Skip to main content

Can I Still Have Hope?

Have you ever lost hope?  If so, what you experienced is commonly known as despair!

Despair, according to the dictionary, is the complete loss of or absence of hope.  And if that isn’t bad enough, a sense of helplessness, kind of like feeling that you are caught up in a current with no way of escape, often comes with despair.   

The temptation to despair is actually fairly common.  We live in a fallen world deeply impacted by sin and there is no shortage of things that can crush our hope.

In one particular Psalm, we find the writer referencing some things he was experiencing that could have led to despair.  He was facing evildoers, adversaries, foes, false witnesses, an army encamping against him and war rising against him. 

Other translations bring out different aspects of what the word “despair” might have meant to that writer of the Psalm, such as “I would have lost heart” and “I would have been without hope”.

Lost heart, without hope, not a pretty picture, in fact, a rather despairing one!  Yet in the midst of all that, the Psalmist was able to write:  “I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”  (Ps. 27:13)

What the Psalmist provided for us, in that verse, is an antidote to despair.  The antidote is believing that we will see the goodness of God!  That belief is fundamentally shaped by viewing the future through the lens of who God is and what He promises that He will do.

In the book of Lamentations, we find a similar antidote:  “This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope.  The Lord’s loving-kindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail.  They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.  “’The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I have hope in Him.’”  (Lam 3:21-24)

The antidote is making a conscious and deliberate effort to call to mind the Lord’s loving-kindnesses, compassion and faithfulness.  Because He has demonstrated them in the past, we can believe that they can be for us today.  That belief is fundamentally shaped by viewing the past through the lens of who God is and what He has done.

As we look to the past through the lens of who God is and what He has done and as we look to the future through the lens of who God is and what He has promised that He will do, we can move from despair to hope.

And hope is an anchor for the soul (Heb 6:19).  That anchor holds firm and secure and it helps to keep us from being caught up in the current of despair!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Excel Still More!

To excel, according to some of the meanings from a few dictionaries, is to surpass others, do extremely well, outdo, do something better than anyone else. In 1 Thessalonians 4:1, we find the phrase “excel still more”.   It prompts the question:  if we are already doing something better than anyone else, why would we be encouraged to do even more? Perhaps it would be helpful to see the wording that other translations use for “excel still more” to see why we would be encouraged to do so.  Here is a sampling: • abound more and more • to keep doing so more and more • but try even harder • live that way more and more. • that you progress even more. • that you increase more and more in how you ought to walk Maybe it would also be helpful to see some other verses where the word “excel” is used: “Now in Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha (which when translated means Dorcas); this woman was excelling in acts of kindness and charity which she did habitually.”...
Post a Comment
Read more

New Year Trash or Treasure?

You probably know the old saying:  “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”.  I am not going to try to prove or disprove it, just look at it from a different angle. Cheryl and I were recently walking on a beach in Florida .  A man was walking along with a bag and was picking up trash and putting it in the bag.  Was he picking up things of value? We also saw a different man walking along the same beach with a metal detector.  He would swing it back and forth and would occasionally stop and dig in the sand.  Was he looking for things of value? Both were intent.  Both were focused.  Both were diligent. I’m guessing that the one picking up trash was not looking for things of value.  I’m also guessing that, by picking up trash, he was valuing the beauty of the beach and didn’t want the trash to mar it.  The one with the metal detector, I’m guessing that he was not looking for metallic items of trash but was looking for...
1 comment
Read more

Value Proposition

Value proposition:  it’s a marketing statement that summarizes why a consumer should buy a product or use a service.  It should clearly and concisely communicate what customers can gain from selecting a particular brand over that of its competitors. In a value proposition, you don’t want your product to be viewed as being worth less than what your competitors offer.   But even worse, in a bit of a quirk of how letters and spaces can fall, if you take out the space between “worth” and “less”, you get “worthless”, which means something of no value.   If that word is used in conjunction with how your product is viewed by customers, it’s a word that will likely kill your brand. In the book of Philippians, the Apostle Paul, in a sense, communicated some value propositions. In chapter three, he starts off with describing the value of some things that many considered as extremely valuable in that day and age.   They had to do with status and achievement in the reli...
Post a Comment
Read more