Archive for Hope
Hope Against Hope
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Hopelessness leaves a man or woman frozen in despair.
Why You Must Go Back
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God’s ways are mysterious, beyond my understanding and often seem downright contradictory. While in my humanity, I prefer to think in straight lines which lend themselves to defining a goal as completed, a task marked off, I find that God’s ways are usually not pictured best by straight lines. They are paths which appear, at times, intertwined, difficult to map out, going forward, then backward, orbiting around a center, and often perplexing my human mind. The longer I walk with God, the more clearly I see that He is truly not confined to my limited understanding. He is working, often His deepest purposes in me, when I am clueless.
This week, I was meditating on two of the seemingly contradictory ways of God. In the next few days, I want to explore these two thoughts:
1. You must go back.
2. You can never go back.
Huh? Sounds confusing? I hope you are intrigued sufficiently to continue reading for both statements are true and I am not being ambivalent. There are times in life when you must absolutely go back. You must go back, as it were, in your mind, your emotions, your relationships, to moments of the past and experience the moments again. There are some very important reasons for us to go back. And in other ways, we must never go back and in fact, cannot do so, but that is for another day this week.
In the Face of Shame
Posted by: | CommentsHave you ever felt ashamed of something you did? Have you ever been embarrassed to look people in the eyes?
On Sunday I began to ponder the effects of shame. I was praying for a beautiful young woman whom I had not seen in a couple of years. The last time I saw her, she asked for prayer because of her marital situation. I had counseled with her, prayed with her and had given her a book as a resource. And here she was again, having a hard time looking into my eyes. The longer I spoke with her, the more obvious it was that she was very ashamed. I knew something of her story. An abusive husband whom she just literally caught in the act of being unfaithful. Not a new story with her. As she cried to me for help, she said, “I don’t want to leave him.” My heart was heavy for her. How I wished I could have taken her troubles away! I wished I could have made her marriage whole. But deep within, I knew that aside from a work of the Spirit of God, things were not going to change in this marriage. She was going to continue to be beaten and betrayed. If she continued to be a prisoner of her shame, she was never going to take the steps she needed to in order to experience acceptance and freedom.
The Door of Hope
Posted by: | CommentsThe Old Testament contains the story of Hosea and Gomer. Hosea was God’s servant who God told to marry Gomer, a prostitute. As the story unfolds, we find God describing His people and their unfaithfulness to Him. Then we find a beautiful expression of God’s intentions for His beloved, unfaithful people. We find God’s intentions for us. His intentions for me. His intentions for you. We find a promise so amazing that we can hardly understand.
Therefore, behold, I will allure her, Will bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfort to her.
I will give her her vineyards from there, And the
She shall sing there,
As in the days of her youth…
I will allure her.
God allures me, his unfaithful one.
I will bring her into the wilderness.
Into the wilderness. He allures me into the wilderness.
A lonely place. A place of confusion. A place of lack. Dry. Deserted. Foreign.
And then…
I will speak comfort to her.
God, you are so confusing! You lead me into a painful place and then you comfort me?
I will give her her vineyards from there.
What? You want to give me fruitfulness from my place of desolation?
And the
