Week 10: Day 2

Intro: Hey guys, and welcome to another day here on Orbit, it’s great to have you with us today, as I said yesterday my name is Robin and I get the pleasure of sharing with you this week. This is our second session today; yesterday day we looked at the importance of having a strong faith, and today we continue in the same book and same chapter as yesterday.

Bible: Today's reading comes from Daniel 3: 24-26. And what’s just happened is that these guys called Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego have just been thrown into a burning furnace because they refused to worship a golden idol made by the king, and this is where we start reading today.

Then King Nebuchadnezzar leaped to his feet in amazement and asked his advisers, “Weren’t there three men that we tied up and threw into the fire?”

They replied, “Certainly, Your Majesty.”

He said, “Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods.”

Nebuchadnezzar then approached the opening of the blazing furnace and shouted, “Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out! Come here!”

So Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego came out of the fire.

Thoughts: Each day, I start by asking you a question and today I want to ask you: How are your expectations of God?

Because if there’s one thing King Nebuchadnezzar didn’t expect, it’s that these guys would actually be saved by God… And to be fair to the king, I think I’d be the same in this scenario!

But for us today, our expectations of what God can do in our lives can be all over the place. One minute my expectations of what God can do are sky high, and the next they're almost non-existent.

I think it’s a lot like at Christmas. I don’t know if you do this, but when I’m buying someone a gift, it can be at Christmas, or birthdays, or whenever, I often match the quality of the gift I get them… to the quality of the gift that they gave me last year. Do you know what I mean? Like they give me something that cost this much, and so I’ll get them something that cost me that much.

But when that kind of thing happens, we let our experiences, set our expectations. We let the experiences of the past, set the expectations of the current or of the future.

And of the back of the past two years, my concern is that I've started to do that process to God.

I find it easy to think about all the unanswered prayers, all the disappointment, the lack of relationships, the feeling of loneliness, the anger or anxiety.. And before long I've started to project my experience of the past year, onto my worship to God.

'God you've only done this much, so I'll only worship this far'

'God you've only answered 'X' amount of prayers, so I'll only pray 'X' amount next year'

And so my experience has set my expectations. But that’s not how we are called to live.

As we learnt yesterday, we are called to live by faith and not by sight. Not to let our experience of what God has done, or hasn’t done so far in our lives, not letting that set our expectations of God might do today. But instead, by letting what we see and read in scripture, letting that set our expectations of what God can do in our lives today, by letting the truth about God in scripture be the guide to the way we worship and the way we pray.

Challenge: Each day on Orbit we give you a challenge to help put this passage into practice, and today, I wonder if it might be helpful to reflect back on the past year, and see the highs and lows you’ve experienced, and to then look at yourself today, and just see if there’s anything about the way you now pray, that might have been affected by the hard two years we’ve had.

And once you’ve done that, to then move forward in the knowledge that our expectations of God can be set by truth found within scripture, the scripture that we dissect and explore each day here on Orbit.

Prayer: Let’s finish with a quick prayer: Heavenly Father, you are good, and in your goodness, you meet with us. We pray that today, through your Holy Spirit you will highlight areas in our lives that we are holding back, areas where we doubt you. Father, will you forgive us where we have doubted, and will you give us the strength to worship you in spirit and in truth. Amen

Outro: That's it for today's Orbit. Thanks so much for joining us - we'll be back with another reflection tomorrow.