Posted on by intentional4christ

The Blessing of Hope

Yesterday, I was feeling very sorry for myself… feeling like my life is not going the way I want it at all. As I reflected on my life choices over the past two years it felt like other people are living the life that should have been mine. I woke up today wanting to feel better so I reached for a devotional and found some encouragement, which I share with you today: the blessing of hope!

You see, we move so quickly through our daily lives, often thinking about the next “to do”, next deliverable or project or responsibility to be fulfilled. As has been my experience, living a fast paced life leaves little room for pause, rest, and connection with God or discovering Him in His word. This may lead to us detaching from those God-given longings, dreams and desires that He wants to fulfil in us. Or perhaps, the rhythms of our lives have been riddled with disappointment and delay that those godly things that once has roots in our heart seemed to have withered away.

Today, I share with you about “hope” and why this blessing of God is so important in our lives. First of, I call hope a blessing because it is fundamentally grounded in God Himself and in His word and not determined by what will or will not happen in our lives.

Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God! I will praise him again— my Savior and my God!

Psalm 42:11 NLT

God gives us the gift of hope so our minds and hearts can be anchored in the face of adversity. When life as we know it feels like its gone off its rails or we feel like we are like a ship gone adrift in the storms of life, hope anchors us and keeps us grounded and sane. It reminds us that there is something bigger to life than what is going on in our mind right now.

We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.

Hebrews 6:19a

Hope takes center stage and is forged through adversity (Romans 5:4); this is where we experience hope’s greatest work in keeping us focused on what is most important, God and His plans for us. Hope brings us back to the godly desires and fulfillments in our hearts and rekindles the spark in us. Hope is that “scent of water” that causes a dead stump of a tree whose roots have grown old in the soil to bud and put out branches again (Job 14:7-9). When our souls and minds are overwhelmed, hope leads us to the rock that is “higher than us”- to a place of safety so we are not stuck in the dark doldrums of despair (Psalm 61:2). Hope pulls us out of despair and leads us back to God’s plan for our lives which is always bright and future oriented.

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future…”

Jeremiah 29:11 NIV

So this all sounds great and promising but if you are like me, you are asking, “How can I access this hope now or whenever I am feeling like my world has come crushing down on me?” Famous for this lament, Prophet Jeremiah said,

I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss. Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: The faithful love of the LORD never ends! His mercies never cease. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The LORD is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!”

Lamentations 3:20-23 NLT/NIV

I encourage you to start with an honest throwback of when God has been faithful and his mercies has been available to you. Recollecting how far God has brought us brings a perspective shift: that what we are going through today is only a page, a scene in our story and not the entire story. Allow God’s spirit to illuminate to your mind the instances of His goodness and kindness towards you and with these instances in mind, dare to hope! Call out to God and He promises to incline His ear to us and lift us out of the miry clay (Psalms 40:2). “This I recall to my mind therefore I have hope!”

I also cannot stress enough the importance of taking times each day to step away and retreat from the grind of life to reflect and pray. We have an example in Jesus who did this very often while He walked the earth to be alone with Himself and with God. Incorporating rhythms of Sabbath-rest during our day helps us to purposefully connect to the desires God has placed in our hearts. It helps us to evaluate why we are busy in the first place and if our busyness is in line with the future and hope promised in God. It helps us to reflect on why we are feeling weary and tired in our minds and souls and gives us opportunity to observe God’s workings in our lives. You see, when we activate hope, we are looking future-forward to a bright hope for tomorrow, which is hard to do when you are feeling hopeless. What better way to envision that bright hope than during intentional moments of pause when you can listen for God’s whispers as they rekindle the flames of your heart’s desires and consequently refuel your dreams, hopes, and aspirations.

Now I will back track to something that caught my attention in the passage from Lamentations. it says: “The LORD is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!” When an inheritance is bequeath to another unless that person gives it away, it is theirs for as long as they live and as long as the inheritance remains. What a blessing to have God as our inheritance; that even on our darkest days, God is our portion- He is ours and we are His! We are never alone. He promises never to leave or turn his back on us and that is cause for hope!

So dear friend, I don’t know what you are going through but I want to leave you with this prayer:

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.

Romans 15:13 NLT

Yours Truly.

p. s. Adapted from and inspired by Colette Stewart’s ‘Rekindling hope in life’s fast lane’.

Posted on by intentional4christ

Religion vs Relationship

So two weeks ago, I had a conversation with my pastor that started with the statement “I am very angry with God”. And after about a 15- 20 minute rant about why I was angry, she prayed with me and I went on my rather morose way! And for the past two weeks I have been thinking, “well I put that out there, God and so now its your move” and for the past two weeks I have been wondering how both God and I will get past my confession and back into relationship. Yesterday as I was getting ready for church, I heard a sermon playing on the TV from a preacher I had never heard before and he started by saying, “people are the angriest they have ever been” and that piqued my interest and then God in his special way managed to speak to me through all my anger. So here is what I learned:

  • Lesson #1- Look underneath the anger
    • The preacher in a very dramatic reenactment described Naaman’s journey to healing from leprosy (2 Kings 5:1-8:15) . When Elisha had asked Naaman to get cleansed in the Jordan river his immediate reaction was anger. One would think that for someone who had travelled all the way for healing, he would have been more excited that he did not have to do something so arduous but no…Naaman turned away in anger. Now Naaman was a highly regarded and valiant soldier, a man’s man and his current state was a far cry from the success he had achieved in life. There was a great chasm between what Naaman’s expectations of the life of valiant soldier should look like and his current experience. And this chasm was filled with anger and rage. As the preacher said, success has a way of sedating us to think that we do not deserve any form of suffering and perhaps this was the state of mind of Naaman who expressed anger at the instructions to go and wash in the Jordan river. Two weeks ago, in unburdening about why I was so angry with God, I had shared with my pastor how I felt God could not be trusted. I was angry because I have spent a greater part of my life in service to God in one way or another and did not feel that God was treating me fairly with the adversity and unanswered prayers I have recently encountered. And guess what? I am not alone! Many Christians are asking God questions like, “why did I lose my loved one?” “why did I get Covid?” “why did you not prevent my marriage from falling apart?” “why didn’t the healing come when I prayed?”… and so on and so forth. As the preacher said so astutely, our everyday success has a way of sedating us into thinking that we do not deserve our suffering and the truth of that statement hit me hard. I have asked myself if my whole relationship with God had been built on the notion of reciprocity – that because of the things I have done in service of God that somehow I deserve God to give me everything I ask for. Two weeks ago, my pastor suggested that I reflect on what I have anchored my faith to- whether my faith and trust in God was tethered to the fact that my whole family has been serving Him faithfully and so felt like God owed us something for our service. I have spent the past few weeks thinking about this and have uncovered something really valuable which I share in lesson #2.
  • Lesson #2- What is your faith anchored to?
    • In exploring why I have been so angry, I have ruminated on what my trust is anchored in and came to the conclusion that my pastor was on to something. Over the years, I have built my faith and trust in Jesus based on the things He has done for me. The answered prayers for provision and providence, the many times of deliverance from accidents and ill health, the times I have experienced God’s grace have served to increase and grow my faith in God and in His abilities. However, my faith has not been anchored to more than that. For example, instead of building my faith around the fact that God is a healer which is His character, His essence, I have built faith around his acts of healing- so not on who He is, but what He does. And while God’s many acts helps to build faith, anchoring my faith on His actions alone is not a sustainable way to develop trust in a relationship. So in keeping with this example, during those times when God chooses not to heal me or my loved ones, my faith gets shaken because there is a gap between my expectations and my experience. In reality, whether or not God chooses to heal in a particular instance does not, and should not change the fact that He is a healer. In many ways, I have become like the Israelites of old who sought God for his mighty acts and so that was all God was to them. However, this was not the case with Moses. Even though Moses got introduced to God through his acts (the burning bush), he grew in relationship to the point where he knew God and communed with Him as friend with friend not because of what God could do, but because of who he is. Think about this:

He revealed his character to Moses and his deeds to the people of Israel (Psalm 103:7 NLT).

Psalm 103:7 NLT

So through all my anger, God managed to reach at the crux of what was bothering me and not only that, He has brought me into a place of deeper relationship with Him- just like He did for Naaman. When God got through to Naaman past all his anger, He not only brought healing to the leprosy but also healed his heart. This year I have experienced new dimensions of God and I find that the more I lean into it, the more it feels like my life is falling apart. And the more my life falls apart, the more it falls into place. So before I sign off, I leave you with this thought: Religion says God I did this so now it is your turn to do that but Relationship says God I trust you. so which one do you have? Religion or Relationship?

Yours Truly

P.s. here is the sermon I listened to: https://elevationchurch.org/sermons/the-cost-of-going-off/