Last weekend was the women’s retreat and we have decided to post the retreat talks done by some of the members of our Women’s Leadership Team. This one is by Esther Fikkert:
As the deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, ‘Where is your God? | Psalm 42:1-3
Kim shared earlier about our identity being in Christ; how none of the things we aspire to or strive for can fulfill us, and the only identity that matters is that which Christ gives. Juliet spoke on rest in Christ; we strive for so many things and run ourselves ragged trying to be enough, but we can only find rest in knowing that Christ has done it all.
Both of these topics involve a striving. A striving to be whatever it is that you are feeling you need to be at this moment. A striving to do whatever it is that you are feeling you need to do to make through.
We were reminded that we should be seeking our identity fully in Christ. We shouldn’t be trying to do it all: to seek our salvation in what we get done or how good we are. We should be seeking our rest in Christ, not in the never-ending to-do list being completed. But what about those times when we just don’t feel it? We feel fairly confident in our identity in Christ, we know that we should rest in him, but we aren’t where we thought we should be and we know that there just has to be something more out there.
How many of you hear of the good things that you ought to be directing yourself toward and hoping for, but you feel like you are floundering? A family member just found out they have cancer. A friend’s teen is rebelling in ways that could cause long-lasting damage. You can’t find a job, you just lost your job, or you just plain don’t enjoy the job you do have. Your plans didn’t work out. Where is your God?
In Psalm 42:5, the psalmist asks the question: Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Then he encourages, Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. This is all well and good to say, but how do we put this into practice?
I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to conjure up hope in a time of doubt, but in my experience, it doesn’t work very well. I just end up feeling like more of a failure because I can’t get myself to be more hopeful!
Naturally, if we aren’t diligently seeking Christ, we will seek our identity or rest elsewhere. We will default to seeking our hope somewhere else as well. And, there are a lot of places to find these.
We live in a world of false hope! In a world of find-your-own-solutions. We come up with our own answers. Our own systems. Our own things that are going to fix it.
I found myself — and sometimes still find myself — in this spiral over the last year and a half as I was trying to get my baby to learn to sleep in the midst of ear infections, teething and cold after cold. I would pep-talk myself: If can just get him through this cold it will be better; once these teeth come through he’ll sleep through the night; once these antibiotics kick in …
I found myself sitting on his bedroom floor nursing him or standing there bouncing him, trying desperately to get him to sleep; feeling like I was ignoring my other children and my husband, feeling guilty, absolutely and utterly exhausted and hopeless. People offered help, but there really wasn’t anything anyone could do when it was 2, 3, 4 and/or 5 o’clock in the morning and all he would take was me. I felt like I couldn’t be used by God to do what he wanted me to do because I was so tired and there wasn’t time.
I get frustrated because I have other responsibilities that I was able to do when I had 5 kids under 7, but can’t seem to do them now with this needy baby. And I knew that “this too shall pass,” but when you’re tired it doesn’t feel like anything is going to pass, and I just felt like I was going to be stuck there forever trying to rock this little boy to sleep. And if I did get him to sleep to get him to stay that way for longer than two hours. I felt more prepared to give a talk on hopelessness.
In the midst of this struggle, I read a book by Abigail Dodds — (A)Typical Woman — and a sentence she wrote stuck out to me:
We must be faithful women in the life and circumstances He has given us.
I knew this. This isn’t a new statement. I’ve told other people the same thing. But in that instance, it struck me again, put me in my place, brought me to repentance, and made me think about all of the things that we as Christians feel like we need to push through before we can be of use to God.
We put our hope in pushing through or past these things so we can get to the real living for God. Once I can get to working out regularly; once my new medication starts working; once the kids are in school; once the kids are out of school for the summer; once I get that new job; once I get this system in place; once I get this baby to sleep normally. The list goes on and on and on.
The alternative to the striving to make things work is becoming tired and apathetic and just plain giving up — but trying to make that ok. We try to celebrate our shortcomings by putting them on a t-shirt or blogging about them or creating a meme: I’m a hot mess, deal with it; don’t talk to me before my coffee; bless this mess.
Now obviously, some of these are meant to be a joke. But some of us — if we are truly honest — live by these little mantras. We sit around and take a load off and use the excuse that it’s too hard or we need our “me time,” but we don’t do any of the things that God calls us to do because: God just made me this way, there’s nothing I can do about it.
We cover our inadequacies by glorifying them. Yes, God does love us the way we are, but He also calls us to change; He calls us out of our life of apathy. He calls us to live differently — FOR HIM. Our hope should not be in giving up and letting the chips fall where they may, pretending that we don’t care. We must do something. We must have hope and live out that hope.
So where does the Bible tell us to place our hope? Biblical hope is in our God ALONE (Psalm 62:5). Not in the next system or circumstance going our way. Not in pretending it’s not an issue. God doesn’t promise that things will be easy or go the way we want them. But he does promise to keep his promises. We were lost, separated from Christ. But now we have hope through Christ’s crucifixion and his resurrection from the dead. We can be with him in glory forever (Ephesians 2:12, Proverbs 23:18).
Hebrews helps with my first point of this future hope in Christ in the here and now. The first thing that hope does in the here and now is act as our anchor (Hebrew 6:19-20, Hebrews 10:23). We may not see it right now. We may not feel it right now. But we can have faith that God will keep his promises and that faith anchors us and gives us a hope that is unexplainable (Hebrews 11:1).
Secondly, hope gives us joy (Romans 5:2, Romans 12:12, Romans 15:13). Proverbs 13:12 says: Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life — which makes me think of being blissfully satisfied and content. Our longing, whether we acknowledge it or not, is for Christ and in Him, that desire is fulfilled. In Him we find our hope and that hope gives us an inexplicable contentment and joy in the here and now.
Thirdly, hope gives us endurance (Romans 15:4). We read the Bible for encouragement, to see what God has done through those who have gone before us, and that gives us endurance and hope (1 Thessalonians 1:3, Isaiah 40:31, Titus 2:11). We don’t do the things we do in vain. We don’t just throw up our hands, figuring it will all wash out in the end. We do it waiting for our blessed hope, knowing that the hard things we see and do here on this earth are not the end. Jesus is coming back to make all things new! And that hope gives us endurance to see us through to the goal.
It isn’t always going to be easy. More often than not, the pieces won’t fall into place — or at least not when we thought they would. But we can be confident that God has our best interests in mind and we can put our hope in him and his plans, no matter where they take us. Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.
Get the full-text PDF HERE.