My soul faints with longing for your salvation, but I have put my hope in your word. My eyes fail, looking for your promise; I say, “When will you comfort me?” Though I am like a wineskin in the smoke, I do not forget your decrees. How long will your servant wait? When will you punish my persecutors? The arrogant dig pits to trap me, contrary to your law. All your commands are trustworthy; help me, for I am being persecuted without cause. They almost wiped me from the earth, but I have not forsaken your precepts. In your unfailing love preserve my life, that I may obey the statues of your mouth. Psalms 119: 81-89
Sometimes hope seems like a foreign word to me. I have always heard the phrase “put your hope in Jesus” but there are a lot of days where I feel like I do not even know what that means. I know that Jesus is my hope, but what does it mean to actively have hope in Jesus? When you look further into the Greek and Hebrew definition of the word, it means hope is the confident expectation, the sure certainty that what God has promised in the Word is true, has occurred, and or will in accordance with God’s sure Word. In the Bible, hope is never a static or passive thing. It is dynamic, active, directive and life-sustaining. Hope is more complex than just having a good feeling for the future. It is a certainty that God is who He says He is.
I used to think that hope meant I could never worry or question anything going on in my life. What I have learned recently is that hope in God is hope that, even in the midst of everything, in the midst of feeling overwhelmed, worried or even scared, that God has it under control. It does not mean that we cannot ask God questions or wonder why something is happening. I love Psalm 119 because the author does ask questions. He asks questions, but throughout it shows that He has hope in God. I believe that sometimes we think if we have questions that we are not having full trust or hope in God, but I believe that when we push all those questions down consistently and never actually address them, it causes those fears to boil up and explode. When we address them and give those worries to God, it actually increases our hope, not diminishes it.
I encourage you today to carve out some intentional time to take those worries to God. Ask yourself whether you actually believe you can take your worries to God without feeling like you have lost hope. Go back and reread Psalm 119, but pay attention to how the Psalmist still brought his worries to God while still keeping hope.
Ashlee Frazier
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