Marital Conflicts
Let me distinguish between the issue of expectation and desire for a moment. There is nothing wrong with desiring God to do something for you. Of course God commands us to pray for those things that we need and we should certainly desire for God to answer your prayers. I have many desires for my children. I desire them to be obedient but I must make the distinction of my desire for their obedience and my expectation of obedience. God desires us to be obedient but He doesn’t expect it. Does that shock you? We know God doesn’t expect us to always be obedient because Jesus was slain before the foundations of the world. God fully expected mankind to sin, though He desires to have fellowship with us. God even expects Christians to sin, In 1 John 1:9 it doesn’t say, “if you sin”, it says, “if you confess your sin”. Sin is expected confession is desired. God has a desire for you to choose to walk with Him and yet has made a provision for the fact that you are a sinner. This frees Him from utter disappointment in us. God has never been disappointed in you when you sin, He of course is disappointed for us because He knows the consequences of sin. God hates His children to be hurt and thus desires us to do right and avoid the pain of sin. I have to make the same distinction in those I love. I desire my children to do right but if they don’t I must understand that they are sinners just like me. I cannot have the unscriptural expectation that they will never sin since that will only cause me to be under a curse myself.
Cain’s expectation that God would accept his sacrifice was broken and the results were catastrophic. The first response to his broken expectation was that, “Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.” Here we see the source for most anger is our own broken expectations. I want to be very clear on the fact that anger is not something that is done to you, or imposed on you, it is something that you choose. No one can in fact “make you angry”. Someone may do a very good job of provoking you but you choose if you will be angry or not and most often the issue of anger is because we have put an expectation on someone and when they failed we responded just like Cain, we become wroth and our countenance falls. There is much to say about the topic of anger but we will deal with it in more detail at another time.
God seeks to correct Cain after this for his wrong expectations and anger but it is to no avail since he has determined that he has been wronged and must now seek retribution. Thus we see Cain talking to Able in the field and you know that “Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.” Here the issues of resentment, bitterness and vengeance collide with an unforgiving spirit and the consequence is fatal. In verse 9, Cain enters the stage of denial as he cannot bring himself to admit even now that he was wrong and thus God passes judgment on him in verses 10-12. God was merciful to Cain even in judgment, what he deserved was death for his murder but God allowed him to live. In the face of God’s mercy however, Cain was ungrateful and said, “My punishment is greater than I can bear.” Cain then steps down into what I see as a depression in verse 14 by his constant reference to himself. Depressed people are incredibly self focused. “Thou hast driven me out”, “shall I be hid”, “I shall be a fugitive”, “every one that findeth me shall slay me”. I, I, I, me, me, me. That is the definitive mark of a depressed person but unfortunately that is not the end of this downfall, in verse 16 it tells us that “Cain went out from the presence of the LORD. That is the ultimate end, unforgiveness takes a person away from the presence of God if they continue to harbor it, just as the man I mentioned to open this article.
