Love hopes all things
This morning, I happened to get up really early. I got my coffee and got with God. I had some things that have settled into my mind and heart over the last few months: things like hopelessness about certain situations with the kids, things like labels that I’ve agreed with over my children as I’ve watched their potential strengths be used in destructive or obnoxious ways.
My patience has been low the last few days and I’ve been asking myself why. It’s not that I’ve been breakless, sleepless, nutritionless, or even scriptureless. So I’ve just been wondering what the deal is.
I began to meditate on the patience of God. God is the God of all patience. He waits for people and for people groups for generations. He waited for me for 21 years and gently washed up onto my shores with the truth of his word.
I was meditating on his patience because I have need of patience myself. And as I was looking up patience in a concordance, I realized that biblical patience and endurance is not just a “grin and bear it” kind of patience. It is intimately connected to HOPE.
Think a little about these verses.
And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you will not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. Hebrews 6:11-12
We have to diligently guard our hope and cause it to GROW. And the thing I realized this morning is that I have had some lines of thinking that have been starving my hope for my children and their destinies. A lot of it comes from comparison and anxiety about them not measuring up to the standard given.
I get a bad report from a teacher. I get it once and then I get several more and I start to feel beat down. I start to feel like the hope over my child is fading. And the thing is that he feels it too.
So much of loving our children is having a tenacious, bull dog approach to our own hope for their lives. We cannot veer to the left or the right on this. We cannot create mental movies with a fatalistic viewpoint of them just barely making it. We cannot be in denial about their short comings either. But hope is what grounds us! Our hope is not grounded in their performance or our performance! Can anyone thank the Lord about that?? It is grounded in God’s declarations and promises over their lives!
I’m sure this is nothing new for people who have parented for a while. But this is fresh for me. I’ve got to blow out my heart, getting all the stagnant sadness, disappointments, embarrassments, and false labels over my children OUT. That water cannot stay in this heart. I need the breath of God to breath freshly on the declarations made over Judah and Thea. As He does, I’m reminded that He is faithful to complete what He starts and I will see the victory. So will you!