When Do We Need to Kill Hope?

Why live if we do not have hope?
Hope for a life of purpose.
Hope for health.
Hope for relationships.
Hope to be loved securely.
Hope for….

Hope can be excruciating!
A sick and despairing heart comes with hope deferred. The ongoing absence of what we believe would add to our thriving and pleasure brings a sense of depletion. Squashes a fullness of joy.

We don’t want to get our hopes up only to have them dashed, leaving us with a crushed heart!

I find within a lurking resignation that some of my hopes will never come to pass. The ‘fairy tales’ are not going to materialize. If I could lower my expectant hopes to ‘reality’, then I would not be having hope deferred. I find a warped desire to get better at denying the longings of my heart in hopes this will kill off the lurking depression or angst.

But what of the God given desires of wanting more than this flawed world can give me? Of hoping for more of what God initiated at the time of Eden? Of what is available on the other side of the transition door?

I see a ‘tie in’ to some underpinning reactions I have to prayer.
Often I observe that we bring our hopes to God in an attempt to convince Him to make our hopes come true. We use the ‘name it to claim it’ mantra as a way to manipulate Him into our way of thinking. Yet often what we hope for may not be in our best eternal interest.
We pursue having pleasure, avoiding painful and hard things and having problems quickly fixed. And we want God to join our agenda.

A problem we have is that we do not truly know what will bring about a fullness of thriving and joy and peace. It is possible that the fulfillment of some of our hopes and dreams will in reality ‘clip our wings’. Our hope may be toxic to our well being.

Maybe as these limiting hopes die, we will increase the likelihood of the restoration of our broken perspectives. Maybe a resurrection of something God desires can occur once the death of an ill placed hope dies.

Jesus sees the big picture. His hopes for us are eternally greater than our miniature ones. His dreams are bigger and broader and deeper than what we can imagine.

Would we not benefit from discovering what Jesus is praying for – since He lives to make intercession for us- and ask for His delightfully lofty hopes to come to pass?

Our wants are not necessarily bad. In fact, it is wise to not kill off the acknowledgement of our preference, dreams and desires. Through these we gain insights into the design of how we are made by God. By embracing these we can live more fully. The problem may be in our determination of what these should look like.
We need to ‘die’ to the clinging of our interpretation what of our dreams and hopes look like.

Let’s keep our passions intact while pursing God’s hope, as He pursues bringing restoration and resurrection to what is best left to die.