Hopelessness to Hope — Broken & Hopeful

Do you ever have those days when you wake up and feel that it’s all hopeless? You lie awake at night considering all you have going on in your life, and imagine that nothing will ever change and your life will always be this way? Maybe you have tried to break free and to change things, but these attempts have fallen to the ground with no sign of completing their task.

Your heart cries out and aches for relief as you go about your day with a dreary cloud of despair tormenting your every move. The problems seem insurmountable, and you wonder how you will continue to walk forward. Everything ahead of you feels uncertain, or, even worse—the same as it is now. 

I was reading the story of Hezekiah in Isaiah 36 and 37, where the powerful king has sent messengers to taunt his people and foretell their defeat by his army. The Assyrian army had destroyed many people and nations at this point, and were greatly feared. Hezekiah takes the message to God, crying out for help. I would imagine that it looked pretty hopeless to him as well. But he poured it all out before God anyway. God’s response through Isaiah was basically–don’t worry, I’m taking care of it. 

I think I would have asked for more detail, or really questioned how God was planning to do that. So often we limit our vision to the natural, to what we see and can explain. And God’s plan for saving Hezekiah and His people had nothing to do with Hezekiah’s army, or any method he could come up with on his own. Instead, God sent an angel who slaughtered the army—all 185,000 of them. He sent the king’s own sons to kill him after that. It was a decisive blow. 

Overnight, everything for Hezekiah and God’s people had changed. The situation that seemed without hope completely radically shifted. I bet they had whiplash! 

In your own situation, it’s easy to say—yeah, yeah, but that was Hezekiah. God’s not going to enter in to my situation and do something about it. But He already has. He walked into your situation and sat down, promising to never leave. Which means that He sees all the things that look hopeless to you, and knows already what He’s going to do about them.  

And you might ask, but when and how? The when I don’t know, and God’s timing (although perfect) can be frustrating sometimes to those of us without further vision of the future. He waits until the time is right. And He determines what “right” is, not me. And the how is up to Him too, but don’t limit Him in that to what you see or can explain in the natural.

We forget that God operates in a whole supernatural realm that allows Him to interact with the natural constantly, but doesn’t limit Him to do it in the way we can imagine. He is the eternal God, and His ways are unknowable for our finite brains.

So, what do we do in the meantime? We keep coming to Him and laying it out before Him. We keep focusing on Him, and how His life is enough for each circumstance. I’m not enough in my flesh, but He is in His Life within me. So, I have to walk in dependence on Him to be enough. I must keep coming back to focusing on Him so that I don’t walk in fear, discouragement and doubt. Anytime the waves are my focus, I’m drowning. This doesn’t mean I’m ignoring the problem, but I’m bringing it to lay before Him. 

And then we wait with expectation. He will not abandon you. He will not forsake you. He is already acting but you can’t see it. He is sustaining you in the middle of an impossible situation. He is providing the strength to keep walking and to turn away from the hopelessness.

Lay out the problems before God, pouring out your heart with all its aching to Him. Wait with expectation that He will act, even if its not in the way or time you want. And trust Him in the meantime to be enough for each moment of each hard day.

So now we must cling tightly to the hope that lives within us, knowing that God always keeps his promises! Hebrews 10:23