Where is your hope?

There's not much better than fresh new insight on an old problem. I was so encouraged by Steve and Wendy Backlund's message in school the other day that I decided it was too good not to share!

Hopelessness is a dark shadow that often manages to sneak into areas of our life without us knowing. It's not  easily recognised, and so flies under the radar much of the time. Oftentimes when we sit down and ask Holy Spirit to bring insight into areas of our lives that are suffering moodiness, depression, anger etc we can find that the root cause is hopelessness. 

Steve Backlund says that every area of our life that doesn't glisten with hope is believing a lie, and that lie is a stronghold of the enemy. A statement like this really gets you thinking. What does it mean to be loyal to a lie? It means to believe something about you, your life, or your circumstances that is not consistent with how God sees it. For example, I might (consciously or sub-consciously) I might believe that I am still single because I haven't been focusing enough on God, that he has held back my ideal man until my prayer life is sorted and consistent. Then because of that I plan to have routine and structured time with God so I can focus on Him and manipulate Him into giving me what I want because I'm giving Him what he wants. The reality in this situation is that God doesn't need us to do anything for Him to release His goodness to us. Just think on that for a bit... While we were still sinners - or for us in this day and age - before we were born - Jesus died for us. He took our place and made a way for us to be made whole. So God releases His goodness because that's who He is - He's good! His goodness is not dependent on our behaviour. When our paradigm shifts to understand that all God wants for us is His goodness to invade, then the lies in our life will be replaced with God's truth and hope can then take over the hopelessness.

Your hopelessness about your problem is a bigger problem than the problem!! There is always an answer - there is always a way out. This isn't cliche, it's not trite, it's not even positive thinking - it's the truth. As Christians, it's often easier for us to surrender our behaviour than our beliefs. We think that if we DO something that God wants, then it'll all work out ok. The trouble comes when our problem is actually on the belief level, because changing the behaviour is only like fixing the symptoms rather than fixing the cause. This is where the leap of faith comes it. Faith is believing in something we can't see. So even when everything about our situation looks hopeless, faith is choosing to partner with Heaven's reality and stepping out in faith in that direction. Our underlying belief always has to be that God is always backing us for our best.

Paul tells us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds - we call that repentance. I used to think that repentance was feeling really sorry for the sucky things I did and feeling remorse for grieving God and other people, which is true to a point. But too often we're actually just sorry that we got busted, or that a mess was made. True repentance is giving up the lie that we were believing that caused us to mess up and asking God to give us His truth in the situation. Repentance is renewing our minds which leads to transformation. Once we understand this principle we will experience the freedom that Jesus paid for on the cross. Joy will come back into our lives and hope will abound!

At this point in my life I can now see problems as opportunities to see how big my God is, and how much He loves to give us good things. He's not out there booby-trapping us to see how we react, or to test our character. That's not the behaviour of a good Dad. We are reminded in the Bible that God is so much more perfect and good than our earthly fathers, so if we are believing that God would behave in a way more terrible than a human father, then we need to repent (change our thinking) and ask Him for what His truth is. There are no hopeless situations. Ever. Remember that and your life will be changed forever.