Intro to Trust, Desire, Hope

God is teaching me a lot about hope. This summer has been an interesting one full of change and redirection. It did not look anything like I expected. I do not entirely know what I was expecting to learn but I know this was not it. Much of this summer was spent battling with the fact that my dreams and my circumstances do not match up. Endurance despite my circumstances was a big theme. All this has led me to study hope.

Before this summer all I knew about hope was that “Hope deferred makes the heart sick but longing fulfilled is a tree of life” (Pr 13:12). It took me a while to remember that I do not have to live in the ‘hope deferred makes the heart sick’ part of the verse. I can be instead looking ahead to the ‘longing fulfilled is a tree of life.’ I do not have to look at my circumstances as a gauge of where I am spiritually.

Right now I know that I am coming closer and closer to longing fulfilled. I can see it on the horizon. I do not know how all this is going to work or what it will look like but I know I am getting closer and closer to stepping into them and living in the fullness of these dreams.

I have big dreams. I want to change the world. I want to see and bring about restoration. I want to cultivate a greater hunger for God in the church. I believe God has great plans for His people and right now He is preparing us to walk in the fullness of them. I believe He placed these desires for greatness within us so that they will drive us to Him because He is the one who can fulfill them.

Trust is the first step in this process. We need to trust that our Father will fulfill His word. When we can trust the Father, He can better grow desires and dreams within us. Hope is the longing for those desires to be fulfilled and the belief that they will be fulfilled.

These next several posts will be more about what I am learning about these things.