“To dare to hope is to simultaneously expose our greatest desires and our greatest fears. But if we’re not willing to risk hoping, then we are already quietly quitting on a better future.”- Lysa TerKeurst
“When time are good, be happy; but when times are bad consider this: God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore, no one can discover anything about their future.”- Ecclesiastes 7:14 (NIV)
In Chapter 1 (“Quietly Quitting on Hope”) of I Want to Trust You, but I Don’t, Lysa TerKeurst takes on the topic of the way we sometime quit on hope. For example, you maintain a tight grip on those confirmations that appear to point in the direction of God granting your prayer request. As in the game of tug-of-war, you give it your all. But suddenly the opposing team yanks on the rope. You fall flat on your face.
Above all, Lysa notes, the tighter you hold on, the worse the hurt when the rope is pulled away. So, to manage your disappointment, you may say things like this:
- “Maybe it’s not meant to be, and I’m good with that.”
- “I just don’t care about this any longer.”
Consequently, the hardships of today feel much heavier when we limit our view of life to our present hardships. As a result, Lysa points out, we:
- trade dreaming for dread.
- exchange looking forward with joy to looking backward with sorrow.
- swap the anticipation of future possibilities for the angst of staying stuck in the pain of what happened.
In conclusion, Lysa exhorts:
“Sometimes we need new perspectives to believe trust is possible. That God is still good. . . . But that’s really hard to hear when your life doesn’t look like you thought it would and relationships aren’t playing out like you hoped. . . . Instead of filling our thoughts today with all the worst-case scenarios we fear. I want to challenge us to stop and say, But what if it does work out?”
Today’s question: When do you find yourself willing to dare to hope? Please share.
Tomorrow’s blog: “Start fueling hope in God”