Redeeming Your Story: Hope
Hope looks to the future. Without it, there is no way to move into the future. In a culture with a suicide rate that consistently climbing, it is crucial that followers of Jesus speak of HOPE! Hope is the fuel that moves our faith forward – they go hand in hand.
At our home group this week, we looked at the story of Elijah in I Kings 18 & 19, which demonstrates the importance of remembering as a basis for our faith and hope for the future.
So reminisce with me…about a time in which a look to the past fueled your hope about the future.
March 23rd, 2007 at 2:01 am
Greetings to all, and may our loving Lord bless you with wisdom, peace and joy.
I must honestly say, as there is no one (beside God) who truly knows me better than I know myself; it is a daily look at yesterday that brings me hope for tomorrow.
In scripture, when the reference to the kingdom of Heaven or the kingdom of God is told to be foremost in ones seeking (Matthew 6:33), it is not telling of an eternal place but a place of being in the here and now. Over 200 times reference of this kingdom is made and is a very important idea to grasp in the life lived now for the life yet to come, by the promise of Hope.
In the recognition and living in this kingdom, at the present, one must acknowledge God as their King, and in this, surrender all to Him. In doing so, He takes responsibility for that which is surrendered and will not allow it to go void. It is through the change of character and heart, seen daily, that speaks volumes in where ones hope lays.
Psalm 39:7 “But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you.
Yesterday should be a marker of remembrance into the future of hope for the glory of living as a new being in Christ Jesus.
So, all of my past, acts as device of hope towards the future as I learn, that which has come to pass, and strive to live the life God intended me to.
And to God goes the glory for He is our Hope!
March 23rd, 2007 at 9:38 am
The most memorable “redemptive” moment in our recent story is the one that landed us in the Mill Creek area and ultimately brought us to Pathways …
Our family lived an hour north of Mill Creek in the Skagit Valley for 28 years before moving back to the greater Seattle area nearly two years ago. We’d lived in five different homes in the valley during that time, making moves primarily because our family was growing (or growing up!) and our needs would change with the years.
Beginning with the apartment we called our very first home, the Lord’s finger had unmistakably pointed out each and every new address to us ~ sometimes before we even knew we’d need to move, but more often, after a long and faith-building journey to wait on His direction and timing and not assume our own. The common link between those moves, though, was that only our address (and maybe the elementary school) would change ~ everything else familiar in the valley, our church family, and my forest-engineer-husband Steve’s place of work remained the same. Each move actually became easier because we’d seen the Lord’s faithful hand work on our behalf again and again, and life had become very predictable.
But two years ago Steve’s longtime timber company folded and closed its doors. Fifteen years earlier he’d had to give up driving because of recurring seizures and had long depended on coworkers to drive him to and from the office. That group quickly scattered after the shutdown and at the same time we sensed the Lord leading us back to the north Seattle area, where our daughters and extended family live and where we both grew up. But life-as-we-knew-it had been hit by an earthquake and nothing would be familiar anymore.
When Steve landed a surveying job in south Everett we put our home up for sale, and within three days we had three buyers who were trying to outbid each other, well above our asking price. Suddenly we were sitting in a home that was no longer our own and Steve was committed to work an hour away with no way to get home each night! Praise God for my parents in Mill Creek, who housed and drove him while we looked for a place to live in a completely unfamiliar neighborhood.
I spent hours and miles running back and forth from the valley, frantically following every single real estate lead that looked even remotely promising, until we’d exhausted every one and had to be out of our home within the next three weeks. That spring homes were being snatched up within hours and always just out of our financial reach. Other than asking for a home that was well kept and within our means the one specific thing I’d asked the Lord for was a bus stop close by so Steve could find transportation to and from work.
But now it looked as though we’d have to rent an apartment until we could find a house. I confess the very thought of that was overwhelming because I knew Steve couldn’t be of much help with a brand new job and it would mean moving everything twice. On a Sunday night before Memorial Day the Lord and I had a tearful heart-to-heart. That’s when I gave up my right to finding a home and acknowledged His faithfulness to us every single time we’d moved before, and if He wanted us in an apartment, well, I knew He’d get us through that, too.
The next morning I’d arranged to see one more house with our realtor and that afternoon I’d meet my mom to look at apartments. I got to the Silver Firs neighborhood (where I’d searched a dozen times before) well ahead of our agent and saw immediately the house we were looking at that morning was just not the one. So I began to drive, one more time, through the surrounding streets. Suddenly I noticed a “For Sale by Owner” sign on a corner that, amazingly, hadn’t been there before. I drove up the street to take a look and stopped in front of the house. Almost audibly the Lord said to me, “Dianne, that’s the one.” And as I looked beyond the house to the backyard bordering a walking path to the boulevard behind it, there stood a bus stop sign, not twenty feet away. It never should have still been on the market. To this day I know the Lord saved it for us.
I sat in the car, smiling through my tears and thanking the Lord for demonstrating His faithfulness to us in such a specific way … and had He not given us those “altars of remembering” through the years along the way, I know I would have struggled to believe He could have provided at truly the “very last moment” at such a pivotal point in our journey. Three weeks later we moved in.
Thanks for listening. It was good to be able to tell it. God is faithful.