Expectations After Hours

Nakita Kolov, the Russian nightmare.

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Welcome to Masculine Journey After Hours. And we're excited today, Harold, aren't we? Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'm excited because it's your topic. Yep, I stumbled. You stumbled and picked a topic?

Is that what it was? I made the mistake of suggesting a topic. Yeah, well.

Well, actually no, it's not a stumble. The topic is expectations. They can be good or they can be bad, but we're going to live up to them. So it's important that we pick the right ones.

Or whose we pick. Yes, exactly. Yeah, because the world's full of them.

The world's not slow on expectations, that's for sure. Right. There's plenty of them out there.

Everybody has one. Yeah. And I think, well, Harold, he does the zipper merge right into that topic. He did.

He did. Zipper merge is a term that you guys have developed over my preference on driving. We didn't come up with the zipper merge. I think the DOT did. Yeah, it's the preferred way to merge at a construction site.

Yeah, it is, according to the Department of Transportation. Isn't it, Harold? You don't wait till the last moment and act like ants bumping heads. You go ahead and switch lanes three miles ahead of time.

That way you can maintain your speed. You're saying the government isn't right? Of course, I have the expectation that people are going to do it right at the end.

Sounds good. It's all about expectation. It's all about expectation.

Maybe you're just living under a bad one. I have a history of picking the wrong expectation. Except in marriage. Yeah, that's true. Oh, yeah. That one has worked out really, really well.

I had high expectations when that little lady came into my life, and boy, have they ever been met. And exceeded. Absolutely. We've got 58 plus years already. Wow. David, that's way longer than you've been around. Yeah, like by 18 years. Yeah.

A whole adult more than you. Exactly right. You're exactly right. Well, thank you, David. I appreciate that. All right, so we'll get on to the first clip.

I actually have the first clip. When the topic was expectations, this movie obviously came to mind, because this person has a fair amount of expectations. And this movie is Christmas Vacation, and it's Clark Griswold, who's the lead person. And in this clip, you have Clark and his wife, Ellen, and they're kind of sitting in bed, and they're talking about the upcoming Christmas and who all is going to be there. And Clark's excited. Ellen's not as excited, and let's listen to how it plays out. Did I tell you I talked to my mother today?

And? They've decided they're coming for Christmas, too. You know, it's not too late to change our plans. No, no, no, no. That's great.

It's great. I think you're forgetting how difficult it's going to be having everybody in the house at the same time. Honey, they're family.

They're not strangers off the street. All they do is argue. Christmas is about resolving differences and seeing through the petty problems of family life. Yeah, and it's about my mother accusing your mother of buying cheap hot dogs, and your mother accusing my mother of waxing her upper lip, and then they don't speak to each other. Your mother waxes her upper lip?

She has for years. Fun show. I don't know, Sparky. I just have this feeling that it's not going to... Ellen, I want to have Christmas here in our house. It means a lot to me. All my life, I've wanted to have a big family Christmas. It's just that I know how you build things up in your mind, Sparky. You set standards that no family event can ever live up to.

What have I ever done that? Parties. Weddings. Anniversaries. Funerals. Holidays.

Well, I didn't set that up very well. If you haven't seen the movie, what's happening there is he's been touching the Christmas tree, and so he has sap all over his hands, and that's why you keep hearing things. But then again, it's been out like 20 plus years, so if you haven't seen it by now, probably you might want to watch it next Christmas. But if you have seen it, when you think about that show, that movie, you think about most of Clark's issues are around his expectations not being met. Everything that gets him so frustrated is because there's not an expectation that's getting met that he had, whether that be the family's getting along, what his bonus should be, his bonus check coming, whatever that is. He lives his life based on his expectations, and then everything in life should conform to that.

And I'm not picking on Clark Griswold, I think that's most of us. When I'm really honest with myself, I live with my own expectations and to some level expect the world to conform to that. It doesn't. I can't even get a lot of my family to, which is not what I should be asking them to do, and that's the point. The point is not having expectations on people that at least haven't been discussed. It's different if you've had a conversation with, my kids are all grown, they're adults, and I can have adult conversations with them about expectations that I have on certain things. And once that expectation's been there and it's agreed upon, well, it's a different story. If I don't meet it, then they can be frustrated with that. Or if they don't meet it, I can be frustrated with that. But that's different once you've come upon and agreed upon it. But most of the time what happens in most relationships and most situations is there's no agreeing upon anything. There's just unset expectations.

There's undiscussed expectations. One of the things I love to do at work is I got a new community not long ago, and so I got some new managers. We're working with the same companies, right? But I got some new leaders in the area that comes in from the siting company or from the whatever it is. And so it's someone I haven't worked with before.

So one of the first things I do is I invite them out to lunch. All right, so we can go talk and have a discussion on what's the expectations here? What's your expectations of me when you come to the job site? Which I know what they are. I mean, I've been in the industry a while.

It's job readiness, it's this, it's this, it's this. But I let them tell me what that is so I can make sure that's what it is. And then it gives me the opportunity to set expectations what I need. And what I found in doing that, once you go have that and you break bread with somebody and you discuss it, the tendency is that people tend to want to try to follow that a lot more. Right? Because now it's a known thing. And I look back and most of the times that I've been frustrated, it's because I've had an expectation that wasn't met that I didn't tell anyone about.

Right? It's, it's, that's a constant source of what will be frustration, undiscussed expectations. So anyway, that's just my two cents on it that, you know, I tried to give an example, I'll give one more example. Okay, step away from that is, I've learned, you know, when my boys and I take our trips, we'll take a trip every year of vacation, not to really have expectations as much as having hopes. You know, I hope that the weather's good, I hope that this is going to be fine.

I hope that, you know, this won't have an issue with this. But when I have an expectation, it's not met, I get mad. When I have a hope that's not met, I can put it in a different category. And I don't know if that makes any sense to anyone other than me. But I can have a lot of hopes for that week.

You know, and I pray a lot, God, I pray that these hopes come through. And a lot of times they do, or a lot of times replaces it with something else. But I don't have expectations on the kids, or I don't have expectations of timeframes. You know, other than the fact unless we have a game to go to, or something we have to be at, at a certain time, we get there when we get there.

You know, and that lack of expectation is very freeing and actually very healthy. Anyway, Robby, we believe you, Sparky. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Alan.

We appreciate that. So, Rodney, you have a clip you haven't used in a while from a movie. I mean, you haven't used in a while.

It's been quite a while since you've used this movie. Yeah, I'm back in the saddle again. You are.

Yeah, you are. The outlaw Josie Wales, man. Like you said earlier, how could one not think of this clip when you think of the expectations? I mean, isn't the first one to come to your mind? Andy, what are you laughing about? Huh?

He's still thinking about King David. What's that actually said? I don't think I remember hearing you say that. Did you actually say that?

You weren't listening. I think I did. Well, that's because that's you said, obviously, you said, obviously, obviously. Yeah, I did. Obviously you think of this clip.

Obviously, I did. Yeah. So, what you have here is the outlaw Josie Wales is on the run now.

They went to shoot all of his buddies and he escaped with the one guy that got shot in the back and they're on their way to go cross the river and they're running and they had already ducked one time and a bunch of soldiers passed them and they're here and they're about two hours ahead of them. So, they're coming up to this crossing and Granny Hawkins has an expectation. So, let's take a listen. Howdy.

Howdy there. Sim Costes is the name. Mr. We might give you a bit of ferry in business.

Oh, pleasure. You know, Bill Quantrill used this ferry all the time. A good friend of mine. What do you got over there? Just the store with Granny Hawkins up there.

I'll tell you what. We'll just all amble over to that store. Of course, him and me will ride because we're in touch with the cramp. Stranger, you're in luck.

I just happen to have the perfect thing here for a cramp. We'll need a half a side of bacon, 10 pounds of beef jerky, 20 pounds of horse grain and when we get over there, there won't be any need for you to go inside. You can just talk through the door to old Granny, tell her we need a lot of clean bandages to boil poultice for a boat long in a hurry.

Come on. So, you'll be doing well. How might you know that, Granny? Soldiers were here looking for you about two hours ago.

I was going to mention that to you as soon as I got the chance. They say you killed your own men. You lying blue scum bellies. They say you're a hard-put and desperate man, Josie Wells. They're gonna heal and hide you to a barn door. You know what I say? What's that? I say that big talk's worth a doodly squat. Now, them poultices are laced with feather moss and mustard root.

Mind you, drop water on them occasionally or it'll keep them down. It's obliged, Granny. You can find me when you see me again, Josie Wells. I reckon so. I reckon so. Yeah, I'm waiting on your explanation. All right, let's see if I can pull one out, right? Yeah, no, no. I know you've got this. Yeah, sorry about the throat.

That's all right. So what you have here is Josie Wells is showing up and Granny Hawkins hasn't seen him, doesn't know who he is, but has this expectation that he's coming. And that's where we have an expectation of who's coming in the second coming, that's Jesus Christ.

And so what you have here is Granny knows because of others that have went before him and talked about him so she could recognize him by what others said. And that's what we have to do is go out and talk to others about Christ and so that they can expect him and know when he comes and know who he is and actually live with him now even before he comes. But those things right there are setting expectations like we talked about. There's so many ways to set really poor expectations that can drive you to a place where I take no action. And the gospel is all about driving to action.

That's positive. That's talking about the second coming of Christ and what he's already done for you in his first coming. And when you, that's where I love this clip. So you've got, you know, Josie won't even say who he is to the first guy, right? Cause he knows that guy's already lying to him. He's like, he can see that that liar is going to be casting like a fire kind of thing where it's like, man, you're trying to blow smoke up, you know, over here to say, I'm really good. I'm the Bill contrail, that guy, whoever his name is, that was a guy who was a part of his gang back when they were fighting in the war. And he's just trying to say, I'm your friend. And then he's actually, you know, trying to sing, you know, Southern songs and all this stuff.

And boy, he flips side as soon as the union shows up behind him. Cause he's got enemies in front and he's behind same as what we have as Christians always that enemy's always there and always around us. So it's that constant. What do you expect? Oh, like we talked, I talked about last week, you expect tribulation that always leads into that hope. And the hope does not disappoint when you put hope in Christ and that I just love the way like week to week, sometimes the things just kind of flow, you know, even though I don't have a specific expectation that came to, they come to life over time, right? And you just over a while, you just kind of expect to really understand more and more and connect things that you've never connected before within Christ, within the Bible. And that's what I love about listening to Robby. I always explain they all what he's got the next connection on whatever book he's into.

Cause it's always something that's going to grow us and basically stretch us in a very good direction towards understanding Christ better. So you're the one, you're still the one Robby, you actually have our next clip and last, well, I wouldn't say that it was next. Okay. Yeah. It just may happen to be the last one.

It's all good. So we've used this clip on numerous occasions, but I couldn't help but think that, you know, I was just thinking about expectations that usually my expectation, if I get up every morning is everything's good. I'm going to know everything's fine.

It's going to be a good day. You know, I have that expectation, but, but sometimes disruption comes, right? And, and things like, Whoa, I didn't see that coming. And I didn't, Oh, didn't see that coming.

And I didn't see that coming. And my initial response to that is that idea that actually John Eldridge did a wonderful podcast on the idea that expectations lead or future resentments, which is talking about what you're talking about with your, and interestingly in the book of James, they actually speak to your vacation experience when they say, you know, don't say that tomorrow we're going to do this or that unless it's the Lord's will. Right. And, and so there's the idea of seeing that God's ultimately got the game plan here. And however, hope is a really good thing. And grace is a beautiful thing.

And faith is an amazing thing. So all those things play into it, but often like Jerry Maguire here, he's an agent at the beginning of this movie and he looks like he's a superstar and he's expecting that he's going to have a great day. And he's talking to a little boy that he thinks he believes that he's going to tell him his dad is a superhero, you know, able to take on anything, but his expectation gets blown away. And as a result, it breaks him out of his pose. And so just play the clip. I think it does a good job.

And lately it's getting worse. My agent, my agent. Oh, and I got to play this weekend, doc playing 65% of my games. I get a bonus.

I got to get the bonus. Okay. Jesse, okay. Jesse, take care of little guy.

Mr. Maguire. Yeah. This is his fourth concussion. Shouldn't somebody get him to stop? It would take a tank to stop your dad. It would take all five super trooper VR warriors to stop your dad, right? Right. Who would I become?

Just another shark in a suit. Yeah. He was disrupted by a little guy with a beep voice. And you know, I wonder if you look back in your own life at the points that, that wow, I didn't, I, I hadn't realized that I was so under sin that I was not aware of. I was in the middle of sin, right.

That I didn't realize that God needed to disrupt me totally. And so, you know, this morning Rodney and I were talking about that I was studying Nebuchadnezzar. And so, you know, the famous day that he woke up and he thought life was good, you know, you know, I'm going to have a good day ahead of me. I'm the king of the kings and, and you know, life's great.

I'm going to go up here and tell everybody how great I am. The next thing, you know, he's out eating grass and in the weeds, right? That, that he had his God that he had worshiped was Marduk, which was a bull, right? And so, God was going to show Nebuchadnezzar this really severe mercy of, oh, you think bulls have got it going on. Let's spend seven years experiencing it together.

And we're going to have a little dew of heaven on you, you know, things will be good. And Nebuchadnezzar, you know, he, he after seven years actually figures it out. Well, think about it. He gets disrupted and then all of a sudden he turns back to God and realizes that, wow, there is a God and it's not a bull, right?

It's, you know, and he's, he's got a whole lot going on. Well, I was thinking about, well, you know, in my own life, what were my Nebuchadnezzar moments? Like if you had the Nebuchadnezzar experience where you woke up eating grass when you thought you had this expectation, right?

And to me, pornography was along a line of those ways. I mean, it tremendously would disrupt my life every time it would come at me even. And the next thing I knew I was Nebuchadnezzar in the grass, right? And I didn't see that coming, but here it came. And then I had no control.

And there I was eating grass. And I started to think about how God put certain people, certain things in my life, you know, one of the, which was if, okay, you want to worship flesh, let me give you lymphoma so you can see what happens when you worship that. This will work out good for, you know? In other words, he was disrupting me along the way so that I would push into him.

And I would develop that relationship with him to where at some point in time, he could come in and actually talk me through, you know, Robby, I did pay for this deal. I really did, you know? And I really can help you whenever you decide you can't help yourself, you know? Like, whenever you decide that your bowl is not going to work out for you here, buddy, then I'm going to come through for you. And so I think it's really neat that our own expectations are sometimes used to help us as a severe mercy. It seems negative, but it's completely positive.

Yeah. When you go seven years, the first four or five, not as fun, but yeah, no, it's definitely, you know, disruptions play into because it's tight around our expectations, right? The disruption comes because we have expectations that something's going to be a certain way. And then it's not. And then you end up reeling, not knowing what to do. And hopefully you do turn and push into God, right?

Which is your best option. Anyway, it's good. Darren, glad to have you with us today. Okay. Okay. You don't have to talk if you don't want to. I had zero expectations of speaking tonight.

Well, that's fine. You know, you didn't you don't have to, but you can. I don't know what Rodney means. I feel like I just got a backhanded compliment.

You kind of did. We don't know half the time what Rodney means. Yeah. You just shake your head and say, huh? Yeah. Trying to be more like Jim. Yeah.

I got a ways to go. Sorry. Yeah. He's got a spreadsheet on it. It explains it though. I'm sure he has a spreadsheet so expectations.

I'm sure a long life have tripped you up from time to time as well. Regularly. Yeah. Literally in the last, I would say a couple of days ago, my son and I were talking about this exact thing about his expectations for his staff. He's a pastor of a growing church and my expectations for my customers, my business partners, my vendors, different things. And he said, dad, you know what? I'm going to try something different. I was listening to this podcast the other day and it was totally on the subject of get agreement, lose expectations. And so he was like, nah, it's really good. You should listen to it. And I was like, okay, great. Well, send me the link to it. Well, the expectation was that I would get the link.

It hasn't happened yet, but when I get it, I will listen to that though, because it has, I mean, just in the last week had a big kind of a come to Jesus moment with a really good friend because of my expectation for him and his expectations for me. And they weren't meeting each other's expectations. And so we had to sit down and just have a, it's just Monday morning before we got going, I just said, Hey, let's sit down and talk.

And so when you sit down in the barn or the shop or whatever, and you just have a talk with no expectations and then lay things out there with grace and mercy for one another, it's amazing how well the rest of the week goes. Yeah. Yeah. Misaligned expectations are horrible. You see it time and time again. You know looking back, just even the arguments I've heard over the last few months of people, you know, not agreeing, it's almost always been misaligned expectations almost every time, right? Unless someone just didn't do what they said, you know, and there was no missed expectations, just, I didn't do it, you know, which I guess is still a missed expectation technically, but yeah, I mean, that plays into it. So communication is key to helping that not happen.

And I always, I teach the scientific method as far as how to problem solve and actually build and develop leaders. And it's all around expectation. When you're in a company that just basically says one thing does another, everybody talks a good game, but everyone never lays anything out. So when something happens, you can look back and go, yeah, that's what we expected. But when you write down your expectations, say, this is exactly what I do expect on this occasion, because we had like, you can't go five minutes without another expectation and something, but you write it down on what you actually expect and you actually go do it and see if you actually get your expectation. A lot of times you don't. And that's where you start to get the learning. And that's when you can start to make adjustments to go, oh, I expect something.

Can I get my actual to line up with that expectation? See, you have this expectation that when we date a five minute you have this expectation that when we date a file, we, yeah, what is today? Robby, today's a year, not just a two digit, two digit works at 23. Okay. All right. Oh, two, two, eight.

You know, you got to love it. And so I owe to 28. You know, one of the things that I've noticed is that, that we expect other people to have our gifting.

Yeah. And that's one of our expectations is Rodney expects me to be gifted in structure. I would promise you the rest of us. The rest of us don't have that expectation. I had that. You corrected me, Robby.

I stand corrected. Well, real quick, I want to throw out a question there before we hear the music here in a few minutes, but about 30 seconds, we'll hear the music, but what expectation does God have of us? Ah, that's a good one to love each other. To love each other. To obey.

Oh, I like that one. What else? Aaron, what do you got? To believe what he said about you. Yeah.

Right. To believe him first and foremost, right? Above everything else.

What else? Love one another. Obey. Believe what he says about you. Believe what he says about others. Love him.

Yeah. Love him first. Zipper merge.

And zipper merge whenever possible. Harold, God's going to be talking to you about that one. Anyway, go to masculinejourney.org to register for the upcoming bootcamp. And if you want to know more about anything that we talk about, please reach out to us on social media or email us at our first name at masculinejourney.org. We'll talk with you next week. Have a wonderful week.