Where is your HOPE?

What do you hope in?

I have talked with several people this month where this topic came up. All had different reasons for talking about it, including my own. I think we all talk about it.

The world’s social climate is a vast reason for thinking about it. So, are many many personal circumstances my friends and myself find ourselves in.

I write this from a Christian perspective, but I might surprise you with my personal answers. I do it at the risk of offending some because I do not subscribe to some common “church/Christian” theories.

If you are facing insurmountable life situations; gut-wrenching, heartbreaking … simple platitudes, maybe even some you have repeated to yourself, no longer seem to bring the hope and comfort they once did. And maybe, just maybe, your perspective has changed how you look at life and your faith.

I see and hear many say, just have faith and God will bring it about or He will answer.

I believe God can do anything. He is all-powerful.

Does the amount of faith I possess bring it about?

I think faith in God’s abilities is part of my faith.

But does my faith bring about my prayers and wishes?

I have lived long enough to see answers to prayers.

Guess what?

The answers are not always as I prayed! My faith did not bring about my wishes. God had the ability, but He didn’t. Plain and simple. Life did not progress as I prayed it could. Instead, it took twists and turns that were less desirable to me. Sometimes painful, if I am honest.

I’m going to steal one of my son’s lyrics here …

“There is NO faith in certainty!”

If I talk to God, who can do anything, and bring a request and believe I know what the outcome will be … where is my faith in that equation? To exercise faith, I do not know the outcome. I can’t give God suggestions or outcomes and expect him to perform them for me. That is not faith! That is treating God as “gifter of MY wishes”. If I am certain of the outcome, He will perform; that is not faith.

Do I know the outcome I would like? If course I do, but it is from my perspective. If I trust God to be God, I cannot pigeonhole him into my personal responses. My faith must allow him to be God. Trusting only He knows the right outcome.

So, where is my HOPE?

My hope is not in God’s answer. If it were, my hope would have been defeated and deflated many times in my life. I didn’t get the answer I hoped for.

My hope is that God will always be with me!

No matter the answer. No matter my broken heart. No matter my circumstances.

God is with me! And promises to stay with me, carry me, walk me through life!

That hope sustains me!

What more could I ask?

God, the holy one, the creator, the great I Am, the all powerful One promises me, a speck on the timeline of existence, that He will stay beside me and walk me through whatever life throws my way. Through the good and the horrible. Through moments of bliss and horror.

There is not a place life can take me that He will not be there to help me through, to comfort, guide me and carry me when necessary!

I put my hope in his mighty and strong arm being with me! Enveloping me!

Matthew 28:20 (amp)

Teaching them to observe everything that I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you all the days (perpetually, uniformly, and on every occasion), to the [very] close and consummation of the age. Amen (so let it be).

My faith and hope is not in the amount of faith I have, nor that God will answer the way I wish, nor do I have hope in my prayers! Although talking to God (prayer), is something Jesus taught us to do. How do you have a relationship without ever talking to the other person, in this case being?

My HOPE in this world is that God is WITH me!!

Where does your HOPE lie?

Praying in this tumultuous world we find ourselves, you will find hope! Not in your circumstances, but in the One who is with you!