“But as for me, I will watch in hope for the Lord. I will wait on God my Savior; my God will hear me.”
—Micah 7:7

What is hope, really? And how do we continue to have it when we hope and hope for things that never come to fruition? Isn’t it foolish to keep hoping when time after time our hopes and our dreams don’t “come true”?

One of my favorite simple Bible verses about hope says,

“For you O Lord are my hope, my trust O Lord, from my youth.”
—Psalm 71

Another beautiful Bible verse about Hope is found in Psalm 13:

“But I have trusted in your faithful love; my heart will rejoice in your deliverance. I will sing to the Lord because he has treated me generously.”—Psalm 13:5-6

The secret is not to put our hope in a certain outcome or certain circumstances, but the Author of life Himself. As the Psalmist says, the Lord is our only Hope, our only certainty. We are taught to put our hope in our circumstances, our dreams, our people, even in ourselves, and we come up disappointed, sometimes more often than not. Only Jesus can give us true hope that lasts!

This is most often forgotten by me in times of sorrow or trial. I am cautious as I say that, as I know that I have only barely tasted of the suffering and sorrows that some people experience in this lifetime. When I suffer, often over the sorrow or trials of my own children or people that we are serving, I begin to pray fervently for a certain outcome, usually that they would be relieved of this hurt. And this isn’t wrong. I do believe that God delights when we bring all our worries, all our hurts, both big and small to Him, and when we pray fervently for Him to relieve us and save us or our loved ones out of them.

The problem comes when I get so focused on the outcome, the things that I want or the end of the things that I don’t want, that I put my hope there. I place my hope in a certain situation or a certain answer, and not in the One who holds the answers and holds eternity in His hands.

I once hoped with all my heart for the healing of a terminally ill friend. I prayed for her healing fervently and I believed that God would perform the miracle required to save her. Perhaps you have been there? Believing with everything in you for the cancer to be gone at the next scan, for your marriage to be renewed as you strive to turn toward your spouse, for groceries to appear on the doorstep when you have worked three jobs and still can’t make ends meet, for the wayward child to find their way home. You have cried out to God and you have prayed your bold prayers and you have fully believed that He will do it.

And you aren’t wrong to ask. To beg, to believe. In fact, I believe God is so pleased with this kind of hope. This kind of hope, expectation, anticipation puts us right up next to our loving Father. This kind of hope is our great offering to God.

We can trust Him with our longings, even as we put our ultimate hope in the finished work of Jesus Christ and the promise of eternity with Him.

So how do we keep from being disappointed when He doesn’t answer our prayers the way we want Him to? What does it mean when we pray with all our might and our friend still breathes her last, our marriage crumbles, our family doesn’t have enough to eat, or the wayward child remains estranged from family? Were we wrong, to expect that He could intervene?

No. This hope was beautiful to Him. And yet, ultimately, our hope cannot be in the outcome of our circumstances. It must be in God alone. The result of our hoping and our expectancy, whether or not we get what we want, is that we get more of God. As we cry out to Him we get to experience a little glimpse into our eternity – His presence with us.