Where Do I Find Hope?
For the last few years, I’ve been praying for four specific situations and relationships, and to be honest, sometimes I feel like my prayers are useless. This person will never change. That situation will never shift in my favor. That answer remains elusive. At times, it feels utterly hopeless.
But over the last few years, God has been challenging my cynical spirit and inviting me to look at what His Word says about hope. Because when I think a situation or a person is beyond hope, it actually reveals my lack of faith.
Years ago, when I was knee deep in my depression, I came across Romans 15:13, “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.”
I was instantly convicted. I knew I was not overflowing with hope; in fact, I was quite the opposite. Bitterness, resentment, and cynicism were my constant companions, and they convinced me the world was on fire, and my future was grim.
GOD OF HOPE
I realized if God was my Father, and I was his child, then I had no business being hopeless. A child should reflect her Father, shouldn’t she? If so, then I, too, needed to reflect hope.
But how is that possible when you struggle with depression and the world is in constant chaos?
The secret, I discovered, is in knowing where to place your hope.
Do you put your hope in your finances? In your relationships? In your own intelligence? In your own strength? Turns out that’s a bad idea.
In Psalm 33:20, the Psalmist says, “We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield.” David reiterates this in Psalm 25:3, “No one whose hope is in you will ever be put to shame.” My hope needed to come from a source bigger than myself; it needed to be placed in a Heavenly Father who loves me and cares for me.
HOPE MATTERS
When I think of hope, I think of the story of Viktor Frankl - a Jewish psychiatrist. When the Nazis came to power, he spent three years in various concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and like many others, he lost most of his family in these camps. In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl shared his experiences as a prisoner and came to the conclusion that the difference, between those who survived the camps and those who didn’t, relied heavily on the way a prisoner envisioned his future.
Those who had lost hope for a brighter future were often the first to succumb to illness while those who dreamed of better days ahead were able to hang on. Their hope enabled them to survive their present circumstances. Often, we think it is our past that causes us depression, when the reality is, it’s our perception of the future which gives us a reason to get up in the morning.
As Christians, we have every reason to be filled with hope. Not because the world is ok – it really isn’t - but because God is with us, and our hope is in Him. As we enter this Advent season, I encourage you to consider where you are placing your hope. The world is indeed a dark place, and it needs those who are filled with the God of hope to be overflowing, so that Hope can reach into the darkest corners of the earth.
“We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.” Hebrews 6:19