Have you ever felt like hoping was painful? Like if you hope, and then something doesn’t happen, that it will just break you to the point of no return?
I bet if you are on this journey as a parent to an individual with special needs your hope has waivered at times. Maybe it wasn’t even specifically about your child but maybe it was about your faith in the school system, or the doctors, or the supplements, or the one more thing you thought you should try. Have you ever felt like because your hope waivered your faith wasn’t strong either?
You see people like to tell us all the cliche things like God doesn’t give us more than we can handle. I wanted to dig into this term more while writing this. In the Old Testament, when Satan comes against Job, God doesn’t say do your worst because Job can handle it. He says Job is a man of integrity and gives Satan permission to test Job’s integrity. As we read through Job, who loses his animals, his children, his health, and even has his friend’s come against him and accuse him, we see a man who has little to hope for. Job goes on to even say “Don’t I have a right to complain?” (Job 6:5 NLT) He goes onto to say he wish the Lord would kill him and that he does not have the strength to go on. He ends these verses by stating “No, I am utterly helpless, without any chance of success (Job 6:9-13). In Job 7:6 we see Job cry out to God and say “My days fly faster than a weaver’s shuttle. They end without hope.” In all of this, the Bible says, Job did not sin. But he did complain and did cry out to God.
So did Job handle all that Satan brought his way? Well yes, he kept faithful to the Lord but his hope most certainly waivered as we can see from the verses. I think the important takeaway here is, Job did not sin in all of his uncertainty and pain. We see after all of the testing, that the Lord goes on to bless Job even more than he had in the first half of his life. In the moments of testing, Job wasn’t hopeful in fact he states he longs for the day the Lord took care of him (Job 29:2 NLT).
Hope and Faith are not a you can have one or the other situation. You can have hope AND have faith. You can have faith without the feeling of hope. I think this is made clear in the verses of Job.
In Hebrew the word hope is translated from three words: Tikvah meaning cord or rope symbolizing a firm & reliable anchor, Kavah meaning to wait or expect, and Seber meaning expectation or confidence in a good future.
In Hebrew the word faith is translated from Emunah, root word aman, which is actually a verb meaning support and places the action on the one who supports God. So faith is not us knowing that God will act, but actually what we will do to support God.
So while hope is to be expectant of God, the Hebrew translation and understanding is actually centered around us taking action.
In Exodus 17:10-13 we see Moses, Aaron, and Hur atop a hill. The Israelites are fighting the Amalekites and Moses, in faith, holds up the staff of God & as long as he continued to hold up his hands the Israelites prevailed. At some point Moses gets tired and can no longer hold up his arms. Aaron and Hur then come alongside him to help hold his hands. Because of their faith, the action of holding up Moses hands & staff, not the hope that God would act, Joshua defends the army of Amalek.
See James 2:14-26 for further clarification on faith without works.
We see in verse 1 Corinthians 13:13:
“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love”. faith and hope are listed just further cementing they are synonymous of one another.
We also can gather from that verse that love triumphs faith and hope. In loving our children with a diagnosis we may feel hopeless at times and our faith may even waiver but the greatest commandment is love. So when you are feeling like you are not enough, which by the way, you are if you are worrying, know that your love surpcedes your faith and hope.
Romans 5:5: “And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us”.
We should not be ashamed of our hope or lack thereof. Because of God’s love for us, we can than love even when we cannot be hopeful in trying seasons.
Romans 12:12: “Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer”
The call to action here points back to having faith. We shall rejoice in hope, whether it is the Lord providing blessings or healing on this side of heave or when our kiddos are laid at his feet. We must be patient in the trying seasons and pray through these times.
Romans 5:3-4: 3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope.
Our tribulations and times of hopelessness will actually produce more hope as seen in the above verse. It is through trying times we are able to abound in hope through faith.
Romans 15:4: 4 For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.
When we are in trying seasons, it is scripture that can give us hope. I don’t know about you, but when I have been through the most trying times, I have went back to Job over and over again. Studying Job’s passages brought revelation that God will truly use all things for good. It may not look like the way we want it to or could ever even imagine, but he surely is good all the time.
