My expectations are this and only this: God will be faithful. People are people and are weak and fallen and fickle. I am one of those weak and fallen and fickle people. I should not expect from them what only God can do. I should not put my hope in people, because people won’t (and can’t ever) live up to such high expectations.
I can look in my own heart and see the condition of every human heart. We have such high ideals and such good intentions, but so often our feet stray from that path of good intentions and high ideals. We want to be good, but can’t. Only God can. Only Jesus can. And only Jesus in us can ever be good enough.
So I fix my eyes on Jesus. I pin my hopes on Him. I have high expectations that He will come through and do something magnificent with my life. I can’t help when my hopes get built up, but I can help where I take those hopes in prayer (thanks to a friend for that insight). I can help how I take those unfounded hopes captive and submit them to the authority and lordship of Jesus.
I would love to be married. I would love to have a girlfriend. Right now, I want good friendships with good conversations. But my hope is in God forming me into the right man to attract the right woman. My expectations are that Jesus will give me exactly what I need, will be exactly Who I need Him to be at all times, and will always do the very best for me.
I have to surrender my own expectations and hopes and dreams and trust that God has bigger expectations and hopes and dreams for me. Way bigger because He is way bigger, and His vision is so much more far-reaching than mine. Surrender is a hard, daily process, but Jesus is completely worth whatever effort, whatever blood, sweat, and tears it costs me. Even if it costs me my life, He is supremely worth it.
So I lay it all down in hopes of receiving a thousand times more both now and in eternity. And all that I laid down will seem so very small compared to all that I am gaining. If Jesus gave all for me, how can I hold onto anything and not give it back? Here, Lord, is all of me. Take it and break it and multiply it like the fishes and loaves and use it to bless the multitudes. Make my life a blessing to the world.
Amen and amen.
Ragamuffingospelfan's Blog 
Yes, our expectation should be that God will be faithful to us, but the qualifier is that He will be faithful according to His Will. He wants us to be happy, but we are not promised happiness all the days of our lives, even as Christians.
There also has to be an element of effort on our parts. Not to say that we “help” God, but we cannot sit on our duffs expecting God to just place everything in our laps. With faith there is works. Faith produces works which grows your faith producing more works, etc. And recall Hezekiah who while calling on God for forgiveness and salvation, strengthened his fortifications and built his underground tunnel to provide secure water for Jerusalem.
Sometimes God does “place” things in our laps, but I feel that it’s only after he’s worked on our hearts and we’ve made it clear that we’re not living with an expectation that anything we want will eventually land in our laps.
I met my wife when I wasn’t expecting her. I had sorta given up. I had come to a point where I was beginning to accept the idea of singleness and how I could be used of God and enjoy being single. I had gone thru a period of looking and dating. I had been quite an introvert. I had to break my introversion first. I had to accept the idea of failure, of rejection. Thru all of that, God was faithful as He worked on me. But, God was faithful on His terms and His will, not mine.