Thursday 19th March - In God We Trust

DAILY BYTE

It must be said however that it really, really, really matters what or who we place our hope in. It’s not enough just to have hope because the actual area in which we direct our hope is absolutely vital.

Those prisoners in Frankl’s concentration camp had hope but directed it towards the wrong source (the Allies); just as King Zedekiah misplaced his hope by trusting in the Egyptians and not God. Sometimes we seem to place our hope more in our circumstances changing than in God himself. Hear what Eugene Peterson says about this matter:

‘Hope is a willingness to let God do it his way and in his time. It is the opposite of making plans that we demand that God put into effect, telling him both how and when to do it. That is not hoping in God but bullying God.’

God’s promises to us are not always about our circumstances changing (although I affirm that God can and does radically change circumstances). Remember that even Jesus contended with circumstances he did not want (read the story of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane). No, God promises are more about an overflow. That God’s love, life and endless potential will never, ever stop overflowing into our lives and that nothing in heaven, earth or hell can stop that.

Nothing!

Not even the very worst of circumstances, the most frightening of tomorrows. In fact, the only factor that can stop that overflow is us. For God won’t abandon us, but we most certainly can abandon him. When we give up on hope, we give up on life. When we give up on tomorrows, we give up on today and we walk ourselves through the gates of a self-imposed hell.

God’s promise is to overflow his love and presence even into difficult circumstances. God is more into redeeming our circumstances than changing them, and transforming us through them by filling them with divine meaning.

Like what happened with Jeremiah and the Jerusalemites. The day after tomorrow, their worst fears did come to pass. Their city was sacked, the walls were broken down, and the majority of them were dragged away from their promised land, away from Jeremiah’s field of faith, away from the city of God, away from the Temple, and away from God himself … or so they thought.

But it wasn’t forever. For Jeremiah’s faith was eventually rewarded for 50 years later they returned to farm their fields with shouts of joy and tears of laughter.
But that’s not the main point of our story. You see while they were in those foreign lands, the places they believed were God-forsaken, they discovered that in fact God WAS there! That God was not rooted to one city, to one land. God was everywhere! A whole nation’s faith took a quantum leap forward in growth and understanding.

God’s love for them overflowed from Jerusalem all the way to Babylonia!
Jesus realised that his circumstances (the cross) would not be changing, but he managed through his fear and stress, to allow God’s love and spirit to find him and overflow into him – even in the Garden of Gethsemane. Easter reminds us that this same love overflows for us all in an incredibly personal and redeeming way. It overflows from the cross to the very centre of our hearts and lives.

Take care to open your heart to that truth – no matter how difficult things may be, or how horribly your tomorrows may be lurking, God’s love will find you and overflow into you.

PRAY AS YOU GO

Lord God, we pray that your love and life would constantly overflow into our hearts, even when we are going through difficult times. We confess that we have sometimes misplaced our hope by trusting in all the wrong things. Help us to hope in you alone. In Christ name we pray. Amen.

FOCUS READING

Luke 22 : 41-44

He withdrew about a stone's throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done." An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.