Have Hope in God

 

Ecclesiastes 7: 9-12(NLT)
“Control your temper, for anger labels you a fool. 10 Don’t long for the good old days. This is not wise. 11 Wisdom is even better when you have money. Both are a benefit as you go through life. 12 Wisdom and money can get you almost anything, but only wisdom can save your life.”

“Where did I go wrong in my life?”

I was talking to Louisa the other day. She’s a middle-aged Christian woman that I’ve known a while, and she expressed her desire to have a do-over with her life. Louisa has lots of regrets. She wished that she had never moved away from her hometown in the South and that she would have married her high school sweetheart. “At least with him, I knew what to expect.” she remarked. What did she get instead? A man that cheated on her most of their 25 years of marriage. She met Larry two years after she moved to Ohio. They dated for a couple of years, got married and had three children. She found out about his affairs after they had their second child, but because her oldest child had medical issues, she remained in the marriage. Raising two boys alone would’ve been more than she could handle, she thought, and after her daughter was born, she settled into what she refers to as a life of disappointment.

Most of us wake up every morning, go to work, raise our children, and do what is necessary to live a peaceable life. It isn’t a fairy tale, because life isn’t meant to be. It’s meant to be a walk of faith with God through the Lord Jesus Christ. Most of us are fully aware of this. Things in life don’t always go the way we plan. Many of us are caught off guard by this and catch ourselves wishing that we could have a do-over, especially when it comes to some of our mishaps and mistakes. But life just keeps rolling, and we must have faith in God to keep up.

When our reality is far from what we’ve dreamed, we think we’ve missed something or left something behind that would have made us better and therefore made our lives better. We figure it’s almost impossible to recoup now that we have so many responsibilities. Others are depending on us to hold things together, and it isn’t always easy to be strong. Our hopes are injured because it feels that any chance of living the dream is greatly diminished. We’re left wondering how we ventured so far off track.

Romans 8:29-30(NKJV) declares, “29 For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. 30 Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.” Verse 29 tells us that God knew us even before we were in our mother’s wombs. He has given us a destiny, and this destiny is shaped and modeled in the example that Jesus Christ left for us. We are children of God, and God is the One who predestines our lives. It’s not our plan, it’s His plan! Our great pleasure, privilege, and responsibility is to pray, to seek what He has in store for us, and to follow His plan and purpose with all our hearts.

Our plans and dreams are limited to only what we can see and imagine. We don’t consider all the pitfalls and missteps because we couldn’t possibly know them all. We think about what is good for us, but don’t always know what is good for everyone, or how our dreams and desires might impact the lives of others. Our God is interested in what is good for everyone, and the benefit of all is masterfully woven into His plans. Our Heavenly Father knows everything. Jesus Christ tells us in Matthew 6:8 that God knows we need before we ask Him. There isn’t any detail about our lives or the lives of others that God does not know. Acts 17:27 tells us that He alone set the boundaries of our births, and He left nothing to chance.

Galatians 3:13(NLT) declares, “But Christ has rescued us from the curse pronounced by the law. When he was hung on the cross, he took upon himself the curse for our wrongdoing. For it is written in the Scriptures, “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.”” The past is gone forever and will never come again. It cannot be relived, and none of us can have do-overs, but we must never, ever forget the reality that our Heavenly Father is a Redeeming God. He redeemed us from the curse of sin, sickness, and death. Adam disobeyed God and sold us all into the slavery of sin, sickness, and death, but God always had a plan for our redemption through Christ. Romans 5:12 affirms that Adam sinned, and sin spread because we all sinned too, but through his sacrificial offering for our sin, Jesus Christ redeemed and saved us from this curse. Now, we are free and have received the gift of eternal life because of what God accomplished through the death and resurrection of our precious Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

God redeems! He delivers and restores! When we try to make our plans work, they don’t always come out the way we envision, and this is what causes disappointment, but God’s plan always works to His glory and to our benefit and glory as well. In Proverbs 3:5-6, He instructs us not to lean on our own understanding. He tells us to place all our trust in Him, and all means “ALL”. He directs our paths, and on this we can depend. In Jeremiah 29:11(NLT), He told His people living in Old Testament times, “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”

Romans 8:28(NLT) affirms, “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” We make mistakes, but they teach us that God is the One that is in control! We don’t have any power to call our own. All power belongs to Him! Although there are disappointments in life, He can redeem them to such a degree that the sting of disappointment no longer affects us. Through Jesus Christ, God has given us a sure hope, and Romans 5:5 declares that this hope in Christ does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through His Holy Spirit!  So, let’s not waste time on wouldas-couldas-shouldas. Let’s be secure in the knowledge that we can bloom wherever we are planted as long as we trust God and depend on Him to lead us on the path He's set for our lives.■ 

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

“Have Hope in God”, written by Kim for https://rescuefromdomesticviolence.blogspot.com© 2022. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.