Hope Thou In God

Why me? What is happening? Will it ever end? Have you ever asked questions like this before? I know I have. Sometimes I would be venting to a friend, sometimes earnestly asking a spiritual mentor, and still other times crying out to God through the midst of a river of tears. Life always brings about difficult times, and those times often are accompanied by a myriad of questions. I would often talk to people to figure out why things in my life or family were so hard, but when I think of it, I really didn’t want to know why things were the way they were, but rather how could I go through them.

How do we go through trials? What do we do when everything is going wrong, or even when everything is going right, but we feel miserable? What do we do when we are discouraged? These questions are common today, and have been so for centuries. Even men who we consider very spiritual men asked these kinds of questions. One of these men was King David. When we think of David, we typically think of David the Warrior, or David the King, or  David and Goliath. We hardly ever think of David the depressed, or David the down-hearted, or David the disillusioned. Yet from what we read in the Psalms, David may have been all of these things. How then could David write, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.”How did David weather his trials? David discovered that God’s presence is the solution to our problems.

Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me?

Psalm 42:5

It doesn’t take long before life begins to throw you a curve ball. We all experience problems and learn to deal with them. We can even be hopeful for other people who are going through a rough time, but when it comes home to us, things change. David said, “Why art thou…” HE was discouraged; HE was down; HE was dejected. For whatever reason, when the scene changes from, “Joe Smith’s dad” to, “My dad” the trite words of advice we just gave Joe don’t seem to cut if for us. So what do we do?

People tend to have different reactions to difficulty. Some people “melt.” Our text uses the words “cast down” which has the idea of melting away. These people have no strength, they want to run away, get out of the problem. They just want a “normal” life.

Others react in anger. The word “disquieted” has the idea of noise or even to roar. Anger is the response people have when they want to take control. They are tired of the problem, and they are going to DO SOMETHING about it. Sometimes this comes out through words, other times in fighting, and sometimes it doesn’t come out at all. Like a volcano that is simmering awaiting the right moment to break through the stony covering above. Reactions of teenagers can range from anger, partying, drug abuse, cutting, or even suicide. Frankly, anything that seems to dull the pain or give even a moments peace is reasonable to someone who is burdened down. Regardless of HOW you or I personally react, we all DO REACT, and we need to figure out the right way to react.

Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.

Psalm 42:5

The first step to dealing with our problems is to hope.

It is worth noting that the word “hope” is not what we normally think of in comparison to our current day usage of hope. We usually use the word hope to refer to something that we would really like to see happen, but have little expectation will happen, such as I hope I can get this job, or I hope that I pass my exam. These represent desirable outcomes, but lack certainty.

The biblical use of hope, however, is quite different from our use of hope. In the Bible, the word “hope” has the idea of certainty. We may define hope as confident expectation—we know something will happen, we just have not experienced it. This is the WAY we are to hope.

Next we need to recognize WHO we need to hope in.

Our hope must be in God. Many times our hope rests in ourselves, or in another individual. Sometimes our hope is in a doctor who will cure our parent from cancer. Sometimes its in a relationship that will make us feel better. However, no matter how good a person may be, no human is capable of taking away our problems. The only one who is worthy of our hope is God. Why? you may ask? It is because of WHO our God is. God is the faithful God (Lam 3:22-23). God is the God of comfort (2 Cor. 1:3). God is able to save us (Hebrews 7:25). God will never leave us (Hebrews 13:5). Any basic study of who God is will encourage you that God is worthy of your trust.What exactly can God do?

The third step is to hope in God for WHAT He can do.

The word in our text “help” is the same word used for salvation in many other places. This means that God is our deliverer. He is the one who can deliver you in the midst of your trial. This is no better demonstrated than in the life of the author of our Psalm—King David. David experienced the deliverance of God when he fought Goliath. He knew from personal experience that God can deliver from impossible situations. God wants to deliver you from your impossible situations. It is our responsibility to cry out to God, believing that He will deliver us.

But what about when you cry out to God to deliver you and nothing changes? What do you do then? The answer is found in the last phrase “for the help of his countenance.” The word countenance carries the idea of the presence of God. It literally means that God is with you. To be sure, God can deliver us from our trials, and He wants us to call out to Him to do so. However, God also uses our trials to transform us, as Job said, “when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” It is in these times that we must trust the Lord, all the while believing He is with us. You see, when God’s presence shows up in the middle of a trial, everything changes. Oh the circumstances may not change, but our response does. All of a sudden we have peace where we were perplexed, we have joy where we were discouraged. Nothing changed, and yet everything changed. THAT is miraculous.

Teenager, God wants to use your life. He has a wonderful plan for it, But there are trials God wants you to go through so you can discover that God, Himself, is enough for any trial. He wants you to discover that His presence is enough to keep you from melting away, or raging through life’s trials. Today, ask God to show you His presence; meditating on who He is, and He will show up. “Hope thou in God.”