Hope’s Descent
What To Do When Your Hope Is Spent
“For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him.” Psalm 62:5
What do you do when you’ve turned your pockets inside out and all you find is lint and not the currency of hope and faith you need? This is a hard place to be and I’ve been there.
You know what I’m discovering about hope and faith as it relates to all that deeply concerns and matters to us? That our Heavenly Father doesn’t just want our faith, he also wants our questions. He doesn’t just want our hope, he also wants our doubts and sorrows.
If you grew up thinking that you needed to have “enough faith and hope” to stir God’s heart to action on your behalf, it can be really hard when you find both completely spent. It can keep you from coming to God until you feel like you have enough of whatever you think you need for him to hear your prayers, and finally just answer. But in coming when all is spent, I show with my actions, that I actually do believe that whatever I lack—be it hope, faith, strength—he can supply and that I can ask for what I don’t have within myself.
This life with God isn’t about having sufficient hope and faith within ourselves. And quite frankly, sometimes life is heartbreaking. Devastating, even. It’s an added emotional burden to tell someone to just hold on to faith and hope when their hands are bleeding, already broken from the fight. What that precious soul needs is to be comforted with the Christmas story. The story that Jesus wants to be in the heartache with us. Why? Because we are his and we matter to him.
I confess that I don’t remotely understand God’s ways about this. I mean, if I matter to you God, why allow this heartache and the things that have caused my loss of hope in the first place? Maybe you’ve told God something similar. Here’s the good news: his coming as a vulnerable baby, born into an occupied and oppressed nation, tells us that being fully in it with us matters greatly to him. It also tells us that his being with us is his chosen path—one more impactful than if he had just stayed in heaven and fixed everything remotely from up on high.
The enemy wants to use our loss of hope to keep us from God. He wants us to think that it’s all up to us to dredge up enough hope and faith because how else will God hear us? Don’t let the enemy keep you from Jesus because your hope is spent. Jesus wants to be with you in everything and he wants to supply you with the hope you need. His is a hope that descends to where we are—one that shifts things and paves the way towards better things, starting from the inside out.
Kemi