Hope.
This word has been plaguing my mind. What does it mean to hope? Where does hope come from? How does one "have hope"?
You see, for me, "hope" has never been a concept I understood.
I've always known "hope" as a wishing, a longing, a desperate cry of the heart for things to be different better than they are now.
I spent the majority of my childhood hoping that…
…my dad would come home before bedtime
…my dad wouldn't have left
…my dad would call when he said he would
…he would show up when he was supposed to
…he would show an interest in knowing who I was
…my dad would love me as a little girl deserved to be loved.
I hoped and prayed and yearned for these things only be to let down, disappointed one more time. So I made a pact with myself to stop having expecting anything to get better so that I could never be disappointed again.
And at 17-years-old, I stopped talking to my dad…and I stopped hoping.
But there's something that happens when someone stops hoping; it's as if the soul withers, wilts like a flower in the heat of the sun and no water in sight.
I had stopped hoping for my father to change, but I'd also stopped hoping that life would be enjoyable, stopped hoping that the pain would go away.
Instead of hoping, I began asking God to end my life so that my misery might end as well.
But you see, in God's infinite goodness, He wouldn't give me what He wanted,
but instead gave me what I needed.
And what did I need? Well, of course, I needed hope.
So a year after I'd stopped hoping, I found myself surrendering my life over to God, and I slowly began to look at the future as something worth sticking around for.
It seems as though my entire five-year relationship with God has been a constant relearning of what everything means. God spent years working on the meaning of love (in all its forms) and what relationship between Him and I and me and other people should look like. And though I know that God isn't done with me there, yet, it seems to be that He has refocused His attention on working on hope in my life.
Today I stood with my heart exposed before the Lord and I realized that my faith is weak and I am so terribly afraid to hope.
I'm afraid to hope that…
…the support for the World Race will come in
…I'll be able to somehow afford all the extra gear
…I'll FINALLY get to go overseas
…the Lord has a plan to use me in the lives I come into contact with.
I'm afraid to hope in the faithfulness of my Heavenly Father.
I'm so afraid to hope that for the past several weeks, I've stopped myself with fundraising before I even start doing anything. If I don't try, then I can't fail, right? At least, that's what Satan desperately wants me to believe.
But then the Lord reminded me of this verse…
Hebrews 6:19 – "We have this hope [eternal salvation] as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure."
This verse is one of the most famous within the Bible, but today I continued to read beyond that; and I think there is the really important part.
"…It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf." – Hebrews 6:19b – 20 (NIV)
You see, I may still be learning to hope, but it's not MY OWN hope that matters. The hope I get to rest in is the hope THE LORD provides through the death of Christ as payment for my sins. And that hope is greater and stronger than any hope I can muster within myself.
God sees me as His beloved daughter, and looks down upon me with a smile on His face. My Father was faithful enough to provide eternal salvation for me, to create an opportunity for me to be able to be in relationship with Him.
And if He is faithful enough to do all of that, then I'll rest in that hope with the confidence that He will continue to be faithful through everything else.
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