Today’s Dose of Hope: Hoping in the Word

Hello hopers! I have missed blogging regularly during the holidays. But while I wasn’t posting much, I was polishing a project I’ve been working on for a couple weeks (months?) now related to Doses of Hope. Last year I was talking a lot about this verse:

I wait for the Lord, I expectantly wait, and in His word do I hope. – Psalm 130:5 (AMP)

I think it’s a really important one. It says a lot about life in that one little sentence and what it means to be a follower of Christ, what it means to wait in whatever area we’re waiting (health, career, relationships, etc), and what it means to live a life of hope. One ripe with expectation.

I also love that it establishes how we wait: with hope in God’s Word. God’s Word is of course His breath on the page. His divine revelation to us so that we’re not fumbling through this world all alone in the dark, trying to figure it out as we go. God straight up tells us through Paul’s letter to Timothy that every word in His Word is not only divinely inspired (“God-breathed” as the New International Version tells us), it is useful in teaching us what is true, helping us realize what is wrong, and equipping us to do good.

All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work. – 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NLT)

We could unpack even the first sentence of that for hours. But instead, I wanted to share some of the verses I’ve been thinking when it comes to hoping in the Word. I love that God’s Word is always referred to in the present tense. It is alive. It speaks to you and me the same way it spoke to the original authors and readers thousands of years ago. It was written to you and me for our specific lives just as much as it was written for every other reader through the ages. “God uses it” in our lives as 2 Timothy tells us. He did not just give us His Word to reflect on the past. He gives it to us for today.

And we can place our hope in it (confident expectation), because God’s Word is His promise. He’s never contradicted His Word, and He never will. I love this verse. I just discovered with new eyes it for the first time like moments ago.

God also bound himself with an oath, so that those who received the promise could be perfectly sure that he would never change his mind. So God has given both his promise and his oath. These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It leads us through the curtain into God’s inner sanctuary.  - Hebrews 6:17-19 (NLT)

C.H. Spurgeon talks about it like this:

“No promise is of private interpretation: it belongs not to one saint but to all believers. If, my brother, thou canst in faith lie down upon a promise and take thy rest thereon, it is thine… Come, weary one, use thy LORD’s words as thy pillows. Lie down in peace. Dream only of Him.” – C.H. Spurgeon

Underneath all that 1800′s talk (which I’m geeky enough to not mind at all) is a fantastic message of truth for us. None of God’s promises apply to just some of us. All of them apply to all of us. We might be on different timelines, we might take different journeys through different trials, and we might have to wait for different things at different times. But each of us has been given the promise that we can hope in God’s Word and the things His Word says, which comes straight from God Himself, to speak to us about His good plans for our lives.

I wait for the Lord, I expectantly wait, and in His word do I hope. – Psalm 130:5 (AMP)

Awesome, right?

I’ve been making a list of what else God tells us about His Word and what else He tells us in His Word, and I’m going to kick this year off  with new Doses of Hope about what God is showing me and how much I’m continuing to learn about the HOPE that we can live with. That’s all caps because I’m excited. I could shout it from the rooftops.

I’m also super excited about all the hope we’ve been able to share with each other over email, Facebook, and comments. I love the community God blesses us with even online. Happy (belated) New Year! Here’s to a blessed 2012!

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