Hope in Hard Times

HOPE IN HARD TIMES

There is only one thing that we have as human beings that God does not have – Limitations! 
Suffering is the human experience of our reaction to our limitations – When we can’t have what we want, when we can’t do what we want, when we can’t be what we want to be. Jesus came to live in the midst of our human limitations to resolve all of those problems. He did not come to remove them, but he gives us his unlimited risen self for us to rise above our suffering in the midst of them. 

1 Peter 4:12-14. My dear friends, don’t be shocked at circumstances coming your way that test you to the limit. Don’t think of this as being out of the ordinary as far as you’re concerned. You can be glad that you are going through the same sufferings that Jesus went through, so that when his power and glory shines through, you will be elated just to be there. You can also be elated if you get insulted for being a Christian because the power and nature of Jesus will be on display in your life. Their words might be putting Jesus down, but your life is raising him up.

Peter is telling us to not think of the unexpected as being something unexpected. If our expectation of what should happen to us always came to pass it would mean that we were in command of every one of the thousands of random events and the way that they collide with one another.
If we can believe that God is in command of all things, then we can have a proper expectation of him and not of ourselves. We do not become the saviour of our situation, but he does. We see his power and love having sway in our lives by our faith, instead of the erratic and unpredictable circumstances having sway over us, even though they are on display.  

Heb 2:8 ‘He put all things in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under him. But now we do not yet see all things put under him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death now crowned with glory and honour.
Jesus is now upholding all things that are happening in your life by the word of his power – If we are ignorant of that then it has no personal meaning. If known and believed in this is cause for an elevated disposition of hope (elation). Your heart and soul become bonded to the hope of Jesus in action rather than the grief and disorder of the world, releasing us to live in and with - the purposes of God.

2 Corinthians 4:16 So we don’t lose heart. Even when our outward life changes for the worse, our inner life continually grows stronger. Our experience of affliction and suffering releases a flow of God’s glory in the midst of everything that happens around us, as we discover the inner life realities of the unseen world. We are not fixed upon the changeable nature of the outward life. 

With this understanding we can unconditionally embrace this present moment no matter what the physical or psychological content is. This is how a new pathway of truth is formed in the spirit of the mind, and once we hold on to that pathway of truth, we then choose how to deal with the outer situation. 
As we learn to live consciously with him, we can ‘lose’ our ‘it’s all about me-self’ and find our ‘true self’ of faith in God. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.  (Matthew 16:25)
limitations can now be met and endured with faith and hope and acceptance. 
We can go with the flow of what is happening, by faith - giving thanks to God in all things (1Thessalonians 5:13) and living in the hope and expectation of what God is doing in the midst of it all. There can also be times when we need to resist something wrong and call it out.
God will give us the grace to know the appropriate acceptance or resistance to a situation and the right timing on how and when to do what we need to do. 
A ‘no’ to what somebody wants from you is just as obedient to God as a ‘yes’ if you know the heart of the matter. Jesus said no to the Pharisees when they wanted to penalize him for healing on the Sabbath, but he said yes to Pontius Pilate when he ordered his execution.

JOB -He deserves a mention here, if we’re talking about hard times.
God allowed Job to see that he was in the midst of all the sufferings that Job was going through and that he as God was in control of everything that was happening. God was in control of what Satan could and could not do. God was in control of all creation, and he discusses this with Job. He challenges Job to consider where he himself stood, as a good man, in regard to being fully in charge of his own destiny. ‘What do you know, Job?’

Job 38:4 Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much. Who determined its dimensions and stretched out the surveying line? What supports its foundations, and who laid its cornerstone as the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? – 12. Have you commanded the morning since your days began, And caused the dawn to know its place? 16 Have the gates of death been revealed to you? Or have you seen the doors of the shadow of death? Have you comprehended the breadth of the earth? Tell Me, if you know all this.
God finishes by asking Job "Shall the one who contends with the Almighty correct Him?
He who rebukes God, let him answer it." (Job 40:1)

God continues with his revelation to Job of many other wondrous examples of his creation of the Universe and everything in it. This gives Job a new perspective on things, and Job finally answers God.
Job 42:1 Then Job answered the LORD and said: "I know that You can do everything,
And that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You. You asked, who is this who ignorantly offers advice?' Therefore, I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. So, listen, please, and let me speak; You said, you would question me, and I would answer You.'
‘And I say. I had heard of You by the hearing of the ear, But now mine eye seeth You.

Job was now seeing an unlimited God through the eyes of pure faith. He came to his senses and received hope from God – and he wasn’t even given the inner life of God through Jesus that we are given - to guide us and lead us and become our wisdom. 
Job wasn’t even under the Old Covenant - He wasn’t even a Jew. This shows how God can intervene in the life of any person at any time and in any age, covenant or no covenant. Our faith tells us that all things are under the feet of Jesus, and even though we still see chaos and disorder around us we see Jesus – within us. 
We see with eyes of faith. 
As Job said. ‘I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, But now my eye sees You.’

God asks us, like he did to Job, to take stock of where we are with our faith - What do we actually believe in and put our hope in. Our minds are continually constructing a pathway of belief that shapes our inner lives with our feelings and emotions and decision making. We are either letting the outward circumstances form these pathways or we allow the inner work of the Holy Spirit lead us into the truth of Christ in us - working in us and for us and through us.
Paul said Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you? (2Corinhians 13:5)

I’m now continuing with that Scripture we began with that Peter wrote, which ended with ‘You can also be elated if you get insulted for being a Christian because the power and nature of Jesus will be on display in your life. Their words might be putting Jesus down, but your life is raising him up.
Peter then goes on to say towards the end of the passage.
19. So if you go through difficult times that you know God has allowed to come upon you, walk on with God and trust him as your creator to faithfully look after the well-being of your soul.

There’s a secret here in this Scripture, a mystery, a hidden treasure as usual, which declares the reality of a life lived with God. It’s the story of the Gospel again - one of its ten thousand reasons - a process of faith as always – putting off the old self and putting on the new self.
We lose ourselves in order to find ourselves. We admit we are wrong like Job, so we can be declared right in Jesus. We are strongest when we’re weakest. We can have hope when enduring suffering instead of learning to just get over it or complain about it. 
Mostly we are taken into God’s purpose with no awareness of it at all. We have no idea what God’s immediate goal may be in certain situations, and as we continue to trust him, his purpose may become even more vague. God’s purpose may appear to have missed the mark that we would have set, because we often see different targets to what he sees. We see things to be done, and we ask for his help to let us do our thing, while he sees a son or a daughter becoming more and more one with him and being in his purpose. If we have a set and determined purpose of our own, it can destroy the simplicity and the calm, relaxed pace which should be characteristic of the child of God that is growing into maturity.
So, if we are in oneness with God and recognize that he is taking us into his purposes, then we will no longer become anxious to find out what his purposes are because we trust him to be doing the best there is for us – doing exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think.
(Ephesians 3:20) - We let him surprise us.
As we grow in faith and hope it becomes simpler to us, because we are less inclined to say, “I wonder why God allowed this or that?” And we begin to see that the compelling loving purpose of God lies behind everything in life, and that God is divinely shaping us into oneness with his ways. We can now trust in hope for the knowledge and the wisdom of God, not in our own abilities. When we pursue closeness to God by spending time in his presence, we will see God’s commitment to doing for us what is for our good – it will be revealed to us - in his time, and in his way.