Monday, November 29, 2021
The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. Deuteronomy 29:29
Hope Is Born From Faith
The advent season has begun and yesterday in church we lit the hope candle. Hope is something we have all been on a daily search for the last two years, regardless of our religion. Hope is something that everyone understands at the base level. A Christian, in a growing relationship with God, understands exactly what true, deep, hope is. Of course, understanding what hope means is different than living with hope. We cannot live with hope if we don’t have faith.
Pastor Sam preached a wonderful sermon about faith in times of not having any answers. He told about how Moses’ last words to the Children of Israel before he died were about the choice they make to obey or not, and how it will set the trajectory for the future of their nation. He was making the point that they don’t know some things, and they are not supposed to. Those “secret things” are only for God to know. Their job, and ours, is to obey and trust God. We know we can trust Him because He has been faithful, both to those who have gone before us, and to us as well. We so often forget the things He has done and instead focus on what we want Him to do that He has not done yet.
We do want to know the “secret things.” We want to know why, how long, when, who, which direction, what should I do, etc. Sometimes we get clear answers from Him and sometimes we don’t. When we don’t, we really do already have the answer already, and that is simply to obey and trust – and give it to God because it belongs to Him, not us. It is hard not to lose hope in difficult circumstances when you feel hopeless, forgotten, unworthy, and most of all tired. Satan loves to speak lies into our heads about the “secret things.” Instead of believing those lies, we need to embrace the peace of laying it in our Father’s hands and letting Him deal with all.
We can’t figure out the “secret things” anyway. Part of what makes us so tired is that we exhaust ourselves searching and rearranging and trying to fix it all when we don’t need to do that because He does it for us. We don’t need all the answers. We need all the faith in a God who has all the answers.
Faith in a God who knows the “secret things” produces hope because there is nothing in this life that brings hope. We measure hope sometimes by the world’s standards and by our own circumstances. We seek hope in trying to solve our own problems. This world steals hope. Circumstances crush hope. True hope is born out of faith in a God that is the only one that can fix anything. He holds our “secret things” and takes care of them, then reveals them to us when the time is right - and that may be never this side of heaven. Faith in a trustworthy, promise keeping God gives us the hope we need to trust Him with the “secret things,” and continue in obedience.
…the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. Romans 8:18
