{Be Real} Patient in Hope

I said it out loud, just this week.

“I just want to get this show on the road already.” Hurry the process – yes, that’s what I said I wanted to do.

But what my heart really knew, down deep…was that I just wanted to be out of the in between.

It’s in between places that make us feel vulnerable, exposed. Our hearts are tender, the band-aids that we use to cover us are ripped right off.

Raw.

The raw places, the tender places, they’re the places we fear.

Because on the other side of that fear, lies so many possibilities. What if this thing I’m waiting for is just a huge disappointment? What if…what if…

In that space, our fears surface, bubble…

And we see what our impatience reveals. The truth behind impatience is that it’s a mask for our fear, and lack of faith and trust in God.

I’ve seen it so many times in my own heart, the ugliness of impatience.

The ugliness of trying to BE God rather than to trust God.

The ugliness of wanting to control, the pride that fills the heart when I think I can do it.

The ugliness of the fears that make me feel small, like an 8 year old girl, clutching onto my daddy’s hand for dear life.

But what if that’s the point of it all?

What if the process of learning patience, is all for God to expose what’s really in our hearts?

I don’t think God can ever have our full attention, until we realize the depth to which we need Him. The depth that we need Him to come. The depth to which we cannot be the source of our own hope.

In the space of time, God reveals our hearts to us little by little, ever so gently.

“God can do anything, you know…not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.”

Ephesians 3:20 (MSG)

As God moves ever so gently, He shows us in this vulnerable space that He is our only hope. We can’t deny it as we tenderly open our hearts before Him. He is our only hope.

Our souls can exhale in this.

Patience is our soul’s journey, not toward a thing or a goal. It’s a journey toward knowing God’s heart. A process of opening to the Lord, and to placing the weight of our hope fully upon Him.

In the bible, the Hebrew word for wait, qavah, literally means to wait for, look for, expect for, and hope.

Waiting and hoping are the same thing.

God wants us to know as we wait, that we can fully, and confidently, place all of our hope in His hands. For whatever that thing that we’d rather control. We can’t keep that hope in our own hands.

Instead, we can have hope that He sees us, and He’s never stopped working. His heart toward us is good and our inheritance as his daughters is eternally secure.

“I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord,
Plans to prosper you and not to harm you,
Plans to give you a future and a hope.”

Jeremiah 29:11

God’s heart toward us is always to give us hope. To always BE our ultimate hope, in every situation, no matter how dark or lonely or exciting or tender.

We can place our hope in Him.

Because our hope isn’t in a situation, it’s in a person. Jesus.

And what a better place to place our hope? 

Jesus is proof that God has been eternally patient with us. Since the beginning of time, He longed for us to search for Him, to know Him. And when we turned from Him, over and over, He came back to save us. He sent Jesus to die on the cross for us. And our God is still saving us. Every moment of every day.

God is the eternally patient one. Our true example of patience.

So we can be patient together as His eternally hopeful daughters. For everything He has in store – right now here on earth, and into eternity.

 

“This I recall to mind,
Therefore I have hope.
Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not.
They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.
‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul,
‘Therefore I hope in Him!'”

-Lamentations 3:21-24