Dwelling in Hope

Do you feel overwhelmed when you think of the world that our kids are growing up in? The chaos that sometimes surrounds them or that they create by their poor choices. I do!

However, several years ago I experienced a divine appointment that shifted my perspective and gave me hope. I met a young single mother that was a newly returned prodigal, who found herself all alone in a hospital, while her newborn was going through heart surgery.

We ate a meal together and she poured her heart out, sharing her testimony of serving in worship, falling in what she thought was love, making some choices she wasn’t proud of that had lifelong consequences. She then shared how quickly her community turned on her, and her faith was shattered while she sat alone asking God how is this possible?

For a long time, she turned from the Lord and then one day in her lonely desperation she randomly opened the Bible and it unfolded to Esther 4:14. And there was her answer.

All her aching questions about what she should do? How will she do it on her own? Is she able? God answered in that one verse… perhaps she was created for such a time as this. Perhaps she was created to be that little boy’s mom and it wasn’t a mistake.

It wasn’t God’s will for her to sin, but he still loved her and won’t leave her, and he will be with her each step of the way. Her Father was going to turn her torment into a beautiful testimony.  Mark Twain said, “the two most important days in your life, are the day you were born and the day you figure out why”. This situation that seemed to shatter her world turned out to be her why.

God knew I needed that encouragement way before I got introduced to the struggles we would face in our own journey. I asked her if I could share her story of hope when we spoke that day, and she said it is her testimony, and please do.

What a blessing to watch her stepping out in faith trembling. She taught me that God often uses our deepest pain as the launching pad for our greatest calling. The enemy attacks what is valuable to God. However, our God is a jealous God (Esh Oklah) and he can redeem his stolen property by raising the army that he poured into to drive out the darkness. Lisa Bevere said “I believe that the attacks in your life have much more to do with who you might be in the future then who you have been in the past.”

Perhaps our kids will never surrender or turn back and join in on what God has in store for their life. Maybe they have bought into a lie that they have blown God’s plan for their life, even though they are not that powerful! But what, if for now, we hold onto hope and believe what CH Spurgeon said, “Child of God, you cost Christ too much for him to forget you.”