When, Not If, The Desire Comes

Proverbs 13:12 - Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but it is the tree of life when the desire comes.

For the past several years, I have subconsciously read this as, "but IF (not when) the desire comes, it is the tree of life."

Have you ever hoped and believed for something for so long that you had given up hope?  See, if you don’t hope for something, you're not disappointed when it doesn't happen.

But uh-oh.... FAITH is the substance of things HOPED for, the evidence of things not seen. (Heb.11:1). But it definitely doesn't help my hope when I read the rest of that chapter about all the heroes of faith who died before they saw their promises fulfilled. 

I wish the writer of Hebrews had included King David in that list. He died without building the temple he longed to build.

How is that for a hope crusher?!  God told him he couldn't build it, but his son would. 

I believe David is one of the Bible's best representations of faith and waiting on God. Because his 'waiting' on God involved much more than trusting God to bring the fulfillment.  It involved running from King Saul, fighting battles at every turn, and even the sin of messing around with another man's wife and having her husband killed.  Yet he was still the apple of God's eye.

David was anointed to be king long before he was given the throne.  And I can just picture him as a young man sitting on a hillside watching his flock and asking God (if his personality was anything like mine) "Okay God, you anointed me to be king... did you mean king of the people or king of the sheep?!"

How did he hold on to hope all those years as a shepherd and then running from King Saul? Did he always hold onto hope?  Read the Psalms and look at all the times he cried out to God, "Where are You?!  Why are You allowing me to go through this? Why are my enemies winning?"  But you know what? His heart always returned to tell God, "But I will trust in You."

That's the answer right there to holding onto hope… Trusting God to come through even when circumstances shout otherwise.

But if you're like me, you find yourself trusting God completely in certain areas and (sometimes unknowingly) not in other areas. 

Remember that I had subconsciously been reading IF and not WHEN the desire comes? Sometimes, we get to a place where hope seems so foreign in a situation that we sort of change what we are hoping for. We settle for less than God's best. Or worse, we get ourselves tangled in situations that are not God-ordained and end up with an Ishmael like Abraham did.

 

My prayer for today is:

God, show us how to hope in You. Help us spend the time we need getting to know You more and learn how much you love us. Help us see situations around us through Your eyes, and don't let us jump out of Your will by letting go of hope and taking matters into our own hands. And help us not give up on our dreams because they are being delayed. Show us that delayed does not mean denied. And fill us with all joy and peace in believing that we abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

  Amen.

 

 

For further insight into hope, I recommend, Hope Journey: A Prayer Journal for Scripture Meditation.