Solid Ground

Lord, where do I put my hope? My only hope is in you.

Psalm 39:7

God’s great, overarching promise is himself. He has given himself fully to us, and in any situation, at any moment, for any reason, he is completely sufficient. When we look around for other rescue, other supply, we come up dry. Everything else is flimsy and untrustworthy, but the promises of God are sure. We can confidently put our hope in him.

God is not only the foundation of hope but also the source of hope: “I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13). As we turn toward him with all our cares and anxieties, he generates hope in us. That hope so fills us with joy and peace that our lives overflow with it. People around us are infected with it.

My mother is a woman of infectious hope. At age eighty-five at the time I was writing this, she said, “I’ve lived too long for worrying to make any sense.” No matter what has come her way through the years, she learned long ago to praise God for who he is and place all her hope in him. I’ve observed her all my life and have witnessed what it looks like to put one’s hope in God. I’ve seen her come through bruising difficulties unscathed. I’ve seen her weather heartaches and emerge stronger. She stands in these last years of her life as living proof that a woman can live a lifetime with God as her only hope and can be a real, genuine, honest-to-goodness human being living real life with all its difficulties and sorrows.

What are you facing today—big or little? Where is your hope? What if everything you had confidence in has proven unreliable? Try to identify misplaced hope, and deliberately transfer all your hope to God. He is safe and reliable and sure.

My only hope is in you, Father. Teach me what that means in the details of my life. Alert me when I have placed hope somewhere other than in you.

If you hope for happiness in the world, hope for it from God, and not from the world.

David Brainerd(1718–1747), American missionary to Native Americans