Put Your Hope in God … and Enjoy the Journey
I am the First and the Last; there is no other God. Who is like me?
Let him step forward and prove to you his power.
Let him do as I have done since ancient times
when I established a people and explained its future…
You are my witnesses – is there any other God?
No! There is no other Rock—not one!
Isaiah 44:6-8 New Living Translation
I enjoy road trips. It’s not unusual for Debbi and me to take several road trips with no particular place to go; we just picked a point on the map and then chose a non-direct route to get there. Most of the trips I take, however, have a purpose; I have somewhere to go. When I visit family and friends, I anticipate arriving and spending time with them. If I have a meeting or seminar to attend, I look forward to connecting with people, contributing to decisions, or receiving new insight. But I enjoy the journey there as much as the reason for the journey.
God has taught us several things about hope. The best is that God has something awesome in store for us. Jesus’ death and resurrection make possible for us the privilege of sharing in a future glory. All those who “confess with their mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in their hearts that God raised him from the dead shall be saved” (Romans 10:9). God promises a new heaven and a new earth. Having been set free from slavery to sin in this life, we wonder what it will be like to no longer have to deal with sin, its effects, and its consequences. And, for as awesome as all that is, the most wonderful promise is that we have the awesome ability to enjoy a pure and beautiful relationship with God, just as God intended for all people at creation.
The destination is going to be awesome! When our hope is in God, we can know that our destination is sure. As God told the Israelites through Isaiah, “What I tell you, you can count on. Who else can tell you what will happen in the days ahead? Let them do as I have done since ancient times.” God is faithful and can be counted on to bring us to the destination God has promised.
But … we haven’t arrived. The moment we accept Jesus as our Savior and Lord, we start out on a journey. And our journey has a name; its name is HOPE. Paul reminds us, “Hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently” (Romans 8:24-25). Hope is a road trip with a destination. Our problem is that we are often like children. We are barely down the road and already we are nagging the Father, “Are we there yet?” Now I know that Jesus told us that unless we become like little children, we will never enter the kingdom of God (Matthew 18:3), and God even gives us permission to have the persistence of a child (Luke 11:8), but I don’t recall we are to be impatient like a child. Impatience is often what gets in the way of enjoying our God-given hope.
While there are many examples in the Bible, the child nation of Israel demonstrates it well. God delivers them from slavery to the Egyptians and sets them out on a road trip. Their destination is the Promised Land. The nation is so excited they can’t wait. But this is not to be a quick journey across town. It is in the journey that God intends to establish his relationship with them and that takes time. He has them stop at Mount Sinai so that he can give them instructions for life and living as God’s chosen people. But while Moses is on the mountain receiving those instructions, they grow impatient and convince Aaron to fashion something out of gold. This will be “god” so they can get on with the journey.
Interestingly, the grown-up nation of Israel isn’t any better. God does not do for them what they want, when they want, so they start worshipping other gods. Neglecting God because of their impatience on the journey in their walk with him has ultimately led to their exile from the Promised Land. We do that, too.
Men, how often haven’t we over-ruled our wife’s objections because we’re sure we can get where we’re going faster or find a route that we expect will have less obstacles and then we either get totally lost or arrive too late for the party? Then we try to excuse our poor judgment by declaring what an awesome adventure it was. Road trips in the car are one thing. But in life, if we are not listening to and following God, our misadventures turn into hopelessness and despair.
I am so grateful that even when we knowingly turn away from God’s way, God will bring us back to hope. Through Isaiah, God invites the Israelites to join him again on his journey. It will include returning to the Promised Land. God’s requirement is that they must return to God’s way and trust God. Our gracious God continues to offer us the same promise. To the church in Ephesus, who had wandered away from the path of hope they had in God, Jesus had John write, “Remember where you were. Repent and do the things you did at first” (Revelations 2:5).
Most of the time, though, the things that keep us from the hope that God intends for us as we journey aren’t drastic they just get in the way or distract us. What can really mess up a road trip for me is how I respond to the reality of every trip: finding myself behind a truck. I don’t much like driving behind trucks. It’s not that the truck driver is doing anything wrong or that I don’t think that I should have to share the road with trucks. It’s that I can’t see. Similarly, I find that I lose hope on my journey when I no longer focus on the God of the journey. Amazingly, it is not the big things that take my focus off God. Big things tend to help me focus better on God. It’s the little, everyday things.
The first time I read through the Isaiah 44 I laughed out loud. How could anyone take a chunk of wood, put half of it into a stove to warm the house and bake a loaf of bread, and then take the other half and carve it into an idol and worship it. Talk about ridiculous. How could a piece of wood possibly give a person hope or a sense of security? And how could a person be so naïve? But as I read the text a couple more times, I sensed God smiling and shaking his head at me. He showed me my trucks and then told me that those trucks that are always on the road are the circumstances in life that are always there, blocking my view, keeping me from seeing. Circumstance comes from the Latin circumstantia, meaning to “stand around.” Circumstances are people and events that crowd into our lives. They can be positive or negative. But here’s the thing, the deceiver, who wants us off the journey and doesn’t want us to enjoy the journey, works hard to convince us that they are permanent fixtures that determine our foreseeable future.
Once on the way to Chicago, we got caught in a semi squeeze. There was one in front of us, and one on each side of us. I really could not see and as a result, missed our exit, which can be a major dilemma when you are on the toll road. When circumstances get in the way like that it can take us off track and cause us to lose hope. Pretty soon, we allow the circumstances to tell us what is true about God: You’ve missed your exit; there’s no turning back; it’s really going to cost you now.
But when the circumstances pass and we can see the open road again we will realize that God provides many opportunities to turn around. Not only that, but the threat that it will cost us something to get back into God’s good graces isn’t; God has already paid the toll. “O return to me, for I have paid the price to set you free.” As Jesus declared, “If the Son has set you free, you will be free indeed!” (John 8:36). Don’t let circumstances tell you what is and isn’t true about God; let God tell you what is and isn’t true about circumstances.
When you accepted God’s hope of glory and you were set free to begin a hope-filled journey to an awesome destination, you were also blessed with an on-going freedom that no one and no thing can take away, not even the circumstances of life.
Put Your Hope in God … and Enjoy the Journey! If you get off track, don’t worry. God will lead you back to hope. He’ll go with you.
With you on this Awesome Journey!
DS John