Hope Changes Everything預覽

When you’re looking for hope in the Bible, there are plenty of verses to be found. However, in the midst of a search for hope, it seems a little odd to turn to a book called “Lamentations,” doesn’t it? And yet, there it is, only three chapters into it:

“The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning. I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my inheritance; therefore I will hope in him.’” (Lamentations 3:22-24, NLT) I love the affirmation this scripture provides us: every day is a day when God refreshes His mercies toward us! No matter what has happened in the past, God’s mercies are new today. Even if today itself is a crappy day, we can be assured that tomorrow is a new day, and yet another opportunity for God to do something fresh and faithful in our lives.

One thing I’ve learned about God the longer I’ve walked with Him is that he is a good Father who takes care of His kids. He has given each of us gifts that we can use to expand His kingdom and through which we can worship Him. But most of all, He’s given each of us exactly what we need for today.

Exodus tells the story of the Israelites as they leave their enslavement in the land of Egypt and head out to the promised land. You probably know the part about the plagues, how Pharaoh finally lets them go, how God parts the Red Sea so the Israelites can cross on dry land. They were finally free… to wander around in the desert.

And that’s where their gratitude for freedom wore out and their grumbling set in. In Exodus 16:3, we read their complaint to Moses and Aaron: “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”

Since we know the Israelites eventually make it to the Promised Land, it’s easy to criticize the Israelites both for their ingratitude and for their nostalgically wistful thinking about their time in Egypt. However, I don’t know about you, but I can identify. I’ve had marked moments in my own life where I felt like I was in a wilderness, and all I could do was shake my fist at God and say, “Why?”

But notice that God didn’t wait for the Israelites to clean up their hearts before He starts to take care of them. In the very next verse, God lays out his instructions—He’s going to give them some food. And He’s going to do it in a fantastic way.

“I will rain down bread from heaven for you,” He says.

And that’s exactly what God does, sending a sort of bread that the Israelites wind up calling manna (which, incidentally, is a sort-of word that sounds much like the Hebrew phrase “What is it?”). This manna is apparently an ancient super-food, because it takes care of all the dietary and nutritional needs of the Israelites for the next forty years.

The guidelines God gives about the manna are my favorite, though. He tells them it’s going to appear every morning and they need to gather up what they need for the day. And just to make sure it’s fair, He supernaturally prohibits hoarding, which we read in Exodus 16:17-18: “The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little. And when they measured it by the omer, the one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little. Everyone had gathered just as much as they needed.”

So they have enough food for the day, and God specifically tells them not to try to keep any of it overnight. Then Moses reiterates this. And while many of them heeded the words of God and Moses, some of them decided to do their own thing, and you know what happened? The manna went bad overnight! Specifically, “it was full of maggots and began to smell” (Exodus 16:20).

God gave them exactly what they needed for the day.

He’ll do the same for you.

When I was a kid, I had a dream to play in the NBA, but my height and other limitations of my game were never going to allow me to do that. I’d be fine as a basketball player in junior high and high school, and maybe if I’d gone to college. But to play in the NBA? It wasn’t going to happen.

Because those weren’t the gifts that God gave me.

He gave me gifts of empathy and compassion. He gave me gifts of speaking truth to the broken-hearted. He gave me a genuine love for the hurting and the outcasts. And He’s given me dreams in all those areas, dreams that line up perfectly with my gifts.

Instead, God took all of my past experiences, talents, pains and rolled them out into a dream life I couldn’t have written for myself if I’d tried. Today I don’t work—I live. I don’t feel the pressure to be anyone else, because God has me doing what He wants me to do.

And the same holds true for you. Your past, your skills and your passions line up, and they equal a dream life you may have never imagined.