Hope

Finding Hope in the Unexpected

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Donkey.HS

What am I expecting?
Hoping for?
Looking for?
Longing for?

Two thousand years ago, they were hoping for a way out of oppression.
They were longing for freedoms.
They were looking for a king…
…a king who would do all of this and more for them.

This past Sunday, Palm Sunday, marked the commemorative start of the Christian Holy Week. In many of our churches, we marked it by handing out palm fronds. Sometimes the fronds have been woven into a cross-like symbol meant to be kept as a remembrance. Some churches give out a single spear from a palm leaf, some give a small frond, and some hand palms out to wave during a particular worship song.

Last year I happened to be in Montreal, Canada, for the start of the Holy Week, and I visited the Notre-Dame Basilica just before Palm Sunday. I had been there as…

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Finding Hope in Knowing God Wastes Nothing

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DSCF9869 - Copy

I wish you could experience the richness, perfection of timing and incredible way in which the Lord pours out His love very personally to each of us. If you aren’t experiencing this in your life, please … get to know Him, as He desires to know you and walk with you in this way.

This past week marked the start of a “new” study for me. It’s a new study with a group of 23 women, but I did this study over a decade ago, shortly after I entered into a personal walk with Christ. I don’t remember much from it, except that it left me with a few incredible impressions about how God’s Word was completely woven together, and that His love and His message to us is poured out very intentionally in Scripture.

This morning, as I was working on Day 3 of the study, this sentence was on the page about Saul (who was later known as Paul):  “NOTHING in Saul’s life would be a waste unless he refused to let God use it.” … and, yes, that word is in all caps in the workbook.

Those in my closest circles have heard me say, “God wastes nothing.” They’ve also heard me say something along the lines of “… anything He allows, He intends to use for our good and for His glory, IF we will only let Him.”

I SAY this a lot, but I needed to HEAR it this morning.

Once again, the Lord showed up to give me a loving encouragement. He did it by using Beth Moore’s words on a page, right after I read Paul’s words from His Word in Galatians.

What she said in this sentence … this concept … these words … somehow, has infiltrated my life (maybe it started when I did this study years ago … I don’t know …), and it is now a part of who I am. But it doesn’t stop there … Because of His amazing presence in my life, I’ve incorporated those words and woven them into His words and His promises for all of those who love Him (Romans 8:28).

The Lord truly does waste nothing. Every single thing we experience in life is something He has the capability to use for our good and for His glory, if we will only submit to Him and allow Him to do so.

There’s an action step here. I see it. Do you?

Monday’s Musings — At a Loss for Words

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Just reposting an older writing from 2013. I’m going through some things, and I truly cherish those who have taken a moment to reach out to me to offer me their gentle kindness … and their hope. 

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This has happened to me more times than I care to remember, and I know it has also happened to you:

Someone is hurting through their circumstances. You know it, and you have no idea what to say to them. So, you don’t really say much of anything.

When we’re at a loss for words because of the hurt another is experiencing and we choose to say nothing, we fall short of providing hope to them. The simplicity of a few words to tell your friend or acquaintance they are being thought of can lift them up. Saying nothing does nothing.

After going through my own devastating hurts in the last few years, I’ve experienced this from the other side, also. There were many times I’d run into someone who knew bits of what I was going through, but they’d skirt the topic, avoid me completely, or just stand there acting…

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Monday’s Musings — NO Coincidences

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The Bridge Builder

There are no coincidences. None.

There just aren’t.

In a life built on faith, there is always a reason. Always.

We don’t often understand the fullness of the incidence or of the reason, but just because we don’t understand, does not mean a reason does not exist.

A friend introduced me to this poem several months ago during a women’s Bible study. We were studying Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts, and on pages 55-73, Ann takes us through a lesson about bridges. Ann cites this poem on page 71 of the Study Guide, but I say that “a friend introduced it to me,” because until my friend Sarah read it out loud, I hadn’t really “read” it while studying it. Sarah is a poet at heart. She’s a writer, but also a poet. She’s been blessed to see, experience and re-tell her own stories through His poetic lens and license, and when she read it to our group, I closed my eyes, and I “got it.”

Today, my son brought this to me to begin working on it as a recitation during his homeschooling speech class. The photo of the poem is from his textbook.

A coincidence? No … a God-incidence.

I had to have seen this poem a few years ago when my daughter went through the same curriculum and speech class. I had to have seen it at that time. Why didn’t I recall it from back then? I’m pretty sure I didn’t recall it, because God hadn’t spoken it into a part of my heart until Sarah read it in our small group time. That’s when it spoke to me.

It spoke then — that day in our small group, but I didn’t do much with it. I oooo-ed and aaaah-ed with the rest of our group about the meaning and the depth, but I’m not sure it really intersected with my heart at all in the days, weeks and months that followed.

In my church yesterday, the pastor gave a message about being “good soil” from Jesus’ parable in Luke 8.

There is a lot in common with bridge building and being good soil.

With a heart filled with gratefulness to Him, I can say  — because of Him — I am good soil. I’m grateful our Lord has given me a heart willing to be good soil, and I’m also grateful for all of those who have uprooted thorns in my life, pulled weeds, tended to my soil, nurtured it, planted the Word in it, and have spoken into my life at some point along the way.

The last few months have found me struggling with the task of perseverance in my life. I’ve been called to persevere through some tough stuff, and it’s been wearing on me. The soil message was one I needed to hear. It reminded me that the tasks to which He has called me have a greater purpose He wishes to bring about. Yes, some of this is about me, some of it is about the others it involves, but the soil He is turning and the bridges He is building have a purpose for which He has not fully revealed to me.

Happenings in our lives are woven together by the Master. Nothing is allowed to occur in our life without first passing through His hand. We’ll never know the reason for much of it, but when we can see glimpses of how He is weaving His story into our lives, it should awe us to no end.

So when I struggle with perseverance, and when I happen to hear a message at church on Saturday night about the storms of life, and then I go to church on Sunday to hear a message about soil, and the storm and soil messages are reinforced on Monday by a bridge message, it is NO coincidence. It’s Him speaking something into my life that He wants me to hear.

I recognize His presence and His weaving in the circumstances of my own life, and I recognize them in His calling on me to persevere through the storms, to maintain good soil and to continue building bridges for His purpose and for His will.

Finding Hope in the Storms of Life

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 Storm.HS.Presence

The sun is shining, and it’s a beautiful day here today. Yesterday, however, a huge storm overtook the morning. The sun came up, and it was bright and beautiful as it crested the horizon, but I could hear the rumble of thunder far off in the distance. Within the hour, the storm loomed close and the skies grew dark.

Thunderclaps, lightning bolts, and pounding rain raged outside for a few hours. Pellets of hail fell in bursts. I went online to find the forecast giving hope it would all be gone by the noon hour.

The storms of life often appear similarly, don’t they?

The sun can be shining in our lives, and we might hear the distant grumble of trouble looming.

When we’re in the depths of the storms of life, they are often all we can see.

The rest of our life is still there, but the storm is what dominates the present.

We’ll see the darkness taking over the light.
We struggle to see the horizon.
The winds feel like they are swirling around us.
We’ll often allow the negativity to overtake us.
We may feel like we’re drowning and being pelted with despair.

If you are anything like me, you wish you could have access to His forecast. If we could just know how long the storm would last and what might be over the rainbow, it would make it easier to jump into our rainboots and wade through the muddy yuck, wouldn’t it?

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In Matthew’s Gospel, Matthew records an account of a storm that came in fast and went out even faster:

“Then he [Jesus] got into the boat and his disciples followed him. Without warning, a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!” He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm. The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!””
~ Matthew 8:23-27 (NIV)

A mighty storm raged around them, and the disciples were in the thick of it. Jesus was sleeping in the boat; He was with them in the same storm. They called upon Him for help. He provided it, but He also rebuked them for their lack of faith.

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Dr. Tom Constable’s commentary in Sonic Light tells us that when whenever Matthew uses the phrase “little faith,” in his Gospel, “it always reflects a failure to see below the surface of things.” (Study Notes/Matthew/page 149)

That phrase and commentary on the phrase makes an impact on me.

When I’m in the depths of a storm, a challenge, a trial, a crisis, some kind of trouble, (… whatever label you and I want to attach to it in the heat of the moment …) I’m often self-consumed.

How will this go?
How will I be impacted?
What about this?
What about that?
What about them?

I often fail to “see below the surface of things” when the waves are sloshing over the side of the boat. I’ll have my bucket in-hand and be bailing fervently, but I’ll often forget He’s in the boat with me. Right there. Right there in my presence at all times – even in the storms.

He calmed the seas He created. He pushed back the winds He controls. He did so to the awe and amazement of His closest followers.

He doesn’t always calm our storms as quickly as we call upon Him and ask Him to do so. I don’t have the specific answers as to WHY He doesn’t, but I can imagine Him looking at me saying, “Why are you so afraid?”

I want to often skip over that “You of little faith …” rebuke, but there are times when I know I deserve it.

When I can stop focusing on trying to bail the rising water out of the boat and, instead, focus upon His constant presence with me in the storm, I can then lean on learning to grow a bit more in faith while not being so afraid.

Perhaps He desires for me to realize my “momentary troubles are achieving for us [and also for me] an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”
~ 2 Corinthians 4:5

Perhaps He allows those winds to swirl around me, the horizon to remain hidden and the short-term forecast to be unknown because in the midst of the storm, He wants my focus to be on His presence. Perhaps He knows that when my focus is there, my faith will be greater and my fears will be calmed.

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you are more than welcome to do so.
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so that it continues to be referred back to Hope Surrendered.
Thanks so much. 

 

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