When thinking today about the hope I’m supposed to have, I found this verse.
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.
The Bible uses the term hope differently than we often use it in English. 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? My problem has been first that I look to the wrong things for rescue and second I do not necessarily recognize rescue when it comes. From past experience, I know that God’s choice of rescue is both unpredictable and consistently better than my visions of rescue, but I cannot 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 my hope is that I do definitely know Who I’m looking TO. And that makes all the difference.
2 comments:
God finally has my attention, I've been a believer for 35 years and not until the past 5-7 years have I ran to God and His Word first, that I may know Him, and have stopped running to books, girlfriends, husband,although I still confide in my pastor/husband. Great post.
"My problem has been first that I look to the wrong things for rescue and second I do not necessarily recognize rescue when it comes."
This is great because I can TOTALLY resonate with it. We do not automatically turn to God when we get knocked down. I had a flat tire today & it took me a couple of minutes before I started talking to him about the problem (no cell phone, out in the country with no people around, no spare, etc...). Anyway, when I finally do remember I feel unfaithful when I ask for help, because that's exactly the FIRST thing I should have done.
I think that the reason why God is completely unpredictable is a function of Him wanting our trust. It's kind of like Him telling me "don't worry about WHAT I'm going to do, just trust me that I will help you through it." And when we can truly trust that, we can rest in it. And it's a honest trust. Because even though I don't have the foggiest notion of what He's going to do this time, I do know that He loves me & I do know that He's good and I do know that He cares about this situation & He will not give me more than I can handle (He will make up the difference). So, I don't know what exactly I'm looking for either, but it's kind of like an Easter Egg hunt to find the deliverence, isn't it? And when we finally see what it is, we realize it's just exactly what we needed (and we didn't even know it).
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