Meeting the Father in Unmet Expectations

April 19th, 2026 | Guest Teacher: Rick Dunn

Meeting the Father in Unmet Expectations | Exodus 6:2-8

There comes a point in every life with God where we run into the gap between what we expected Him to do and what He actually does. That gap can become a place of deep confusion, disappointment, and even disorientation. We pray, obey, seek counsel, try to be faithful, and yet instead of relief, things sometimes get harder. In those moments, it is not unusual to wonder: Is this what I signed up for?

That is where Moses found himself.

His story begins with extraordinary promise. Saved from death, drawn out of the water, marked by God’s providence from the beginning, Moses looked like a man whose life was headed somewhere significant. But the story did not unfold in a straight line. Anger, failure, exile, obscurity, and decades in the wilderness interrupted every expectation he may have carried about who he would become and how God would work.

So when God met him at the burning bush, Moses did not respond with eager confidence. He resisted. He questioned. He objected. “Who am I?” “Who are you?” “What if they don’t believe me?” “Just send somebody else.” Moses had not simply lost confidence in himself. He had lost his willingness to hope again. When expectations have been shattered, hope can feel dangerous.

And yet God did not respond to Moses by giving him a full explanation. He anchored him instead in something deeper: His own character and His own presence. Again and again, God directed Moses back to Himself. Not to a strategy. Not to an outcome. Not to reassurance that everything would immediately get better. He gave him the promise that matters most: I will be with you.

But then came the deeper shock. Moses obeyed, and things got worse.

Pharaoh did not soften. The oppression intensified. The people were not relieved; they were angered. Moses’ obedience collided with resistance, and in that collision he voiced the anguish many believers know well: Why have You brought trouble? Why did You send me? You have not rescued Your people at all.

This is one of the great mercies of Scripture—that it tells the truth about what it feels like to follow God in the middle of disappointment. Moses’ words are not polished. They are raw, honest, and hurting. And still, God meets him there.

In Exodus 6, the Lord responds not with shame, but with revelation. He reminds Moses of His name, His covenant, His faithfulness, and His promises. Seventeen times in those few verses, God says in effect: remember who I am. The answer to Moses’ unmet expectations is not that God has stopped being good. It is that Moses must learn to trust the goodness of God even when the story is painful and unresolved.

That same invitation comes to us.

The places where God has not met our expectations may become the very places where He restores our trust in Him. Not because pain is easy. Not because disappointment is small. But because God is doing something deeper than making our plans work. He is drawing us to Himself.

By the end of Moses’ life, the cry of his heart had changed. What mattered most was no longer success, clarity, or control. It was presence. If Your presence does not go with us, do not send us from here.

That is where disappointment, surrendered to God, can lead us—not away from Him, but into deeper worship, deeper dependence, and deeper rest.