Hope.
Feb 3rd by Jon- Tagged in:
- serious wednesdays
“Promise me if you go on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, you’ll take me so I can sit in the audience.”
This is my father’s only request when it comes to the book release of Stuff Christians Like. I’ve never been on television. Two people attended the only meet and greet I’ve held. I’ve been assured by one of the biggest publishers in the world that Christian humor books simply do not sell. But I think that parents are required by DNA to hope. To believe that anything is possible if not down right probable.
I am encouraged by his hope, but to be honest with you, I’ve had a few puzzling years with that word “hope.” I’ve had a bit of a struggle. And it’s not what I expected of Christ and faith.
Life fell apart in the summer of 2005. I’ve shared that sentence so many times you have to be getting tired of it, but that’s what happened. And I guess I thought after that experience, when I had come clean and had full disclosure with people and laid it all down, that things would feel a certain way. I thought forgiveness and grace would feel round and full and complete and that freedom would feel incredible. But it didn’t.
Hope was not as instantaneous and complete as I would have preferred. Sanctification was not accomplished in the span of a long weekend. And that’s when I started to learn about the three stages of hope.
Hope is one of the first things that disappears when you get lost. Your ability to see beyond your current circumstances is chased south by the shadows. Your ability to dream and plan and hold visions close to your chest fades until hope feels foreign and far away.
And when you become a Christian, there’s the temptation to think you’re doing something wrong if you don’t feel hopeful 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But here’s the thing about hope, it takes time. And sometimes, I think our greatest frustrations are when we try to force hope into a stage it’s just not ready for. I don’t hear people talk about the stages that often, but I think hope is divided into three:
1. Learning to live with the past.
2. Learning to live in the present.
3. Learning to dream about the future.
I don’t have scientific proof of these, good luck Bunsen burnering hope, but those are the three stages I’ve experienced in my own life and here’s what they look like:
1. Learning to live with the past.
When my wife and I started to work on our marriage, this was what we did first. Walk through and talk through hurt from the before. We didn’t dwell in it. We didn’t let it define our future, but we had to be honest about it. We had to admit scars and fears and doubts that had taken root in the first few years of our marriage. We had to learn to live with a past that refused to stay quiet. As I’ve often said before, unless you deal with it, the past turns into a collection of knives hidden around your house. If you haven’t forgiven each other, then all the sudden you’ll see a character on a television show do what you did and you’ll get stabbed. Someone will make an offhand joke at a dinner party and you’ll get stabbed by that memory. So for us, learning to live with the past was about removing knives.
2. Learning to live in the present.
I think satan is desperate to keep you out of the now, because it’s where Christ lives. I’m convinced that in the moment, in the hours we’re given, Christ is waiting. And satan loves to keep us focused on a past we can’t change or a future we can’t control instead of in a present we can participate in. But after a life of running, being in your own skin and letting go of the masks is going to feel a little weird. And you’re going to need to learn how to live in the present. For my wife and I, that meant finally having honest conversations. We were one of those Christian couples that says, “Things are great, we never fight.” We weren’t fighting or disagreeing in large part because we were not being honest with each other about our feelings. And once we spent time learning to live with the past, we had to find our way in the present.
3. Learning to dream about the future.
It’s weird, but I never noticed that I didn’t actively dream about the future until I tried to. After coming through the first two stages of hope, I looked at the future and I just couldn’t do it. My wife and I would sit down in chairs in our yard and stare at each other, “So what do you want to do this year? What about the next five? What do those look like to you?” We’d ask ourselves questions over and over and we never really had an answer. We were so out of practice, we had been on two different teams previously and that’s pretty common. Even if you’re not married, it’s pretty easy to get so splintered up inside with your desires and who you’re pretending to be that it’s difficult to dream about the future. But I’m convinced this is a critical part of hope.
I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced one of those stages of hope. Maybe I’m way off base here. Maybe my individual experience is nothing like the collective experience. But if you have, if you’ve ever had anything like this in your life, I hope you’ll give yourself the gift of time. One of my greatest frustrations is trying to force my way out of one of those seasons. To yell at God essentially and say, “I got it, we’re good living in the present. Let’s focus on the future now!” But it doesn’t work that way.
Hope is sometimes slow. It’s sometimes instant. Sometimes God grabs you and you skip all those seasons. Sometimes you spend years in one. It’s never the same. But what is, what I do know about you, is that regardless of who you are or where you are or how long you’ve been divorced or unemployed or living a double life, you need hope.
Like I need hope.
Like we all need hope.
And that’s what God wants to give you.
Comments
thanks so much for being honest about that fact that when you started to deal with your issues- life didn't become perfect right away. i think sometimes the idea that you'll always feel perfectly hopeful or joyful gets put across from different testimonies we hear in Christian circles. and then when it's you facing something and you don't feel great right away- even when you start going in the right direction- you wonder if something is wrong with you. so- thanks for the honest perspective.
Great insights!
You know I have not seen any Christian humor out there. Won't everyone be surprised that we can laugh at ourselves? I think your book will sell.
Ansolutely hit the spot today for me and our staff.
Between this and the "God didn't ask you to God" post of a couple wednesdays ago, I do have hope.
Enjoyed this post, Jon. I appreciate your willingness to be open and share what you've learned from your pain. I've noticed that one of the most frequent themes in my writing is hope. I've struggled with dealing with the past–wanting to redo my entire life–and a character of mine struggles with this as well. She's stuck back there, reliving her mistakes, just like all of us do. While I wrote about her, I realized just how much I relived my past, refusing to enjoy present blessings, rejecting hope for the future.
Thanks for this post.
It's helping me.
Hey Jon, loved how you broke down the stages of Hope. Very reminiscent of how Richard Rolheiser explains in his book, “The Holy Longing” how the Paschal Mystery crops up in our lives when we deal with a loss or a change. after times of transitions and change we all have our own Good Friday-3 Days-Easter-40 Days-Pentecost. Learning to let the old self or situation pass and letting it bless you in your new identity is very important to learn. Great book, check it out if you havent! Keep up the good work!
–nick
Another great Wednesday post. (Not that I don't like the others.)
totally needed to hear these words today. thank you. really.
with love from pittsburgh,
laura
Thank you for being transparent! I'm studying the book Your Redemptive Healing: Experiencing God's Freedom, Wholeness, and Blessing by Jan McCray and your "stage one" of hope reminds me of what she says about the first part of complete healing:
"In order to move forward in Christ we must let Him take us back into our past hurts. As Jesus heals and weeds the roots of our hurts, we move forward with Him into wholeness."
God really wanted me to hear that truth this week!
Hope is a little easier to have after reading this amazing book. "The Rest of the Gospel" Clearly, its not better than the Bible but what God has revealed to me through this book has been one of the most life changing experiences of my life. And the bible study I'm in is only on chapter 8! ha!
One of my favorite posts. Thank you.
Jon… This means a whole lot to me. I talked to a girl yesterday about my feelings for her, and she prayed about it… and tonight she politely declined to enter into a relationship. Very politely. Very courteously. And in that moment I lost a whole lot of hope that I've had in me for the past couple of months. And this post… is something that I needed to hear.
"And hope does NOT disappoint us" (Romans 5:5).
Thanks Jon!
When I was young and first became a believer, I lived in a pretty hellish environment. I was blown away though when I read the Bible for the first time about the hope that we have that one day we are going to see God face to face and know him and He is going to wipe our tears away. I took great comfort in that then.
I make it a real point to try to live in the moment and really be focused on the here and now. For the last few years though the tough one of me has been having hope for a future here. It's easy to get bogged down in all the medical bills and financial strain etc., and lose sight of the bigger picture. Tonight when I started reading I was experiencing so much anxiety about upcoming property taxes and income taxes etc. That doesn't do any good at all. I need to remember again that I have a blessed hope for something amazing reguardless of the current circumstances. Thanks for helping me remember the truth.
Jon,
Thanks for your honesty. It gives me hope! Another thing that help hope is embracing the idea that perfect solutions don't exist. Feeling wretched is one side of being a Christ Follower and thats not all bad.
http://gracefreakdan.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/rep...
Thanks again,
Grace Freak Dan
I think we should start a campaign to get you on the Daily show. Not only would it fulfill your Dad's dream, but I think that Jon and Jon would just be neat to watch together
I'm in the middle of writing about my journey from hopelessness to hope after severe injuries altered my life. Your three steps say it so well … that's been my experience also.
Hope can be a powerful thing. It's part of what got us through our son's death. The hope that tomorrow would be better than today. One of my favorite verses has always been Romans 5:3-5 :
3Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
That hope never disappoints- God has poured out His love- even in our darkest days. I reminded myself of that verse again and again- and God has blessed us with a different Hope now
she's due in a few months but I wanted Hope to be her middle name to remind me of the love God always gives.
This is the second Wednesday post I am forwarding to a small group of accountability partners.
Lessons I am in the middle of. Maybe still in the past part, but moving to the present. I think.
Thank you.
Just read this. NICE
Our blog are tracking a little bit. OR…wait… are you blog stalking me?
My latest is "why do we suffer alone"
(again hope, 2nd time this week)
Excellent post. It isn't easy to make the future better (i.e. discussing all the hurts from the past with your wife), but it's worth it. The truth may hurt, but silence kills. If we could only grasp that concept and stop allowing silence to steal our hope and joy.
So I'm almost a week late in reading this and posting a comment but these 3 stages are amazingly in line with things I've been experiencing for the past 18 months, except mine was career related instead of marriage related but the general terms are almost exactly what I've been thinking or learning. Thanks for the insight and the reminder of hope.
Ephesians 3:20-21
Jon, I quoted this blog on http://www.outofthesilverchair.blogspot.com- it was so perfect- Thank you!
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