Hope in the mess of relationships.

Excerpts from Tim Lane and Paul Tripp’s book on all kinds of relationships, Relationships: A Mess Worth Making:

We are sinners with the capacity to do great damage to ourselves and our relationships.  We need God’s grace to save us from ourselves.  But we are also God’s children, which means that we have great hope and potential — not hope that rests on our gifts, experience, or track record, but a hope that rests in Christ.  Because he is in us and we are in him, it is right to say that our potential is Christ!

We are well aware that we are smack dab in the middle of God’s process of sanctification.  And because this is true, we will struggle again.  Selfishness, pride, an unforgiving spirit, irritation, and impatience will certainly return.  But we are neither afraid nor hopeless.  We have experienced what God can do in the middle of the mess.  This side of heaven, relationships and ministry are always shaped in the forge of struggle.  None of us get to relate to perfect people or avoid the effects of the fall on the work we attempt to do.  Yet, amid the mess, we find the highest joys of relationship and ministry.

We would prefer that God would just change the relationship, but he won’t be content until the relationship changes us too.  This is how God created relationships to function.

Does the challenge and mess of relationships leave you discouraged?  Does the biblical honesty about human community shock you? Are you feeling overwhelmed by the hard work relationships require? … The shattered relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit at the cross provides the basis for our reconciliation.  No other relationship ever suffered more than what Father, Son, and Holy Spirit endured when Jesus hung on the cross and cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

In his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus brought reconciliation in two fundamental ways.  Jesus reconciled us to God, which then becomes the foundation for the way he reconciles us to one another.  As C.S. Lewis said, Christ restores first things so that second things are not suppressed but increased!  When God reigns in our hearts, peace reigns in our relationships.

And I’m only on page 15 now …

:]

In Him, hope.

I looked within,
I looked behind,
I looked around,
I looked ahead.
Despair.

I looked to Him,
I looked behind,
I looked around,
I looked ahead.
Hope.

Bright hope.

:]

Expectation.

From Bruchko, an autobiography of a missionary to the Motilone Indians:

Bobby [one of the Motilone Indians] and I worked on the translation of Philippians.  It was one of the most intense, most wonderful times of translation we had ever had together.

As we worked through the first chapter, we came to verse twenty where Paul says that his great expectation is that he will not be put to shame, but that Christ will be exalted in him whether in life or death.

I needed the right word for expectation.  A Motilone expects to go to bed at night, but that word doesn’t have much force.

The center of emotion for a Motilone is his stomach.  To have a full stomach is to have a happy heart.  What was the surest way of having a full stomach?  Probably to have hunted and killed a large tapir.  You eat tapir until you can’t eat any more.

So I took the verb for having a tapir in your possession, and I invented a new tense: I put it in a future tense that has already been completed, then I made it superlative.

I gave Bobby the word.  It shocked him.  “No,” he said, “that’s too big a word.  It’s too forceful.  How can you expect something as much as that?”

“All right,” I said.

He was quiet for a while, thinking, then said, “Bruchko, is Jesus Christ that expectation for you in your life?  Really?”

That stopped me short.  It’s one thing to figure out the right word to use, it’s quite another thing to be asked if it’s true of your own life. I thought of my conversion, and of some of the crises I had weathered with Yukos and the Motilones.  Finally, after a long silence, I said, “Yes.”

Then I nodded vigorously.  “Yes, Bobby.  With all my strength and all my will I want to give myself to the expectation of Jesus Christ.”

Bobby looked down at his feet.  “Yes,” he said.  “It’s a good word.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

He nodded.

Thoughts on hope.

We’ve been going through Colossians in our girls’ Bible study at church, and since last week’s study, Colossians 1:5 has been surfacing and resurfacing in my thoughts.

… we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel. (1:4-5)

Because of the hope laid up for them in heaven.  Because of this hope, they persevered in faith and love.  And Paul doesn’t just say that their hope is heaven; he says their hope is in heaven.  Their hope wasn’t just a location.  Neither was their hope just a flitting emotion.  Their hope was a Person, a promise, and a prize; and all their hope rested on Jesus, heaven’s glory.

Sometimes I wonder about Lot’s wife whose backward glance cost her her life.  Or the Israelites in the wilderness who longed to return to Egypt, where they were enslaved.  Or the disciples who went back to fishing after Jesus was crucified and before they knew He had risen again.  I think whenever the present is trying and the future is uncertain, we tend to long for what is behind.  We sigh and think that the best thing to come has already come and passed.

But Paul tells the Colossians that their hope is laid up for them in heaven.  It’s a future hope.  Because their hope lay in the future, they pressed forward.  What a wise and loving God that He would give a sure hope that would keep His people looking and moving forward, a hope so radiant that nothing that lies behind would ever tempt His beloved to look back.

Such is our hope.  Such is the fuel for our perseverance.

I need not sink, standing on the sands of false hope or even viable earthly hope.  My feet have found firmer ground — a Rock.

And she smiles at the future …

Strength in hope.

Where’s my hope?

Jeremiah remembered God. He remembered who God is; he remembered the unchanging character & purpose of God. In the midst of destruction & despair, in the face of a hard providence, Jeremiah preached truth to himself:

This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. The LORD’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I have hope in Him.” It is good that he waits silently for the salvation of the LORD. (Lamentations 3:21-24)

It amazes me that a man like Jeremiah could say he hoped in the LORD, even after all he had witnessed. For over 40 years, he preached a message of repentance & of God’s coming judgment on Judah’s sins. No one repented. He watched as calamity fell on the people of Judah; he saw the destruction of Jerusalem. With his finite eyes, what could he see but devastation? What could he see but no future, no hope for Judah?

But his hope wasn’t in anything that his eyes could see. His hope wasn’t in the possibilities or probabilities considering the present situation. His hope was in God, his portion.

Habakkuk, too, hoped in God in the midst of confusion & uncertainty. Regardless of circumstances, his hope (& joy) was in God.

Though the fig tree should not blossom & there be no fruit on the vines, though the yield of the olive should fail & the fields produce no food, though the flock should be cut off from the fold & there be no cattle in the stalls, yet I will exult in the LORD, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. (Habakkuk 3:17-18 )

Jeremiah & Habakkuk looked to God. They looked nowhere else, because they knew hope was found in God alone. They knew hope in God would not disappoint, no matter how hopeless things may seem. They had the kind of strength-giving hope G.K. Chesterton refers to:

Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all . . . As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is mere flattery or platitude; it is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength.

There are those like Jeremiah & Habakkuk.

Yup. And then there are those like me.

I put my hope in the possibility of changed circumstances. I put my hope in the fulfillment of certain wants or plans. I put my hope in people. I put my hope in events. I put hope in myself — my meager abilities & my own devices. I put my hope in the possibility of deliverance, not the surety of the Deliverer.

I put my hope in things that I can see, because I think that what is seen is more sure than what is not seen (at least, not with my physical eyes). I forget that hope that is seen is no hope at all; & when my earthly “hopes” fail me, when I don’t see circumstances or hearts changing, I become sorely disappointed, discontent, or depressed.

I might say, or I might want to believe, that I’m hoping in God, but as long as I continue to be “hopeful” in these other things, my hope toward God is just vocabulary without reality.

But I’m thankful that false hope causes me to despair. My hope and expectation should be in God & in His word. This is true hope.

“And now, Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in You.” (Psalm 39:7)

“For You are my hope; O Lord GOD, You are my confidence from my youth.” (Psalm 71:5)

“Remember the word to Your servant, in which You have made me hope.” (Psalm 119:49)

Only in the Lord do I find strength-giving hope for times of disaster, for times of despair, for times of grief, for times of discouragement with sin, for times of relentless circumstances, & for times of disappointment. He is my hope — nothing else, no one else. In Christ alone, my hope is found.

I can anchor my heart, my expectation, my everything in Him & in His promises.

Sometimes, things seem really hopeless. But this is because our hope is often misplaced. Our hope was never meant to be put in the things we see. Our hope was never meant to be put in people (how can we expect so much from man?).

Our hope is to be in God. And as we hope in Him, we find strength to wait upon Him. We find strength to persevere until our expectation is realized through Him, in Him, & for Him.

“Be strong and let your heart take courage, all you who hope in the LORD.” (Psalm 31:24)