God is often misunderstood and misinterpreted by people. He is good, merciful, patient and kind, yet His attributes are often misunderstood, even by the very people who carry His name.
Yes, even Christians have wrong ideas about God.
Some of these wrong ideas stem from Biblical truths. For example, when God's loving nature is misunderstood and wrongly applied, we will think that He hates us when we don't get what we want even after praying for it.
We ignore the fact and truth that God will not give us what we pray for if what we are praying for is wrong. James 4:3 tells us,
"You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures."
God's loving nature, and many other Biblical truths, are often misinterpreted when we mix our selfish and fleshly ideas with them. Doing this is wrong and causes us to have wrong expectations and ideas about God.
Wrong expectations
Our ideas and knowledge of a person help shape our expectations of that person. And so, how we know God will determine what we expect from Him.
In this article we'll talk about a few common wrong expectations we can have of God. These expectations all come from a wrong knowledge of Him.
This is written in the hope that, as we look at our expectations, we will come to realize if we truly know Him. If we don't then we should seek to know Him.
Three wrong expectations that some Christians have about God
1) That God's grace is always available -- but only for Christians
We Christians can be so selfish. We praise and thank God for pouring His grace on us, while denying that same grace to others who are in sin.
The Bible tells us that God wants all men to be saved (see 1 Timothy 2:4). Because of our selfishness, however, we tend to think that we deserve God's grace while the "wicked" do not.
No one deserves grace. Not even the most gentle and kind among us.
2) That God will always give us our heart's desires -- unconditionally
Many Christians twist Psalm 37:4 and fail to see what it really means:
"Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart."
Many Christians focus on the "He shall give you the desires of your heart" promise, while ignoring the condition required, to "delight yourself in the Lord."
They believe that God will grant their heart's desires and treat Him like a genie or some rich guy who will just give money and possessions unconditionally. This is wrong.
We must first delight ourselves in God. We must find our happiness and satisfaction in Him alone, not in any other person or thing. When He is our delight and joy, He will give our hearts' desires: Himself!
Again, God will not give us what we pray for if what we are praying for is wrong. We can't expect Him to give our heart's desires if what we desire is not in line with His will for us.
3) That because God loves all men, all will be saved -- repentant believer or not
This is a very sad reality among even Christians who don't understand salvation.
There are those who think that because God is loving and has sent His one and only begotten Son to do the work of salvation, all men are automatically saved and will go to heaven when they die, whether they are Christian or not.
This is a big, fat lie coming from the father of lies himself.
John chapter 3 verses 16 and 18 gives us the sobering truth about this:
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life ... He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God."
It can't be any clearer than that.
Those who believe in Christ must repent of their sins and follow Him as their Lord and Savior. Those who won't believe won't.
The result? Those who believe will be saved and those who won't believe won't be saved, period. There's no other way to be saved. That's why we all need to do our best as believers to share the life-saving Gospel with those who don't yet know the Lord.
