Is it wrong to hope for things? Like is it wrong to want things? I want good grades, and I want my family to be healthy and I hope that this holiday season is a time that I can grow in relationship with them.
Is is wrong to hope for big things? Girls, is it wrong to hope to get married one day? Is it wrong to hope for family.
I don't think it is wrong to hope for things, but I think it's wrong to place our hope in things or people.
If my hope is in getting good grades, then when I get a bad grade my heart is broken. If my hope is in getting married, and I never do then I will live a miserable life constantly feeling lonely and misunderstood.
However, If my hope is in God, then I have the confidence to hope for things. Since, I know that God wants my good as well as values my growing character, I can trust whatever answer to my hopes comes my way. When I fail a test, my heart might hurt but I will be able to rest in knowing that God is still my God whether I get an A or fail. When I get married, I can freely thank Him for giving me something that I desire but also putting that desire in my heart.
Now, when we hope in the wrong things, it can be relatively easy for us to pinpoint. We can see how much we are willing to do to keep it. If you are willing to lie, manipulate, or do anything to compromise your values to keep something, chances are your hope is in it. Because hoping in God allows us to do the right thing even when it's hard because we trust Him to work it all out in the end.
Now, I've realized I have put my hope in myself. This causes me major anxiety and I don't want to hope for things because I'm worried that they will fail or I'm not good enough. If I hope for something, and it fails. It becomes my fault for wanting it to happen.
Yet, when am I going to realize that I don't have to do things on my own. I was walking with one of my friends the other day and I was trying to carry my bags and lift my skirt up at the same time and I was fumbling all over the place. My friend was like "I can carry your bag?". Isn't this what we do with God? We are so stressed trying to hold up everything in our lives because we think it's on us, when God is trying to say "I'm here, I can take that from you"
Now, when we give our bags to God it leaves us with empty hands. Hands we can serve and love and trust and hope with. Yet, our heart is in God, and our anchor rests in him. So, if we lose something we hope for, it's only a penny in the grand scheme of things because we have hope in something that is so much greater than anything we can hope for.
God wants us to love things and hope for things, but we won't be fully free to do that until we have our hope in Him.
When we have are hope in God, we are free to take risks because we have nothing to lose because we know that everything to gain is already in him.
Therefore, we can hope for things, and take a risk because we know that all that is to gain is from God anyway.
So let us trust in God, and Hope in Him. So we can live fearlessly, we weren't made to live this life alone, so let us put our trust in Him.
