistent. Do you know why? Persistence can be an evidence of faith; impatience can be an evidence of the frustration of unbelief.
Are you impatient, or are you persistent? Is it earnest expectation that you have? Are you reaching for God to do something through you? Are you waiting for it? Or do you feel as though you are about to give up? Is it out of your frustration, or is it because you have stood waiting on God by the hour and He has not met you? Have you “talked a big fight,” rather than lived with upraised hands? Just how do you walk with God? What are you expecting? Who are you expecting to do it?
There could be a great danger in looking to your leaders for too much. Discern the wisdom in this: You can rely on a leader too heavily, justifying yourself by saying, “You are the man of God; you are the servant of God. All that God gives will come through you in divine order, and I am totally submissive.” You may be in danger of looking to the channel more than to the source of the flow. That was the way the world went when they “worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator” (Romans 1:25). Keep your focus off the leaders; they are only created vessels of the Lord. Look to the fullness of the Lord; look to Him. Never focus on anyone other than the Lord. Then He will make known to you, by revelation, the channel through which He will move. It may actually be God’s intent that you will not be met through the one you depend on, only because you are looking to him too much.
On the other hand, if you follow this directive—but in your heart you are not really submissive—you may not receive anything either. We must recognize what we are, by the couplings of the Spirit. We are an arrangement of pipes through which the fullness of God can flow. The Heavenly Father has a great reservoir of unlimited provision for you through Jesus Christ. It will flow to you. Just keep the drain cleaner on hand to clear out your pipes; be a channel with earnest expectation. Sometimes when you turn on the faucet, it will go “ptt, ptt, ptt”—and then the water will suddenly spurt out. I always love that! It is as though that little faucet has an earnest expectation: “just a minute, just a minute, just a minute—here it is—there!”
We might be right in the middle of receiving God’s victory and find two dangers: one, that we settle for only a portion; and two, that we do not maintain our earnest expectation, waiting for it to flow. The easiest way to end murmuring and complaining is to simply replace it with an earnest expectation that God is going to do something!
The best way to be unselfish is to reach into God for yourself, and then impart what you receive to others. We know that this is how He will meet them. He gives us a Word by which He works in our lives so that we decrease and He can increase (John 3:30). Paul wrote of this in the third scriptural reference using “earnest expectation”: According to my earnest expectation and hope, that I shall not be put to shame in anything, but that with all boldness, Christ shall even now, as always, be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. Philippians 1:20. God has limited Himself to move through human channels. Therefore it is a cop-out for us to say, “Oh, Lord, You meet those people out there.” He will meet them, but the most unselfish position you can take is to determine with earnest expectation that you will break into the sonship, and to be the channel of God’s anointing that will enable you to meet them. Then you will help them to break through.
The only way we are blessed is that someone else has already been blessed, and he passes that blessing on to us. It is as simple as that. Paul told the Ephesian elders, “Take heed to yourselves first, then to the flock of God” (Acts 20:28). That flock would be dead unless those elders got hold of God first in their own lives (verse 29). That is the whole principle of impartation; you cannot give what you do not have. We reach in with an earnest expectation to lay hold of the next level that God wants us individually to move in, so that we in turn can bless that breakthrough to someone else. The Body makes increase of itself by that which every joint supplies, according to the effective working of each individual part (Ephesians 4:16). For example, do not simply pray for all the people in a foreign country; instead, pray for the channels commissioned to meet them. Instead of praying for the schools, pray for the channels through which the schools will be met.
Look to yourself and pray that you will be a channel. Lift up your hands; open your heart. Let God meet you so that you can become a leader completely dedicated to the ones to whom you minister. You will minister to them with empty hands, an empty mouth, and an empty heart unless you come before God yourself. Think of yourself in the light of God if you want to meet other people. It is your walk with God that will change the world. It is your walk with God that will meet God’s people. Earnest expectation!
A branding iron may be hot, but the owner of the steer is not identified until that iron hits the steer’s rump. When that iron hits and it begins to sizzle and smoke, from that time on you will know whose steer that is. So, while this “iron” is hot, you had better turn your heart toward heaven and say, “Lord, seal this Word to me! Stamp it on me! Write it indelibly upon my heart! Etch it on the tablets of my heart (II Corinthians 3:3), so I will know that I am going to live with earnest expectation! I am determined that I will not receive this Word, moved by it only momentarily; I will live this way!”