Hold On To Hope

It’s so easy isn’t it ~ to blame God when we mess up? And yeah ~ we want it straightened out yesterday and if we know anything about God at all, we might rudely demand that He help us out of the mess and grant us our “genie in the lamp desire” just because He can and we so deserve it. Yeah, it’s our selfish, human nature that gets the better of us and gets us on it’s side only to abandon us at an empty wish pond full of mud and mire. We blame everyone else and oh yes, we blame God for our problem and our lack of good fortune! Like the thief on the one side of Christ on the cross, we arrogantly ask God to prove His worth, use His credentials, save His reputation and in so doing save us from our ruin.

Ahh but, God isn’t such a quick fix because He hears our spiritual words and He sees attitudes and behaviors that don’t jive! He knows that the heart is far from Him and our talk is cheap! He has work to do with our immaturity and some serious ‘boot camp’ training before He’s ready to answer our whims and wishes. So ~ in His quietness and lack of response, bitterness brews in our soul and so ~ we turn and run back to the heaps of rubble and our empty wish ponds just to show God who is boss and prove to the world that we don’t care. We give God a bad rap before friends as we blatantly and severely influence them in wrong ways.

Let’s get it! Let’s get that God has our best interest at heart and that the rubble we may find ourselves in is because we’ve put ourselves there with our choices. You know how you got there and it took time, so it will take some serious time to get out. You won’t fix it just because you wish it. You won’t fix it just because you turn to God for a week, or a month, six months, or even a year. Nor will He ~ not necessarily ~ and why should He? There are a lot of issues and hearts and souls and ‘stuff’ that need addressing. Closets need cleaning and God works from the inside out and the ground/root level up. His works are not superficial band-aids to cover a hurt just to get you through the day , but His architecture is solid, ground level building and framing to stabilize and brace for some serious storms and rough roads ahead. Yeah, life is tough for all of us, but living it with God and consistently good choices it becomes a whole lot easier! Never lose hope. Don’t let it go! Hold on tightly to it until it blooms.

True faith perseveres…..

Phil 3:14
. But as they “work out [their] salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12), they find that “it is God who is at work in [them], both to will and work for His good pleasure” Phil. 2:13.