23 Mar Lost Your Hope?
If I weren’t married, my top ten movie list would just include movies like Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, but sometimes, I watch a genre of movies just because the man who holds my heart likes them. Not all the movies on his top ten list make it to mine. I mean, I can only watch any of the Jason Bourne movies once. I certainly can’t watch them every time one of them plays on a cable network; even though, the one who holds my heart will stop on one of them every time.
Because my top ten movie list has been influenced by my man, movies like Braveheart and Shawshank Redemption have become a couple of my favorites. In Shawshank Redemption, one of the incarcerated characters, Red Redding, makes the statement to another inmate, Andy Dufresne, “Hope is a dangerous thing.” A man in prison is afraid to hope because he says it can drive you crazy. To survive in the darkness of prison, he thinks you can’t have hope.
I think the Evil One wants us not to hope. He wants us to believe we can’t get out of the pit we are in, and we can’t ever escape the darkness. Sometimes, we fall for this deception because we have lost hope. Someone has hurt us, we’re battle weary, and we don’t think we can trust again, so we lose all hope.
Here’s the thing: there will always be someone who will disappoint you or hurt you. That someone is flesh. Jesus, the God who became flesh, can always be trusted. He can also give us power for restoration in our relationships and the power to come out of the darkness and out of the bondage of unforgiveness.
As the song from Bethel Music “It is Well,” says, “So let go my soul and trust in Him. The waves and wind still know His name.”
If the waves and wind still know His name, who am I to question His power? I need to trust in Jesus and ask for Him to restore my hope. Hope is not dangerous with Him, He can be trusted.