I Have a Hope
Posted By Phylicia on September 24, 2009
My first Sunday at Thomas Road Baptist Church, our worship leader, Charles Billingsley, announced to the crowd, “Today we’re going to learn a new song, so follow along, and we’ll get more familiar with it as time goes on.” The music began to play and I immediately recognized the melody as one of my favorite songs: ”I Have a Hope”.
The lyrics are: I have a hope/I have a future/I have a destiny that is yet awaiting me/My life’s not over, a new beginning’s just begun/I have a hope/I have this hope”
The chorus then begins, “I will yet praise him/My great redeemer/I will yet stand up/And give him glory with my life/He takes my darkness and he turns it into light/I will yet praise him, my Lord my God.”
Every time I hear that song it revives my heart from any feelings of anxiety or hopelessness. Sometimes it comes to mind in the shower or when I am working on school. Often it comes to mind when I am feeling alone or without direction. It is a song of joyful declaration that hope is always there as long as God is. God will be with us for eternity — therefore hope will be as well!
I have hopes for a lot of things. As I have been working through my devotional, Discerning the Voice of God, I realize how many dreams and goals I tell the Lord about. I have so much that burdens my heart, that I want to see accomplished or to accomplish myself. Sometimes my faith fails me and I begin to wonder when my hopes will be fulfilled… if ever.
Priscilla Shirer said in my book that while the righteous woman trusts God to fulfill his word, the proud woman (self-reliant) depends on herself to bring things to pass. She ends up distressed, hurt, wondering, and confused. I realize now how often I have submitted a dream to God and then rather than simply pursue the duties he has placed before me today, I have tried to manipulate my dream into existence prematurely. I have been self-reliant rather than walking by faith.
The verse she referenced was Habakkuk 2:3, a new favorite that I had never read before:
The vision is yet for the appointed time; it hastens toward the goal, and it will not fail. Though it tarries, wait for it; for it will certainly come; it will not delay.
That is hope. That is a future! We have a destiny awaiting us that no one can take away except ourselves. Only we can shorthand God by refusing to let him work. Only we can keep him from leading us on by stubbornly pulling against his goodwill. I don’t know about you, but I want a future and a hope, and I am not going to try to run my own life if it means forfeiting that future.
Comments
Leave a Reply