Holding On to Hope

Over the past many months, God has had a way of not only providing for us in uncertain times but also connecting us to people who have spoken truth and love to us. People who have shown up in areas of our life that we have been praying for years.

Kayla is one of those people. She has a fire and passion for the Lord that is a rare treasure, and when asked if she would be willing to share some of the things she has spoken into our lives with The Pause Pursuit, one of the loudest being her message of hope, she wrote this. We pray her words encourage you as much as they have us.

Hope

Have you ever seen someone or have you, yourself, ever tried to jump across a stream?

Most of the time this is accomplished by someone hopping on one stone, to the next, to the next, and however many more until they finally reach the other side. Usually, most streams are too big to just leap right over to the other side.

This visual is what I have when I think about situations in our life.

Let me be a little more clear.

I (like a lot of people that I know) have spent most of my life trying to pursue a Christ-centered life.

You know, the “straight and narrow”.

Sometimes deeming in my heart and mind that because I strive for this that my life will always be clean and tidy.

That everything I expect will come forth JUST THE WAY I IMAGINE IT TO BE.

Also, like a lot of people I know, this is not the case!

Life can become messy quickly. Things can bring disappointment, hurt, anger, frustration- that “oh so perfect” life I’m striving for looks further and further away. But what do we do when life quickly becomes imperfect?

Pick a Psalm, any Psalm, go ahead… in there you will see David’s heart.

A man who was deemed “A man after God’s heart”, in all of David’s writings you begin to see his vulnerability.

He strived SO hard to please the Lord and STILL, quickly his life became messy and did NOT turn out the way he expected. In Psalm, you see his cries to the Lord. He actually even prophesied what Jesus cried out on the cross:

“My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1)

Sound familiar? Have you ever heard your heart cry out something to the same effect?

“Why God?”

“Why me?”

“Why did You allow this to happen?”

These are all vulnerable feelings we present to the Father-

BUT, I want you to take a look at the end of the chapters in Psalm. David laid his feelings bare, he was raw and real but at the end of every scripture, he brings it back to worship.

He determines in the midst of his pain and the middle of his mess that God is still worthy to be praised and he can still put his hope in Him.

This brings me back to hopping stones. While we are in the middle of our very real circumstances, if we can hold on to hope in Christ, this brings us to a “stone”.

A new place to step, another bit closer to the end of what we are walking through, and we continue to do this, we find hope each step of the way.

To get us hopping from one stone to the next.

YOU WILL MAKE IT TO THE OTHER SIDE.

Our hope is in Christ alone. We allow our gaze to fall upon the One who takes all of our broken, messy things and makes them all beautiful, in His amazingly, never too early, never too late, time.

Our answers may not come quickly.

Our issues may not dissolve easily, but the more we learn to cling to that hope, with each NEW mess, each NEW growing experience, we gain a new sense of trust and peace that comes quicker and clearer each time.

Allow your feet to land on that next stone of hope.

Don’t give up in the middle of your “life’s stream”

But allow the hope and peace of the Lord to get you to the solid foundation of growth, that’s waiting for you on the other side.