I’ve had a word on my mind and heart lately. It’s almost taunted me, haunting my quiet moments, my favorite songs. It’s always there lingering, refusing to be ignored. I’ve wrestled with it in prayer and in my devotional times. HOPE....that’s my word. Hope is defined as a feeling or expectation of something to come, trusting in something. As a Christian term, it is required of the believer. It’s the confident expectation of God’s promises and his faithfulness. Hope has been hounding me. It’s mentioned in several of our current memory verses. It’s spoken several times in my boys' favorite playlist. It’s even the name of our new church. It’s everywhere. I want to think, and write, and be put together, with organized thoughts, but this one has me tied up in knots that I feel like need written before being fully understood so forgive me if I sound a little messy on this one.
For a while now God and I have talked it out and I feel like I can almost handle hope a little. I can trust in my Jesus. I expect His work in my life and even beyond this life. I can anticipate what God will do, wish and dream of it but, then we get christian on it and it also needs to be confident. I am not big on confidence. I am big on joy. I am huge on gratitude. Confidence and I though, we don’t really jive well. So how am I to combine this lackluster confidence I know with my hope? How can I be confident when it’s hard to hope? When the battles are fierce and families are at stake? There is so much in this world that is hard to hope in, the diseases, diagnoses, addictions, disappointments, frustrations. The ugly, the unknown, the lost, the broken, the lonely, I want to be certain in victory over all of this. I want to be sure that good will win and that joy absolutely will come in the morning but then there are the really long, really dark nights and I feel myself waver. I feel my hope weaken and I definitely don’t feel confident. Is my faith not strong enough, my prayers not righteous enough? I know that my God is more than enough but why can’t I feel that blessed, confident, certain assurance in my hopes? I feel held captive by it all and that is where I find the light leading me out of the darkness. It’s in those prison moments, the longest darkest nights, when it is so far beyond me to win or even fight, when my strength really isn't enough and I don't even feel like fighting, that is when HOPE shines the brightest.
I am in a season of complete unknown newness. I don't know the layout of the Walmart just a couple miles away. Where do they keep the horseradish and the mini chocolate chips? I celebrate every time I don't need the GPS to get me somewhere or to find my way home. I rejoice if I recognize a face in any crowd and when the dude from Garrett's taekwondo class spoke to me in the check out line, I wrote it on my gratitude list. I am completely out of my comfort zone every single day. I love to be in control and feel like I am strong and able and all this newness strips that feeling away. I have a deep need to feel known and accepted and loved and I find myself in a place where so very few know my name and almost none know my story. As if all of that isn't enough, I see so much hurt and heartache and struggle in the world around me. I know of too many families living in hard times. Hearts that are broken. Choices made that can't be unmade and the darkness of this world seems beyond what we can bear. That's the thing.....we can't bear it. There is no part of me or any of us, physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually that fix or manage the shattered parts of this world.
It’s an odd place to be as wife, mom, girl and it has moved me from a place of comfort to a place of transition, leaning hard on my God and trying to be hopeful and confident and all the good while I neither feel nor understand any of it. It’s a place of hope, believing in what I can’t see and don’t fully understand, hoping in the One who guides my steps and holds heart. It’s a level of trust and faith unlike anything I ever known and it has helped me see hope as more than a word but as more of a lifestyle. I can think of situations and circumstances of people I know who are living out their hope as well. Maybe they are hoping everyday for a cure, for an answer, for peace, or for heaven itself. Whatever it might be, they wake up and don’t know the answers, don’t know all the whys or where’s or how's but, and that’s a huge but, they know in whom they have believed. That’s HOPE. It’s the light in the deep darkness. It’s the next breath that you weren’t sure that you could take. It’s the next step down a road you don’t know if you want to travel down because you surely don't know where it leads. It’s the strength and faith to keep going when when we are so very unable on our own. As far as the confidence goes, the trick is where or whom we place it. I have very little self confidence in myself. I’m not a great cook, just good enough. My parenting style is “by the grace of God and the seat of my pants”, hardly confident. I’m getting older but not necessarily wiser. I am just me. All of those aspects have one thing in common...I. Thank Jesus that my confident hope is not in myself. It’s in Him! In 2 Corinthians Paul says, “Each time he said, “ My grace is all you need. My power works best In weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses so that the power of Christ can work through me”. Did you catch that? Boasting! Confidence worth bragging about!! Not in me or you or anyone but in our Creator and Savior and the great lover of our souls. The apostle Paul, the one who wrote a lot of the new testament and is credited for starting churches and sharing the gospel beyond borders, knew weakness and lack but he also knew that God shows up where we can not. In our less than, He is more than enough. He is where our confidence lies and lives and He is our hope in all things and at all times, even our weakest, ugliest, neediest unknown places. Those are the times and places where He does his best work. We can be confident because our hope is not in us.
Hope is so much more than a word in this life in between now and eternity. Hope is a believer's heart’s very beat here on this earth. It’s where my faith began, a hope in my creator and it’s where I look to when my eyes and heart can’t see the plan and it’s where my soul will one day find it’s rest. That is hope. Hope is heaven's home for us in the here and now and that is why I am confident and sure and full of HOPE.
Romans 15:13- “I pray that God, the source of HOPE, will fill you completely with JOY and PEACE because you TRUST in HIM. Then you will overflow with CONFIDENT HOPE through the power of the Holy Spirit”.....
Amen Friends.
