When I was young, I couldn’t wait to grow up. My hopes were simple. Get married and have kids. I wasn’t thinking much beyond that, but I was young. A wonderful husband and three sons later, and my hopes were wrapped up in doing my best at parenting and hoping to survive it all. We had good kids, but that didn’t mean we really knew what we were doing. For the record, no one does. Kids don’t come with a “how-to” manual.
You could say that the Bible is our guide to parenting, and that’s true. But we have to know it well in order to apply it well. Even if we do our very best, we will still make our series of mistakes.
We hope our kids turn out well and follow the things we taught them. We hope they end up being good citizens and that they share our faith and values throughout their lives.
But life is more than getting married and raising kids.
As life moved on, my hopes included finding something to pursue in addition to the two most longed for dreams that I had been given. When the kids grew up, I needed a purpose. What had God created in advance for me to do?
It took years of trying my hand at all sorts of creative endeavors to find my niche. I say creative because that’s who I am at heart. Whatever God had for me in addition to being a wife and mom would be right brained, not left. I did not inherit the analytical genes that were no doubt somewhere in my heritage.
Eventually, I learned that I had a penchant for writing. I began to hope that one day I would learn to write novels that people might like to read.
The point is, our hopes in this life can shift and change. These were some of the big things I yearned for, but we all hope for many different things on any given day. We hope the weather is good, that the rains will come or won’t, that we will have food to eat or friends to share life with or a church where we can worship. We might hope for life, for someone to love us, for peace in a troubled world.
The list is endless.
But when it all comes down, it isn’t what we hope for, but who we hope in.
King David said in Psalm 25:4-5
“Show me your ways, Lord,
teach me your paths.
Guide me in your truth and teach me,
for you are God my Savior,
and my hope is in you all day long.”
The psalms are filled with prayers where the psalmists tell the Lord that they are placing their hopes in God. No one else can fulfill the desires of our hearts. Only God has the power to grant us the hope we need to live in this life now and when this life is over, in the one to come, with Him.
Romans 15:12-13 says,
“And again, Isaiah says,
“The Root of Jesse will spring up,
one who will arise to rule over the nations;
in him the Gentiles will hope.”
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
The God of the Bible is the God of hope. When we place our hope in Him, we find everything else we need.
We may or may not receive the things we want in this life. I hoped I would marry and have children and write books. And God kindly granted those longings. But there are many, many things I hope for, even now, that He has not yet granted. He may grant them one day in this life here. He may grant them in eternity when I see Him face to face. He may decide that my earthly hopes are not as good as the things He has planned for me. He alone knows.
But if I hope in myself to fulfill my own hopes and dreams, the results will never be as good as when I surrender to His will and put my hope in Him. He hasn’t failed me yet, and He never will.
What do you hope for?
Who do you hope in?
Which question is more important to you?
~Selah
