And I Praised God in Faith & It Ate Me!

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope - Romans 15:13

Now, I realize this doesn't directly relate to Jonah but ya know, Jonah once thought by being a pure Jew that God would bless his lil heart and instead that isn't what happend at all. He got (as my grandpa would say) 'et!

So this morning a nice note was awaiting me to read an article written by John Ortberg on "Hope Management."

Cool article. You'll find it in Christianity Today. But I needed more..."Lord! It's your boy John! Can you magnify and clarify please?"

Here is what I got.

Hope against hope – that is the call of every Christian on this journey in this earth. We have these great and precious promises and then we have...well, we have the promise of persecution and trial (2 Tim 3:12; John 16:33), but then there is this promise of hope thing.

Americans aren't tortured, imprisoned, or put into political exile. No, it's much more subtle, emotionally insidious and sure to kill the spirit just as if we were attacked physically.

No, we aren't persecuted (usually) overtly for claiming the name of Christ. Rather slowly we are being persuaded to lose hope in God. Is he trustworthy? Is he reliable? Will He honor the, "if two or more of you agree?"

The same bad science and the same feeble philosophy that has been circling for centuries has new voices and new delivery strategies today. To their redundant questions they answer for us, “No! The evidence is all around you Christian. The misery of the whole world demonstrates that He is not helping" (they say). At the same time, (though we cry otherwise) abundance and wealth lull us into a sense of satisfaction and contentment – not in God, but in the things themselves – to the point that we are tempted to rely on and put our confidence in them our ability to get stuff to respond to the need we have spiritually to have hope in that which we cannot produce. “God may not be there for me at retirement, but I sure hope my investments are.”

For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world— our faith 1 John 5:4

Jesus said that He has given us His words, which in Godspeak is HIMSELF (check out John 1 - if you got the words you got the relationship with "The God.") that we may have contentment of a type that has nothing to do with the elementary things that plauge us daily. "Though in the world we will have tribulation. “Be of good cheer,” he says, “for I have overcome the world” (John 16:33)

I could have this wrong but it seems to me that the trial of our faith, this idea of hoping against hope, is to believe and trust our Heavenly Father, our God, in the face of a whirlwind of subtle and non-confrontational opposition – that we may have peace. Since they typically don't hit us head-on the dowaggers of our faith are just this nagging voice in the wind (Oh wait! That's the TV or the Radio or the Movie Theater or Twitter, Blogs, Facebook, Yahoo News, CNN, MSNBC, etc.)

We absorb and then, left to our own thoughts and our own agendas, we seemingly face a pretty bleak future.

But...

our God knows this, and He gave us a Comforter, the Holy Spirit. We take comfort in knowing that by letting our requests be known to God, the peace that surpasses all understanding will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Phi 4:6-7). And having this peace, we rest assured that God will supply all of our needs according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus (Phi 4:19).

Where we are confused is we are sure this means perfect health, financial abundance, the job the great family, a lack of discomfort...but what about that tribulation thing?

Here is where I want you to get to, if just for today. I want you to get to these words, write them down (cut and paste is fine) and say them to yourself...preferably more than once.

I do not hold the future. I do not understand how to hold a future. I do know the one who holds it in the palm of His hand holds me also and He will do that which will spring up in me eternal life, His kind of life, and goodness and ministry and joy and I realize it may not at all look like anything the world calls good. That's ok. He does and I believe Him! He gives me my Kingdom of God, heavenly, eternal life kind of hope against which I surrender my earthy, worldly, see through a glass darkly limited and false hope - in Jesus Name!

Are any of you anxious? Are any concerned about an uncertain future in a cold and scary world? Hope management for you and I is an exchange program. We give up hope in things and in our ability to manipulate God to do what we think is best and He gives us eternity and an eternal perspective. It is not like anything we imagine.

You pray what I wrote and then you pray it again, and you expect our God to work and He will exchange a kind of lotto hope for more of His kind of life - Eternal!@ Let's remain...

InHISgrip,
~J~