One type of faith is faith in God’s promises for all believers at all times. We are always justified in expecting God to fulfill such promises. But there is another type of faith that causes many problems. It consists of expecting something from God that he has not promised for all believers, something which he is justified in giving or withholding.
Of course, when we ask for something from God that he has not promised for all believers we should still ask with faith that he will give it. But you might ask: “Sometimes our requests are not his will so how we can have faith that he will give something when we don’t know if it is his will?” The answer is that we can have faith like a child. When a trusting child asks their father for something that they think their father will think is good, then they believe that their father will give it because he is a good father. Likewise, as his child when we ask God for things that we believe he thinks are good, we believe he will give it. If he doesn’t provide it then we understand that there is a reason it didn’t happen. But that doesn’t mean we don’t trust him as a good father anymore. When a father does not give his daughter what she asked for does she stop trusting her father? The next time we ask we still expect him to provide for his child.
But when he doesn’t provide we might be tempted to respond by resenting God, especially when it was important to us. We forget that our Father never absolutely promised what we asked for. We might even forget that we cannot escape suffering in this age just by asking God to provide only blessings. We forget that there could be several other reasons God did not deliver what we asked for. Thus, many become disillusioned with God when their false expectations are not met and some end up leaving their Christian fellowship.
The classic example is the faithful follower who goes through a tragedy and then gets mad at God and stops following him. Usually, they were expecting God to protect them from suffering even though God never promised to protect his followers from suffering. Maybe they read some passages from the a Psalm about God protecting the Psalmist, forgetting that the Psalm does not apply to all believers in all times. Bad things must happen to believers in this age; Jesus is our model.
Thus, many become disillusioned with God when their false expectations are not met and some end up leaving their Christian fellowship.
We find another example of this in the book of James where the author criticizes Christian entrepreneurs who launch a venture thinking that they will “carry on business and make money” (James 4:13, NIV). James points out that these were false expectations. We need to admit that we do not know God’s will for many things. James teaches that we “ought to say ““If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that”” (James 4:15, NIV).
Even the Apostle Paul did not know what was going to happen to him. He says: “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair” (2 Cor. 4:8, ESV). He was perplexed but that did not change his faith. Unexpected disappointments and suffering are part of our lives. We respond to them by comforting each other as well as praying, with faith, for deliverance, but deliverance from disappointments and suffering is not a universal promise to believers.
Thus, we need to carefully examine Scripture and carefully examine our expectations of God and see if they match up. Only the proper expectations that should be embedded in our hearts. Again, absorbing Scripture is the most important practice for maturity.
