Christian Devotional-Stories and Bible verses about the presence of God in our lives

In Whom Is Our Hope?

 Trust in the LORD with all your heart; and lean not on your own understanding.  Proverbs 3:5

“Chocolate,” my three year old granddaughter semi-asks and semi-demands…

Hope

I give her “the look”…

The look every parent and grandparent gives…

And reply with “the question”…

The question every parent and grandparent asks…

“How do you ask nicely?”

“Chocolate, please?”

“Very good,” I say…and hand her a piece of chocolate.

Just then my wife comes into the room.

“Why did you give her chocolate?”

“She asked nicely.”

“But dinner is in twenty minutes.”

Listening to the conversation, my granddaughter smiles and eats the last bite of chocolate before somebody can take it away from her.

“Ask nicely…”

Ask nicely and you may get what you want…

even if it’s not what you need.

Sometimes I approach God with that attitude, believing…

If I pray in just the right way…

If I use just the right words….

God will give me what I want…

I hope.

In other words, I hope I have the skill and the intelligence to craft a prayer that will move the Almighty Maker of heaven and earth…

The One who knows my every thought before I even think it.

Kind of foolish, don’t you think, to put my hope in myself instead of in Him?

But my foolishness gets worse…

I don’t just put my hope in myself to know how to lay my requests before God…

I put my hope in myself to know what to ask for in the first place, even though God tells me that’s not true…

“…. We do not know what we ought to pray for…” Romans 8:26

If you asked me, I would say I do not put my hope in myself…

I might even piously quote the words of the old hymn…

My hope is built on nothing less

than Jesus’ blood and righteousness ~ My Hope is built

I would say my salvation comes from Christ alone…

“And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.”  Acts 4:12

And yet  I stand before God and ask Him for what I want…

Putting my hope in my own knowledge of my needs…

Carefully planning how I will ask…

Putting my hope in my own meager cleverness before an all-powerful, all knowing God…

How patiently He reminds me in those moments that…

It is Him and Him alone I should seek…

It is in Him and Him alone I can trust…

It is in Him and Him alone I can hope…

For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence,
    for my hope is from him.  Psalm 62:5

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