When Hope Feels Like a 4-Letter Word

Sometimes I have felt like hope is a 4-letter word.  You know, the bad kind of word.

This is exactly how I was feeling at the end of 2008.  I felt like I looked into my future and saw a gray flatland.  No hill of hope.  No mountain of possibility.  Nothing.

I got to that broken and dismal place because I was tired.  I was so weary of hoping that God would fulfill certain promises to us.  I was longing for Him to bring breakthrough in ministry.  I was sad.  Everything I “thought” was going to happen had not.  I felt like I must not know how to hear God, because so far I had been wrong.  About everything.

I remember praying, “Lord, just show me what You want for us.  I surrender all of my plans for Yours.  Please just make Your will clear.”

Doesn’t that sound like a good prayer?  Little did I know God was about to reveal a motive behind that prayer that made it far more broken than it sounded.

See, I didn’t want to hope anymore.  I wanted God to just give me the answers I wanted.  The answers I was demanding.  If He would just tell me what He wanted, I would get on board with that.  If I could understand what He was doing, then I would be guaranteed fulfillment because I would be wanting what He wanted for me!  My hope wouldn’t be deferred any longer. 

I was operating in a mode that I think most people do:  self protection.   We try to protect ourselves from pain and loss.  And I was trying to do that with the Lord.  I was guarding myself against more disappointment and discouragement by wanting guarantees. 

But that’s the problem with hope, and ultimately, faith.  It requires us to trust, to jump in with both feet, without getting the whole picture.  To know in part, but believe in full that God is in control and that, no matter what I face, He’s got me in His hand.

Despite my broken motives, the Lord began to answer that prayer, but not in the way that I wanted.  He began to whisper a dream to both Craig and me that is exciting.  That is so much bigger than we are, it’s not even funny.  When He first spoke it to us, I literally thought it must’ve been my imagination.  And God asked Craig and me to dream about what He was saying.  To own this dream as our own.  To pray for it, guard it, believe Him for big things.  It was the first time in a long time that I could see a "hill of hope" on the landscape of our lives.

But I thought knowing what the Lord wanted in a specific way would make things easier on me, because I would have a measure of control. (Any other control freaks out there?)   Instead, the Lord gave us a dream, and I want it.  Badly.  And nothing in my life has ever required more hope in God to fulfill or faith to believe that He will bring it to pass.  Where my prayer had been designed to short-circuit the process to get me straight to an answer, God decided to give me an answer that would require us to rely even more on Him.

God answered my prayer – on His terms.  He gave us a glimpse of something bigger that He is doing in our lives.  But it has not yet come to pass.  It has stretched our faith.  It has made hope seem like a precious gift and not a curse.

“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

This verse revolutionized my understanding of hope.  I was feeling so full of angst because of this long season of waiting.  But I was so discouraged, because my hope was in the answers I was looking so hard to find.  God is the source of hope.  I don’t hope in the dreams or promises He’s given or in the timing in which I think they should be fulfilled.  My hope MUST be in HIM.  And as I trust Him, I am filled with joy and peace.  What a miracle! 

Look at the end of that verse.  As we learn to trust in God, He gives us joy and peace and THEN we overflow with hope – and not just hope, but confident hope!  Not just a little bit of hope, but an fullness of assurance that spills over in every area of our lives!  What a promise!  What a gift!

When we are walking in human hope, we will be disappointed.  When we try to convince ourselves to “just hang on”, we will grow in our discouragement.  But the Source of all hope is ready to give us hope as we trust Him.  And we can’t muster overflowing, confident hope on our own.  It is a work of the Holy Spirit in our lives!

There are still days when I struggle with hope, especially as the years pass by, and we still haven't seen this dream come to pass.  And on those days, I am learning to bring all of my weariness and confusion to the true Source of all hope.  He will give us confident hope.  And the beauty is, when we need it again tomorrow, or when the dark moments come, He will give it to us again and again.