God Among Us

Expectations can be both positive and negative forces. Exceeding expectations will likely allow us to feel satisfaction and have a reason for celebration. Failing to meet expectations brings a sense of longing for what “could have been” and makes us feel guilty or even worthless. This is true for anything on which we place our expectations or when expectations are placed on us. But what about our expectations of God? What expectations should we place on God? Should we place expectations on God? What happens when God does not “meet” our expectations? These are tricky ideas, perhaps even slippery slopes. Let’s look at what it means to have expectations about Him.

The ways in which we can accurately place expectations on God must originate from Scripture. This requires that we have a “high” view of God’s Word as the revealing of Himself to humanity. If we believe this, then the Bible must be our ultimate authority and source for our expectations of God. For example, in Exodus 34:6-7 God tells Moses about His character saying, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty” (ESV). From the words of God to Moses here, we see a powerful description of God’s character and how we can expect God to act. In this example, we can expect God to be slow to anger, love us loyally, and readily forgive our sins, but whose justice will not allow sin to go unpunished. When we root our expectations in Scripture, we have proper expectations, but what about when we misunderstand our own expectations about God?

We must be cautious when placing expectations on God. Yes, we have certain truths from Scripture that allow us to know God’s character and how He interacts with His creation. However, we should not place God in the proverbial “box,” confining Him only to what we know of Him and our expectations of Him. When we place God in a box, we will miss His voice and presence almost every time.

In fact, there is a glaring Scriptural example of this. When God sends His Son Jesus into the world to save us from sin, the Jews (God’s own people) as a whole cannot recognize that Jesus is the Word made flesh because they are so caught up in their own expectations of what the Messiah would look like. This is especially true for the Jewish religious leaders, with whom Jesus has many disputes over the course of the four Gospel accounts. From the beginning of the Gospel of John, we see how the Jewish leaders have placed certain expectations on God and His plan, thus creating one of the greatest tragedies in all of history— missing the fact that God was walking among them. We see this evident in John 1:19-23. A few men (likely sent from the Jewish leaders) are questioning John the Baptist about his ministry. They ask him a series of three questions: (1) Who are you? (2) Are you Elijah? (3) Are you the prophet? While these are legitimate questions based on Old Testament teachings about the Messiah, they still misunderstand. John answers all of their questions in the negative, saying that he is not (1) the Christ, (2) Elijah, nor (3) the Prophet. But why do they ask him these specific questions? Let’s look at their misunderstanding.

The Old Testament teaches of a Messiah that will be a conquering king from the line of David, who will liberate the people of Israel from oppression and establish an earthly kingdom. The Old Testament also teaches of a suffering servant who will suffer on behalf of the nation for their sins. The Jewish leaders, in their misunderstanding, came to think that there would be two messiahs because one person could not logically be both a conquering king and a suffering servant; they see the King and the Prophet as two different people. Of course, now we know that there is only one Messiah, but He will have two comings. The first was Jesus fulfilling the role of the suffering servant and dying for the sins of the world. The second will be Jesus returning as the King to rule.

So the Jewish leaders were already distorted when it came to Messianic teachings, but even when Jesus began His ministry, they still could not see how He was the Messiah. They frequently had heated debates with Jesus, trying to poke holes in His teachings. Jesus says He came to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of heaven and to seek out the lost. The Jewish leaders had made the mistake of inverting the creation story. Genesis tells us that God made us in His image. The Jewish leaders were making God in their image. They expected the Messiah to be like them, to match their mold, to fit in their box. So, when the Messiah was actually there, they missed Him.

The mistake of the Jewish leaders can teach us a valuable lesson: when we attempt to make God in our image, we will often miss Him. When we place our distorted expectations on God, not only will we be disappointed in the outcome, but we will also miss whatever God may be trying to show us in that moment. The Jewish leaders missed the fact that God was walking among them in human form! This is the very same God that had been promising for the entirety of their Scripture that He would send someone to save His people, and they missed it. This is a scary thought, right? So how do we avoid missing God? First, it is not possible for us to completely and perfectly understand God and His ways. That is just going to happen, but what we can do is strive to understand Him as well as we can, allowing our faith in Him to lead us.

We can actively try not to place misunderstood expectations on God, but the reality is that we do it anyway, even subconsciously. For example, two years ago I was able to go on a mission trip to Guatemala. In the seven short days I was there, I learned more than I ever had before about how “big” God was and how “small” my box for Him had been. Though I was unaware, I still had these misconceptions as if God was only working in my life and in the lives of those I knew (a silly thought, yes, I know). I realized I was missing out on the idea of how God is working in all of His creation, not just the parts that I can see. I can’t claim to have all of the answers on how to avoid placing such expectations on God. Sometimes it may just be a necessary step in our individual walks with Him that our eyes be opened a touch wider and our horizons slightly broadened. I do know that having faith and pursuing God will (at least) minimize our misconceptions and misunderstood expectations. After all, it is unreasonable to believe that we will perfectly know the omniscient and omnipotent Creator of the Universe. That is where our faith reaches beyond mere human understanding.