by Jacob Ninan
"Trust in the LORD and do good; Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness. Delight yourself in the LORD; And He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD, Trust also in Him, and He will do it" (Psa.37:3-5). 'LORD' here refers to Yahweh – our Creator, Provider and Sustainer. We can certainly trust Him with our entire life, and take great delight in knowing Him. But then, we must also respond by cultivating faithfulness, doing only good and committing all our ways to Him. It is then that He will be able to work out His plans fully in us.
But if we don't understand God or His ways properly, or if we are seeking our own will, we may end up with wrong expectations of what God will do for us. For example, if we expect that God will give us whatever we ask for, without knowing what He wants for us, we are going to be disappointed. It may be that we are just trying to be optimistic in expecting that God will make all things to work out good for us, while we don't seek to be pleasing to Him, and then we are disappointed when bad things come our way. It may also happen with people that we expect things that are unrealistic from them, and then again we get disappointed. For example, if we blindly believe that everyone will understand why we are doing everything and therefore appreciate what we do, it only shows that we don't have enough experience with people!
When we get disappointed like this, what do we generally do except to blame people or God for everything? If our disappointment is with God, we even think of giving up our faith! We may even overgeneralise our bad experiences and give up on life itself!
What we must not forget is that we are living in a fallen world. We ourselves have a fallen nature within us, and so does everyone else. Therefore, we have to the face the consequences. When we make mistakes there will be consequences, and when others do wrong we may also suffer from that. So many things have gone wrong because of the results of the sins of mankind from the time of creation, and we have to face those consequences in terms of sickness, pollution of air and water, chaotic weather, social injustice, etc. Don't we have to 'accept' the things that we cannot change even while we seek to do what we can from our side? In other words, we have to become more realistic about what is possible and not.
Unrealistic expectations from God
Psalm 23 is a favourite one for many Christians. But think of how we like to focus on having no want, green pastures and still waters! Then it seems to give a rosy picture of life! But the psalm also talks of the valley of the shadow of death and enemies. When it talks about restoring our soul, does it not assume that there will be times when we need to be restored? So, the psalm gives a realistic picture of the good, the bad and the ugly we will face in life!Projecting a rosy picture will draw more people, and so preachers present an offer of prosperity, health and an enjoyable life where Jesus will take away all problems. But sooner or later people will get disillusioned with this false offer. Then some may learn from God's word and become stronger, but some others may also fall away from the faith. Many among the people who have apparently come to Jesus looking for a good life have not even become children of God, because they were never told about repenting from sin and receiving Jesus as their Saviour and Lord.
Some Christians search the Bible to find promises to hold on to, while they neglect the commandments and instructions from the Lord. If we don't walk according to the instructions God has given us, how can we ever hope to receive what He has planned for us (Prov.4:11-13)? If we don't walk according to the wisdom God has shared with us, can we blame Him when things go wrong? But if we unrealistically think of God as being only forgiving and doing good, disappointment is what will await us.
God is absolutely blameless in every way (Psa.18:30). The more we get to know God, in all His power, knowledge, wisdom, love, righteousness, holiness, justice, etc., the more clearly we will see that He is always good and right in all that He does. We cannot always understand Him or His ways using only our limited brain, but then we can believe what He has revealed to us in His word. We need to take a clear position in our mind that whatever goes wrong, it is never God's fault. The fault may be in our lack of knowledge, our sins, someone else's sins, etc.
Unrealistic expectations from the Bible
We know that the Bible is not like other books written by different people, but one written by people who were inspired by the Holy Spirit to write down what He wanted to reveal to us. The words of the Bible are authentic, leading us to salvation and the knowledge of God. But some people go wrong even here, when they look at the words of the Bible in an unrealistic way.One common mistake is to assume that all that is written in the Bible is to be directly applied in one's life, instead of realising that large parts of the Bible are giving us a historical narrative to show us what God is like, how He deals with people, etc., and so not everything is to be applied directly. Also, the literary styles used by authors in different books are not all meant for literal application. If we don't recognise such aspects about the Bible and form expectations based on different verses taken out of context, we are going to be disappointed. At the same time, we must know when to take statements in the Bible as true, as when Jesus says that there is no other way to God except through Him (Jn.14:6), and when to take other statements in their context, as when the psalmist talks about fools saying there is no God (Psa.14:1). As an example of misinterpreting the Bible, look at the place where it says in a very colloquial language about all people going after Jesus which should not be taken as being accurate numerically (Matt.3:5). An example of hyperbole which Jesus used to make a point is where He said how difficult it was for people who trusted in their riches to enter the kingdom of God (Matt.19:24).
When we read the Bible, it is good for us to understand the context in which passages occur, and to think of who they were written for and what the author wanted them to understand in their situation. It will help us to understand if they are directly applicable for us to follow, or only meant to teach us some principles.
Unrealistic expectations from people
We get disappointed if we expected certain people to do something for us and they didn't! We may proclaim we are imperfect ourselves, but we may expect others to deal in a perfect manner towards. We want them to be merciful and forgive us when we do wrong, and not realise how difficult our behaviour has made things for them! A wife may expect her husband to be always occupied with showing her affection and helping her, and then she cannot bear with the fact that he has other things to do too! A husband imagines that his wife should appreciate the loving intention behind his actions, even though he is not making the effort to express his love to her in the way she understands! We may have helped someone at some time, and now we expect that they are bound by duty to help us, not able to understand the limitations they have in their circumstances. How much of our problems with other people come because we are not taking the time to think about their circumstances but thinking about what they ought to be doing for us!Conclusion
A part of our life-long growth in wisdom and understanding is to put away our unrealistic expectations, from God and people, and to learn to think more and more realistically. We have to learn to trust in God's goodness and wisdom even when we cannot understand what is going on, and to stop trusting our own opinions towards God and man (Prov.3:5-7). Problems will not entirely disappear, but we will learn how to deal with them better with the wisdom that comes from God.