“No one who hopes in you will ever be put to shame.”
Elisabeth Elliot wrote, “My faith is to rest not in the outcome I think God should work out for me; my faith rests in who God is.” I read this quote at a time when we were launching a new product at work, and it was getting off to a very slow start. I found myself saying to God, “I thought this idea was from You! Why would you set me up to fail?” These words revealed that my faith rested in the outcome I was counting on God to give me, and not in who God is.
When our faith rests in the outcome of an external circumstance, we can be sure that we’ll be “driven and tossed by the wind,” like the doubter James describes (1:6), because we have nothing steady to which we can anchor our hope. Are you single and hoping to be married? Are you the mother of a prodigal, hoping for his or her return? Are you suffering from an illness and hoping for healing? Hoping in and of itself isn’t wrong; in fact, God Himself commands us to hope. But He never tells us to hope in a specific outcome; He tells us to hope in Him: “Those who hope in me will not be disappointed” (Isaiah 49:23, NIV, emphasis added).
We’ve all experienced the pain of disappointment, so how can God promise that if we put our hope in Him, we won’t be disappointed? Because even if something doesn’t work out the way we’d like it to, we can be completely confident in one thing: our sovereign God, who has the whole world in His hands, is also holding us. And everything He brings our way (or mercifully withholds) is for our ultimate good. As David sang to the Lord, "You are good, and what you do is good" (Psalm 119:68). Bottom line. End of story.
We must remember that circumstances do not reveal what's true about God. God has already revealed what's true about Himself in His Word, and He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He does not change, ever. Every circumstance, then, has to be viewed through the lens of the unchanging character of God, and not the other way around.
In the Book of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were brought before the Babylonian king because they refused to bow down to his golden statue. Listen to what the Hebrew men said when faced with the threat of being burned alive: “If the God we serve exists, then He can rescue us from the furnace of blazing fire, and He can rescue us from the power of you, the king. But even if He does not rescue us, we want you as king to know that we will not serve your gods or worship the gold statue you set up” (Daniel 3:17-18, emphasis added).
“But even if He does not rescue us…” Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego knew God was sovereign and could intervene at any moment to rescue them, but that’s not where their faith rested. Their faith was in God Himself, and they would obey Him regardless of the outcome.
Are there situations in your life where you’re putting your hope in a certain outcome instead of in a good God who loves you? Ask God to redirect your hope so that it rests on Him, the One who will never disappoint.
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