Ps. 33:17 The war horse is a false hope for salvation, and by its great might it cannot rescue.
Even as a Christian who was raised in the church, I cannot believe how many different “warhorses” I have looked to over the years in hopes of rescue. My warhorses are always linked to some type of circumstantial change—but they NEVER rescue me the way I expect. They are always a false hope. They let me down every time.
The Bible talks about hope IN God …
Psalm 39:7 "And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you.
… and hope FROM God.
Psalm 62:5 For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him.
And yet, I’m not sure even how to define this hope. I know that the Hebrew word for hope is also translated expectation. I get the idea of sitting in the middle of my struggle and looking longingly for rescue. But where do I expect this rescue to come? Part of my problem is that I often don’t know what rescue is supposed to look like. From past experience, I know that God’s choice of rescue is both unpredictable and consistently better than my visions of rescue, but I have no idea how to predict His mode of rescue for the future.
I am learning that only God can rescue and am aware of the futility of setting my expectations on anything or anyone else. I still don’t know exactly what rescue looks like. To summarize, I often don’t really know what I’m looking FOR, but I have to hang on to hope in Whom I am looking TO.
5 comments:
Hi Wendy, I am new reader to your blog and you came recommended by my new friend, Bina. Last night I was at a discipleship class and we were discussing reCreation and how the promises of God's kingdom being reestablished on Earth are our future hope. Anyway, here are some of the verses we discussed -
1 Peter 1:3
Hebrews 11:8-10, 11:39-12:2, 12:18, 12:22-29
Revelation 21:1-5, 22:1-5
I haven't ever thought of reCreation and those promises giving me hope in my present struggles, so it was a new and interesting idea for me.
Heather, that was good reading. Thanks for sharing.
The pertinent passage for me is Daniel 3:17-19. Daniel's friends expressed confidence that God was able to save them but also recognize that God might not save them.
Having recently finished Tom Wright's Surprised by Hope I have been thinking a lot about the promise of a new heaven and earth and the resurrection is the basis of our hope. We too often separate the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of our bodies from any sense of applied Christian ethics. Especially thanks to a combination of dualistic thought and the generally pernicious effect of dispensationalist eschatology we can have a weirdly off/on approach to hope.
I have felt often as though I'm in a sort of mid-life crisis. None of the things I wanted to do and be in my teens and twenties seemed to have come about. Some things, but not most things, and the more I have planned the more plans tend to fail. In his heart a man plans his course but the Lord directs his steps. Perhaps this is what the crux of all mid life crises is, that we begin to see how what we have planned God providentially thwarts because He is directing us down another path. Prov 16.9,19.21 & 21.30 all have the same import for me. It doesn't matter how great our goals and plans for our lives may be because God is able to redirect us despite our best plans and despite our belief that what we want is what He wants. We can even get passages in the Bible lined up to prove it. :)
The subject of warhorses could be a book Wendy. :)
Thanks for the reminder that God has already rescued us and He is or Hope.
I often hope with bitterness and resentment as I wait, instead of hoping with "anxious expectation." What He has said, that He will do--our hope is certain!
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