Thursday, December 1, 2022
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. Romans 15:13
Hoping for Something Better
There is nothing louder than the silence of heaven when you are out of hope. At times when we need it the most, it can seem like God is not hearing our prayers, seeing our circumstances, or caring at all about what is happening in our life. Hopelessness can bring us further down and farther away than anything else as it rolls right into despair.
When we look to this world to give us what we need, and it does not deliver, it makes us feel hopeless. People we trust betray us and break our hearts. Jobs we depend on go away. Parents that are supposed to meet our needs as children fail us. Friends do not come through when we need them the most. This world is broken and the only thing we can ever depend on from this world is broken hope. It will not deliver. It will disappoint. Yet we continue
Thankfully we have a true hope – a delivered hope – in Jesus Christ. He was the Promised Hope who became the Delivered Hope – a Rescuer for mankind. A Savior – born to die – saving us by becoming the perfect sacrifice through His death and resurrection. That night when the shepherds were watching their flocks, maybe the silence of heaven was deafening to a world that had been waiting a long time for the promised Messiah. Then the heavens were lit up with a whole heavenly host declaring His arrival. Hope delivered.
There is a Rescuer. He comes for us in our hopelessness, but He does not necessarily rescue us from our circumstances. In fact, He rarely rescues us from our circumstances. He comes for something much more important - to rescue our hearts. He rescues our hearts from hopelessness, despair, brokenness, and restores us. He restores hope, faith, and heals what is broken in us. He heals the wounds of this world. These hardships draw us to Him and cause us to seek Him more. The circumstances that He does not rescue us from may be exactly where He wants us for a specific reason. This does not apply to a situation where you (or anyone you are responsible for) may be in danger. God never wants His children to be abused.
We cannot hope in this world, but we can hope in the Lord. We should hope not for “something” to change, but rather for our hearts to be changed by Him. We focus so much on trying to change our circumstances, but Jesus is much more interested in our hearts. When our hearts and our hope is anchored in Him, our circumstances cannot steal our hope away. It is hard – much easier said than done. Our circumstances can be crushing. That crushing can be much stronger than the fight we have left in us if our hope is broken. That is why it is so important for our hope to be rooted in the right place. The deep-rooted longing of every human heart can only be satisfied by our God who created us and came to us. He is the One we are truly longing for.
Because of Jesus, our Savior, we can live in hope from Him even in the midst of the most difficult and painful circumstances. He will be with us and will use these times in our life to grow our faith and relationship with Him. Even when our circumstances don’t turn out the way we want them to, we can trust Him and believe in His promises. All of our life – good and bad – will be used for His glory as our story unfolds. We may not understand it and we may even question God – and He can handle that. But we can still have hope that does not waver as we trust and believe in our Rescuer, Redeemer, Savior, - our only Hope.
