Hope: Relating to Others & Restoration
Have you considered that hope is contagious? Souls with hope want to share it with others! I include the following quotes from Dan B. Allender’s :The Healing Path: How the Hurts in Your Past Can Lead You to A More Abundant Life and Redeeming Heartache: How Past Suffering Reveals Our True Calling. I include these quote for educational purposes with charge to readers and to discuss the inherent meanings in relation to spiritual growth/healing. Please consider purchasing, and reading chapter “The Dream of Hope” for your personal growth.
Post Number 3 in series on Hope: Previous Post
Truth 1: Hopes frees us to live for God and to hope for future
“Hope frees us to live for God’s purposes. Hope frees us to serve a greater good than our own happiness or comfort. It frees us to love and anticipate our future even if we are awaiting our execution.”
“The Dream of Hope” pg 158
Hope meets us in our present trials, troubles, and difficulties. Hope turns our eyes upward to Someone Greater. Despair and hopelessness lead us to seek personal comfort and to withdraw from others. Difficulties and disappointments cloud our souls! Are you free to love and serve? What holds you back?
Truth 2: Hope Trusts that God is Changing our Character
Hope compels us to live for the future by pouring ourselves out as offerings to God in our relationships with others. The primary way we give God glory is through loving others.”
The Dream of Hope” pg 158
When we remain trapped in cycles of despair and rumination about past failures or difficulties, we become focused on past “what ifs” instead of trusting in God to redeem and move us forward. Hope leads to freedom which becomes apparent in how we relate and love others. Are you free to love and serve others? Other people will disappoint and fail us, but how do we respond? Daily reflection helps us to stay on track and grow in grace. Reflection questions:
- Am I quick to forgive others understanding that I need forgiveness and grace because I too fail others?
- When others ignore and fail/neglect to encourage me, do I give up on them and write them off or pray for them hoping that God will bring change and healing? Boundaries are appropriate and necessary.
- Do I love others for what they are doing for me or could do? Does my love for others meet the requirements of 1 Corinthians 13? Or is the love self-seeking or other pleasing?
- Is my heart becoming hard and cynical of others because of past and present disappointments?
Asking these questions and facing the truth of our situations leads us to be more compassionate and kind as God reveals our hearts and we respond in repentance.
Truth 3: Evil’s Disruption
Evil intends for us to succumb to betrayal by giving up on relationship; it intends for us to resign to powerlessness by giving up on the future. Once we lose faith and hope, then we are more susceptible to ambivalence and shame. pg 159
Dan explains the struggle that we must all face in the realm of relationships. Ever felt or experienced betrayal from others? The more we invest in others the more likely others will disappoint us. After multiple disappointments, a person becomes tempted to just stop reaching out and caring for others. Ever heard the enemy whisper something like the following: “it’s easier to just not expect anything. Keep to yourself, you’ll be much happier, Don’t waste your time, they don’t want to hear it anyway”? The enemy tells me “most people will ignore you and what you’re trying to accomplish.”
This post relates discusses feeling betrayed and disappointed with others.
https://wordpress.com/post/wordsofencouragementinchrist.com/1837
Hope comes into these situations when we choose to hope and trust that God will redeem these things. God redeems our failures and the difficult things that we experience. Even when others betray us! Consider how Jesus redeems Peter’s betrayal! Jesus uses this great failure to build up Peter and remind him that caring for others is expressing love for Him.
Dan writes about how ambivalence and shame keep us from hoping and ultimately loving others in Chapter 6: “Ambivalence and the Loss of Love.” I recommend reading this book as you to experience difficulties, and grow in your love for others. Ambivalence in this context refers to facing conflicting thoughts and emotions in relation to others. For a detailed explanation and example of ambivalence:
Shame keeps us from reaching out to others in love. Shame and ambivalence prevents growth and healing.
Redeeming Wounds and Hope
Quotes from the section “The Six Types: A Prophet’s Hope”. Dan explains the role of the prophet in “offering the power of hope”. Let’s focus on the role of hope in this context:
Two friends embrace as they consider the temporary nature of their present difficulties in life.
Hope Works to Restore
Dan uses the analogy of restoring a chair: sanding it down removing the old varnish, preparing it for a new coat, and making the chair to shine again.
Hope always involves taking down whatever wars against goodness and restores what has been harmed to its intended glory. . .
Glory is beauty that fills the heart with wonder and gratitude. Glory calls us to risk, suffer, defy, and persevere to bring on earth what is in heaven.
pg. 112
Hope moves in our lives to restore us! Dan explains the role of prophets and future hope:
The prophet isn’t primarily a teller of future events as much as he reminds us of the future that is promised because of God’s character.
pg. 112
A common thread in the Major Prophets and the book of Revelation is God’s restoration after His Righteous Judgement. God restores and renews His people. This applies to the Hebrew people of the First Covenant (Abraham and his descendants) and for the believers who have been grafted into faith as Paul explains in Romans 11.
God’s prophets guide us in seeking a better future in faith and in the Kingdom of God.
Encouraging others to desire God more
Prophets offer far more than solace; the envision the lavish inheritance that we can anticipate with confidence
pg. 113
Have you considered that this inheritance enabled Abraham to believe against all hope (previous post on hope)? The promise of new life and resurrection in Christ encouraged Paul as he suffered persecution and arrest. It’s the promise of a redeemed, restored world that allows us to see God’s light and promise with the background of suffering, loss, and difficulty in our present age of division and war.
They (prophets) intensify desire for what is ahead and offer access to the same power that raised Jesus from the dead–the presence of God. This is not the promise of healing from a disease or an escape from bankruptcy. It’s not a power we possess to name and claim whatever we want. pg 113
Prophets remind people to have hope and to trust in God’s Presence. He promises that He will never leave nor forsake us. This doesn’t mean that we won’t endure loss or tragedy in lives. Following Christ and His path isn’t a promise of ease, comfort, or prosperity, but it is the path to eternal life! Dan explains this power:
Rather, it’s a power to risk and to labor, oftentimes in relative obscurity, in order to restore our small sector of the earth, knowing that our granular effort will be raised up with Christ to glory. pg 113
This is our call: to encourage others to keep hoping and believing when all seems lost! This call means that we will labor alone with God and experience rejection, misunderstanding, and malice from the evil forces that oppose God’s Kingdom.
Our Awesome God
Phil Whickam reminds us of these great truths in his song What an Awesome God
Our God is an awesome God
He reigns from heaven above
With wisdom, power, and love
Our God is an awesome God
Eyes on the Sky
There will be a day
He will come and wipe our tears away
No more fear
No more pain
No more sorrow, sin, or shame
The King is coming back again
A reign of love that will never end
For everything You’ve done
And everything You do
And everything You are I’ll sing to you
My God, You’re an awesome God
You’re great in all You do
I’m made to worship You
My God, You’re an awesome God
Lyric Source:
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/philwickham/whatanawesomegod.html
There is a day coming when He will come back in person and all the sorrows and tears of this world will pass away! You can read about this glorious moment in Revelation chapters 21-22! As difficulties come upon us, we can rest in His Promises knowing that He sees and knows our burdens. This is our hope and truth!
Purpose of Encouragement
Encouragement isn’t about making a person feel better or comfortable. Encouragement is about laboring to support someone’s desire, and courage to press ahead in his or her journey of faith. There are areas of all of our lives that needs God’s grace and redemption. Understand that God redeems all of us–every single part! He sees and reaches into all the “broken” and sinful parts of our being. May God’s grace and mercy increase your hope and faith in Him!
Words of Grace & Hope 