When Your Hopes Seem to Be on Hold

When Your Hopes Seem to Be on Hold

by Guest - - Holley Gerth

 

You have not been abandoned or forgotten. God is working, and when you least expect it, in a way that you may hardly even recognize at first, He’s going to fulfill all He promised.

You are His servant, and it will be to you as He has said. No matter what. 

But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor  with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call Him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David, and He will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; His kingdom will never end.” Luke 1:30-33 

With the Christmas season just past and a new year beginning, the words above keep echoing in my mind. I’ve heard them since I was a child — I imagine you may have too. But this time I heard something new. A whisper of the hopes that must have been born in Mary’s heart that day.  Because the angel didn’t say - -
 Your joy will turn to sorrow before this story is done.
Your son will be misunderstood by most and rejected by many.
He will be crucified right before your eyes.

No, the angel said . . .

“He will be great.”

“He will be given a throne.”

“He will reign and His kingdom will never end.”

I don’t know what was going through Mary’s mind as Jesus’ life unfolded, but I can imagine what may have filled her heart at times: Confusion, questioning, wondering if she heard God wrong.

Have you ever felt that way? Maybe you even do today?

Then here’s the hope Mary gives us: Just because what God has said to us doesn’t look the way we pictured doesn’t mean it’s not real.

Jesus is great.

He does have a throne.

He is reigning over a Kingdom that will never end.

It just didn’t happen the way Mary probably expected. What got her through?

I imagine Mary kept praying that same prayer she did when the angel first spoke to her: “I am the Lord’s servant. May Your word to me be fulfilled” {Luke 1:38}. Perhaps she softly spoke it as she leaned over a manger. Maybe she uttered it every time she overheard rumors and gossip about Jesus as she stood in the local market. I wonder if she offered it as a cry of grief and surrender at the foot of the cross.

It is the one prayer we must never stop praying on the road to our hopes and dreams. 

Because the moment we refuse to say it is when we have made what we want about us. The moment when we have stepped into God’s place and demanded that things turn out the way we thought they would. The moment when we can lose faith because what we were really trusting in was our own expectations.

Say that prayer, sister/brother  

Say it on your knees in desperation with tears streaming down your face. Shout it at the top of your anger-filled lungs. Whisper it with the last bit of strength you have left. Because God is faithful, and what He has spoken will come true. Not the way we pictured. Not the way we planned. Not the way we would prefer. But it will happen {Isaiah . 55:11, 2 Cor. 1:20}.

You have not been abandoned or forgotten. God is working, and when you least expect it, in a way that you may hardly even recognize at first, He’s going to fulfill all He promised.

You are His servant, and it will be to you as He has said. No matter what.