And now we have run into his heart to hide ourselves in his faithfulness. This is where we find his strength and comfort, for he empowers us to seize what has already been established ahead of time — an unshakeable hope!
Woman of Hope – Part 4
Go to PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3
Brené Brown says that “hope is 100% teachable.”
Sarah learned hope through the things she struggled while waiting for the child God had promised her. (Abraham's and her story can be found in Genesis 13-18). It was a very expensive lesson for her heart and family, not to mention for the son of her servant had, for her servant… Our actions always have a ripple affect on those around us. And being the humans we are, along with the nature of learning, mistakes are a part of it all. It doesn’t excuse the hurt some of our actions inflict upon our lives and others, but it does help us move through and beyond them.
I’m not saying that Sarah’s actions and choices didn’t matter because, ‘hey, at least she was learning hope and faith…'
Her choices mattered. They still matter. They impacted the future in an incredible way. But this is what makes hope so powerful.
It leads us through our choices, our situations, our mistakes, successes, failures, smallness, insignificance, beginnings, lack of resource, fears… it carves a way where there seemingly is no way. Especially after hurt, pain, sin, betrayal, greed, hatred, violence and more, have left destructive marks on our lives.
Hope is the choice we make to keep on going and not give up. Easy to write, hard to do. Except that the more you choose hope, the easier it is to choose again and again and again. It’s a cognitive process. And what's exciting about that is that we can actually train our brains to look for hope. We can create new neural pathways so that our automatic response to failure and struggle isn’t shame, isn’t a deep sense of unworthiness and failure, but hope.
Hope – not just in what we can do and achieve, but in connection to the Divine and Infinite; love and hope itself, Jesus.
“And now we have run into his heart to hide ourselves in his faithfulness. This is where we find his strength and comfort, for he empowers us to seize what has already been established ahead of time— an unshakeable hope!” Hebrews 6:18.
Our walk of faith is not about perfection, fulfilling every law, being robots for Jesus, who do everything amazing all the time. We are divinely human. We are made in the image of God, but not an exact copy. And God is OK with that. He gets it – he made us! He knows what he made. What's more powerful than somebody being able to perform perfectly, is someone who knows they don't have to to be loved by God and live a wholehearted life. THEY are people who have HOPE. They know that in the midst of their humanness, by faith they are connected to the one who is more than human.
Do we wish that Sarah had had faith all along and trusted God without making any mistakes? Without having Ishmael? Without shaming Haggai? And all the complications that that situation involved?
It would have been a cleaner story. For sure. But when I look at Sarah's story, I see a woman who desperately wanted to see the plans of God come to pass; a woman who tried to make it happen in her own strength out of frustration, despair, and disappointment; a woman who repented, a woman who through it all, found God again, found hope again. She was a woman who learned.
When I look at Sarah, I see myself. I see you. I see us all.
Go to Part 5 – Breath of Life
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