Hope

I love the coming of spring. Mostly because I love to garden, to work in my yard, and to be outside. I wasn't born for Minnesota winters, they sort of come with the territory of following God's call and walking in obedience to His will. I would gladly exchange them for a tropical climate. With spring, of course, comes hope. but when spring seems to never come, when we get that feeling of hopelessness, it sometimes feels hard to hang on.

Other things trigger that hopelessness in us. Unexpected events, unanticipated issues which dampen hope. I have discovered a secret fact of life...things don't always work out. You make plans, you think you know what is happening, you have expectations, and then, it just doesn't happen. Things get in the way, people do things that cause you to have to change your plans, people actually disappoint you. They do. Really.

There is a lot of pop theology out there, one such stream says "trust in God and everything will always be fine." Back in the 70s it came in the form of "name it and claim it" The idea was, if you had enough faith, you could say what you wanted and it would happen. It was pretty disappointing for me though. I never did, it seems, have enough faith. Stuff just didn't happen. The result was self-condemnation. If only I was good enough, or had more faith, then my hopes would be met. The real problem, of course, was the focus of my hope. I never realized how self-absorbed it was. I wanted what I wanted, my hopes to be fulfilled, my expectations to be met, and God, it seems, was just someone to be used to provide those. 

Romans 5:1-4 (ESV) talks about hope this way: Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.

There are three things that stand out to me when I look at that verse. It says that because of the work of Jesus, we have peace, we stand in grace, and we rejoice in hope. The peace we have here is peace with God, an end to our prior stance of enmity, a position of reconciliation. Our past has been washed, covered over, made right; we have a new start! And through this peace, which comes from Jesus, we now have access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. Grace is this constant working of God in our lives that deals with today, keeps us on track with God, allows us to stand clean before God and in so doing allows us access to the power of the Holy Spirit for life today.

Because of all this, we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Note that the focus of our hope is on God and the revealing of his glory. It is a hope that reaches forward and says that he is in control, that he knows what he is doing, that he is being glorified by what is happening in my life right here, right now. 

I have faced deep disappointment, loss of hope, numbing despair. Dark, ugly, uncomfortable, unfriendly, lonely and barren. Which, it turns out, was a really really good thing. I actually got a blessing from the hand of God, its called "doubt." Doubt led me deeper in to try to understand why my petty faith didn't meet my expectations. And when I went deeper, I met God. In the midst of my hopelessness, I found Jesus. Somewhere in the midst of the blackness, God spoke to me and all he said was, "Paul, in the midst of your pain, I am holding your heart" It was enough. It gave me hope. Not hope in my expectations, not hope in my plans, not hope in my friends or work, or anything else. It was hope in God. I went through that darkness to the other side and found out that God can "make the Valley of Achor (pain) a door of hope" (Hoseah 2:15). I don't regret the journey.

So, I have hope. Not a petty, insignificant hope, not a fleeting expectation, but a solid trust in the glory of God that does not disappoint.

With you in the journey