Hope

For me, like many of us 2020 was a tough year. So many things we are used to doing didn’t happen and the things we use to mark the calendar where shut down. I found myself at the center of a hurricane as I tried to lead a church through a season like I had never experienced. I like everyone else was trying to figure it out and make my way through. Yet as the leader I was expected to know, understand, and not make mistakes. I became the piñata of everyone’s frustration and fears. Like piñata do if you hit them enough I broke.

Here I was a pastor and questioning everything. I even began to ask what is the point of church? The place that was supposed to be safe was now toxic and destroying me and my family. My hope was in Christ, but it did not rest there alone. It had become tangled into so many others things, such as activities and successes. God used 2020 to begin to untangle me. He revealed things in my life that had to go. I am thankful for 2020 for me it was a time of revival and self check. I did not like what I saw or what I was becoming. I needed to get back to the basics. It is and always will be a heart issue and mine needed to return to God. I never left but had stop surrendering 100% all the time and I was reminded of that in 2020.

So where do you put your hope? What things do you hope for that aren’t Christ like or kingdom building? 

This morning I read 2 Corinthians 1:1-11 and verses 8-10 stood out to me as I reflected on hope. 

“For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.”

‭‭2 Corinthians‬ ‭1:8-10‬ ‭ESV‬‬

https://www.bible.com/59/2co.1.8-10.esv

We can not rely on ourselves! We must rely solely on the Lord, that is where we put our hope. He delivers us each and everyday and will deliver us again, so where do you put your hope?