The Wrong Hope is Frustrating

Someone posted on Facebook: "To hope is to risk frustration. Therefore, make up your mind to risk frustration.:-Thomas Merton  This got me to thinking about hope.  Hope is a strange word in the scriptures because it does not mean the same thing as how we use it today.

In the Bible it is a sure hope.  When hope is mentioned in scripture it means something will definitely happen in the future and when we hope in that event we can be confident that it will happen.  Today it simply means that we have no idea if it will happen, but we wish it would.

So today's hope can bring frustration, but scriptural hope will never leave you frustrated.  But what about when we pray?  Can we become frustrated when we go to God asking for something and not get it?  When we plead with God for healing, for a loved one to be safe, or for the salvation of a friend and it does not happen, how do we feel?

I have been a Christian for almost 50 years now and I have had a lot of prayers not answered the way I wanted.  If God loves me, why doesn't He answer my prayers as I asked?  It has taken a while for me to realize that God doesn't fulfill all my desires, because He does love me.

I don't get frustrated now when I pray for something and it does not go my way.  My hope is not in any event, but in God.  Before I was selfish, but I am now slowly learning that God's plans go far beyond my desires.

Which do I really want, my ways or God's?  Now when I tell God what I think should happen, my hope is not in that happening, but in God to do the right thing.  If my desire is not met, it is because God has a better idea.  I might become sad, but never frustrated.  My plans need to become secondary to God's plans

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash