There are certain times when I feel a particular heaviness. This feeling arises from all the things going on around the world. One day, I was sitting in a restaurant with my husband. We were eating dinner. News headlines kept popping up on a TV screen in my peripheral vision.
It was distracting. I told my husband that I don’t feel like I can bear all the heaviness inside me. I see what is unfolding in the world and some of the lives around me. It all seems like too much. Then he gently reminded me that it’s not my job to bear it all. I was never meant to carry such a burden.
This world belongs to God, and He is still on the throne.
So as I was praying about this, God gave me a word: HOPE. Some of us have placed our hope in our abilities or our achievements? Maybe you find your hope in your job or how well you parent your children. Is hope based on the acceptance and love you find in the people around you, or your circumstances?
I can get stuck on the hamster wheel of performance. When I’m doing well at my job or keeping the house in order, then I feel good about myself. But then, just as easily as I find success, something will happen that will put me into a tailspin.
- My editor doesn’t find me as witty as I find myself
- I miss my workout for the third time
- The craft project I started is an epic fail!
And suddenly my thoughts start spinning out of control. I’m not good enough. I need to hold it together. I CAN’T DO THIS! But thankfully, Jesus is always here, ready to call me back to the present reality.
I am enough.
He is holding it all together.
Christ in me CAN DO THIS!
We have been made right. Not because of what we do or don’t do, but simply because we have placed our faith in Jesus.
“He made Him who knew no sin to be sin in our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
2 Corinthians 5:21
We are new creations in Christ, holy and blameless.
Where have you placed your hope? If your hope is placed in anything other than Jesus and the new life He gave you at the cross, then you are going to be disappointed. There is a song by Matthew West called “Hope Returns.” When I first heard this song, I dismissed it outright. It was talking about Hope returning to us. As a believer in the New Covenant, I know that Hope can never leave us because He lives inside of us.
But then I began to ask myself, if that is true why do I still feel so hopeless? Why is there still a heaviness inside of me? God spoke this song into my heart at just the right time and I saw the truth.
Hope has never left me, but sometimes I forget that truth.
I place my hope in my circumstances, or I am distracted by the problems in this world, I let the brokenness settle inside of me. That’s when I need a reminder.
Hope returns as I am called back to the truth of Jesus in me…the truth of His righteousness in me.
There is nothing that I need to do to earn His love or righteousness. And there is nothing I can do to lose it. It is mine, because of Jesus and what He has done inside of me.
And that’s what gives me … Hope. Jesus gives me the strength to keep going, even when my world around me seems to be falling apart.
I pray the Spirit will show you who you are today, and that you will place your Hope in Him.
“This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and reliable and one which enters within the veil,” Hebrews 6:19
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