The Path of Hopelessness Leads to Hope

We are lost wandering in the dark… all we have is the hope that we will somehow, someway find the right path that will lead us out of this darkness. We trip and fall but still get up. Right as we are about to give up we turn the corner there it is! In the distance a glimmer of light, the hope we were looking for! In the darkness, we feel hopeless and alone but when we see the light we know there is still hope. It is not hopeless after all.

At this point, you might be wondering… “what in the world is Katie talking about? I live in the 21st century and my phone has a flashlight on it… I would never be lost in the darkness.” Although that may be the case I ask you to think figuratively about being lost in the darkness and feeling hopeless. Have you ever been there? Felt like nothing seemed to go right for you and there is no hope? I often feel this way when I think about our world and think about the path the world has chosen to take. This is a path in defiance of what God teaches and what Jesus showed us when He was here. A path that seems to satisfy our personal hopes and dreams but is against the hope that is found in God.

We hear the word hope all the time but do we really know what it means? According to Dr. Google and his associate the dictionary, hope is the feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. Synonyms of hope are yearning, dream, wish, and aspiration. If you ask me there are two versions of hope, the first is the world version that is all about me and the second is the Biblical version which is the foundation of our faith in God. The first version says I hope I get my way and the second says despite the situation I have hope in God above. The differences in these two versions are night and day in the sense that one is filled with darkness and the other with light. The darkness comes from our selfish ambitions and only wanting what will help us. This mindset goes against the way of the Lord and against His plan. Getting our way might provide happiness now but leads to heartache in the long run. There is nothing wrong with hoping that everything works out for the best but when we are hoping for our best and not God’s best is when the problem occurs. The second version is based on God’s plan and involves us choosing to have hope even when it seems hopeless. It is saying I know God is good even when everything is bad in our lives.

Let’s be honest for a second. We all have a tendency to wish that our lives will be smooth sailing and that we will get lucky enough to not have to endure rough waters. We also know that is just a dream and not a reality. But we still have faith in God because we know that hard times do not scare Him. He showed us that many times in the Bible and Jesus showed during His us time here. For example, when the boat was being thrown around by the sea where was Jesus? Jesus was asleep without a worry in the world and when He woke up He silenced the crashing waves with just His voice. Another example is when Jesus walked on the water to met up with the others we are told that the waters were rough and the wind was pushing the boat but that did not stop Jesus and it didn’t keep Him from inviting Peter to join Him in the rough waters. Jesus stayed afloat because He had faith in the abilities His Father had given Him and Peter began to sink because he lost his faith in Jesus’ power and became hopeless. We so often lose our hope in God just because it seems hopeless by the world’s standards. When we look like we have no hope in the world’s standards it is because our hope is not in the world at all but in the Father.

We must become hopeless in our own abilities so that God can give us hope in His own. We must give up on our ways to take on the Lord’s ways. This world cannot provide us with the hope we need because it is filled with evil and pain, only God can provide us with true hope for our future. In other words, we must give up hope in this world to gain the true hope that is found only in Christ Jesus and His Father. We must rely on God to provide as Lamentations 3:24 says, “ ‘The LORD is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I hope in Him!’ ” When God becomes our everything our hope is found in Him and only Him. The grip of the world and the hope it can give us loses its appeal.