Hope in the Night (A 30-Day Reflection on Anxiety and Fear)

Fourth Night: Where Can the Living Hope Takes Me?

"Kings will be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers. They will bow down before you with their faces to the ground; they will lick the dust at your feet. Then you will know that I am the LORD; those who hope in me will not be disappointed."
- Isaiah 49:23

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Reflection:

Hope can take you a long way. Some of the Christian counselors determine someone who is struggling with emotional strongholds through their "hope meter". Because when you have lost your hope, you have lost everything. Hope is the belief that tomorrow will be better than today. King David, a man after God's own heart, knew about the power of hope when life looked hopeless.

You might have heard a song that was similar to the Psalm 42:1 with the words "As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for You, O God." Without reading further into the psalm, it sounds as if everything is okay with David. But it's not. He went on to the verse three saying, "My tears have been my food day and night."

Time will come when your tears becomes your food day and night. And when it happens, that means you are really suffering from hopelessness and despair. David wrote this psalm because he was depressed, and his soul was discouraged. And yet, he says he is going to remember the Lord.

"The Lord will command His lovingkindness," David writes in verse eight of the same Psalm. Though God has not done it yet, David has confidence that He will. So he talks to himself. He writes to himself and he journals about his faith in God. There are times when life crumbles around you, and your friends may not be nearby or they may be telling you the wrong things. These times you need to take it upon yourself to speak to yourself. Look at yourself in the mirror and speak God's truth. Write notes to yourself and leave them in places you will see them. Encourage yourself. This is what David did on several occasions.

He asks himself, "Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me?" He doesn't deny his pain or avoid it, rather he addresses it and tells himself what to do. "Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him, the help of my countenance and my God," he advised himself in verse eleven of Psalm 42.

What may changed David's feelings of hopelessness and discouragement? He looked in a different direction. He looked at what God was going to do, even though he couldn't see it at the time. In other words, he looked by faith.

The way to overcome the emotional stronghold of despair, depression, or hopelessness is to fast-forward through the tough times - the battle scenes, the drought - to the end. Look toward the place where you surrender your thoughts to the love, grace, and faithfulness of God.

When you do that, then the thing that is causing you to feel the way you do will no longer own you. Whatever is going wrong in your life will not have the last word.

Remember: Satan may have a word, the doctor may have a word, your job, friends or spouse may have a word, but God always has the final word.

I remember one more person in the Bible who felt deep depression as some of us felt during these times. In Lamentations 3, Jeremiah was nothing short of being depressed. He saw everything that had happened in Israel. He witnessed the injustice and the wrongdoings. He saw the wicked ways and the wrong ways of the people and how God was dealing with them.

But instead of wallowing in it, he remembered God. When he began to turn his thoughts toward the goodness of God - in spite of the fact that he couldn't see God's goodness at the moment - he started to feel differently about the mess he was in.

In fact, in verse 18 of Lamentation 3, Jeremiah lets us know that he has lost all hope. And yet we see his hope return when he returns his thoughts toward God. We read:

"Remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and bitterness. Surely my soul remembers and is bowed down within me. This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. The Lord's lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness. 'The Lord is my portion,' says my soul, 'Therefore I have hope in Him.'" (Lamentations 3:19-25)

God can take the mess you're in and make a miracle if you put your hope in Him. He promises that, "those who hope in me will not be disappointed" (Isaiah 49:23). A preacher once said, "God is able to turn things around so completely and satisfy you so fully that He will do more than merely bring you out of your emotional bondage. He can even cause you to forget how deep it ever was."

Your hopelessness may seem overwhelming, and you may even wonder how you could ever overcome it. But, if you will do as Abraham did - who hoped when he had none at all as what was stated in Romans 4:18 that "in hope against all hope he believed" - God will honor your trust. He can turn your emotional pain into victorious gain.

Continue fighting the good fight of faith. Do not lose hope in God. Because the power of hope is in God who fulfilled all His promises numerous times and will never change for eternity.

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Prayer:

Dear Father, thank You for reminding me that I am not alone in this battle. I praise You for Your goodness and Your faithfulness in my life. The power of that hope You gave me was enough to lift me up. Thank You for giving me the Lord Jesus Christ as my source of hope. May the power of hope reflect in me and shine upon others who seeks for it, and lead them to You. In Jesus Christ's Name, Amen.