Just say "Nope" to Hoping in Hope

So far this adoption journey has been all about paperwork and process...and fundraising. Since we were logged in on February 3rd we have entered a new season of waiting that God is using to teach me and grow me. I wanted a chance to share some of my personal journey with you. So here it is.

"The Word was, and the Word is and the Word will be."-Sara Groves"

First, just let me say, I Love words. I just do. I love how they sound and how you can put them together. I love to write them, speak them and sing them. I love palindromes and onamonapia, prefixes, suffixes, prepositions, conjunctions, synonyms and homonyms. But I really, really love the Word of God! There is absolutely nothing like it. As one professor put it, "The Word of God is the mind of God in print."

 The Scripture is not JUST an historical account, it is also wisdom and poetry and narrative. But beyond that, it is LIVING and ACTIVE:

"For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart."

(Hebrews 4:12) 

The Scriptures tell us that all of it is "breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,  that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." (2 Tim. 3:16) 

God SPOKE the entire creation into being, and in John 1:1-3, the beloved disciple blows us away when he tells us, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made." Did you catch that? Christ himself IS the WORD! 

That is why I was so excited to read 1 Peter 1:23-25 today, as Peter drives home this exact same point:

23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. 24 For,

“All people are like grass,

    and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;

the grass withers and the flowers fall, 25 

   but the word of the Lord endures forever.”

We have been born again THROUGH the WORD of God. And that WORD is: living, enduring, IMPERISHABLE. According to the quote from Isaiah in verse 25, 

"The Word of the Lord endures FOREVER!"

I love learning new words. A few months ago during a Bible study I was doing, I learned a new word: RHEMA. According to wikipedia,  "Logos is the "Word of God" Jesus Christ, the subject from Genesis to Revelation. Rhema is the revealed word of God, as an utterance from God to the heart of the receiver via the Holy Spirit, as in John 14:26."

Last Friday we experienced a step on our adoption journey that led me to a special time with the Lord. I wrote it all down for posterity's sake, so I would remember the way in which God walked with me and talked with me along this journey. But after much prayer, I have decided to share it, in hopes that it might encourage someone else. You see, His Rhema word to me was personal in its application, but the Word of God endures forever. His truth remains the same for all of us. Perhaps he will take this Logos and speak a Rhema word to you too.

Hoping in Show Hope

Up to this point we have applied for 4 grants. I have been praying, and asking others to pray, that we would find favor with these grant organizations and be granted a silly number I came up with in my head: $12, 000!! Friday we received our second denial letter. I was surprised to hear from Show Hope so quickly, as they said it would be March 31 at the earliest. I was really “Hoping in Show Hope.” God’s timing was really perfect though, as he wanted to teach me something profound at this point in my journey.

Friday morning I read this passage from Jesus Calling and shared it in one of my adoption groups on Facebook:

“I am leading step by step through your life. Hold my hand in trusting dependence, letting me guide you through this day. Your future looks uncertain and feels flimsy- even precarious. That is how it should be. Secret things belong to the Lord, and future things are secret things. When you try to figure out the future, you are grasping at things that are Mine. This, like all forms of worry, is an act of rebellion: doubting my promises to care for you.

Whenever you find yourself worrying about the future, repent and return to Me. I will show you the next step forward, and the one after that, and the one after that. Relax and enjoy the journey in My Presence, trusting Me to open up the way before you as you go.”

After reading this Friday morning, I felt it applied to me as we waited to receive a file, but I had no idea that later the Holy Spirit would recall these words to my mind in a moment of discouragement and call me to practice a sacrifice of praise. Instead of getting down, or even blowing off my initial feelings of grief after receiving our “unacceptance letter” from Show Hope, I sat down and began to journal all the things I was thankful for. I began praising God for who He is, and repenting of the fact that I had put my hope in the possibility of provision from a grant, instead of the promise of provision from God himself. As I read my daily devotion that day, I was led to Isaiah 55. Below are some highlights from the chapter in verses 1, 8,11-12,15b:

“Come all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money…

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways…

So is the word that goes out from my mouth; it will not return to me empty but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. You will go out in JOY and be led forth in peace…this will be for the Lord’s renown.”

God was reminding me that He would provide for me. That the way I thought he would provide, was not what He had in mind. He assured me that He had called us on this journey, and that he would accomplish it for us. Not only that, but we would go out in JOY and be led forward in peace...to HIS GLORY!

As I prepared to go to worship that night I sensed God was going to speak another word to me on this. AND BOY DID HE! The focus that night was God’s word to the Israelites in Joshua 3, “You have not passed this way before.” As he instructed the Israelites on how to cross the Jordan River, from one season of wandering in the wilderness, to the next season of entering the Promised Land, they were to be guided by His Presence. They were to keep their distance from the Ark of the Covenant, in order not to get ahead of the Lord, but to simply follow the way He would show them. He warned them they had not passed this way, or in this manner, before. Yes, God had parted the Red Sea and they had passed through, but this was not going to be like that. Yes, God had led them and provided for them in one way in the wilderness, but this was not that. He would provide for them in a different way in the Promised Land. God spoke to my heart last night that even last semester was a different season of provision for this adoption. He assured me that the season we were entering was not one we had been in BEFORE. His thoughts are not my thoughts and MY WAYS are not HIS WAYS.

I keep thinking back to the words of a long time fellow church member on one of my Facebook posts VERY early in our adoption process. She simply wrote, “You know the Lord has this FOR you.” God used the words of a fellow Christian in worship last night to remind me clearly, “Stop it. Stop it. Let me love you. Let me show you the way.”

A final emphasis God gave me last night was that I cannot approach him thinking I already know, or I cannot receive from him. As I looked up the Isaiah passage in my journal just now, I came across this writing from Wednesday of this week when I was at the same place of worship:

I have been asking God to teach me to pray. I decided, that instead of trying to determine what his answer would be before I asked, that I would beg like a child my heart’s DESIRE. I asked, “Daddy, please can I have a file today? Please?”

Here was his response!!!

CHRIST PROVIDES ALL THE KNOWLEDGE WE NEED.

I found this to be a strange response. In reality, I didn't really think of it as a response to my prayer, but it was the next thing I felt led to write down and I wrote it in all caps! Now I know it was his response. Here are the thoughts that followed in my journal:

In Colossians 2:8, Paul warns the Colossians not to be taken captive through hollow and deceptive philosophies…which depend on the world rather than on Christ.

I am convicted when I think about Eve “worshiping” at the tree of knowledge. I, too, am guilty of seeking wisdom outside of Christ, weighing all the facts, etc.

What would it actually look like to receive all knowledge and apply all wisdom from Christ alone? How often do I seek outside knowledge and then “pray about it.”

A Song was playing as I wrote and I jotted the lyrics down: “You are worthy of it all; for from You are all things, and to You are all things; You deserve the Glory.”

God’s response to me asking for a file on Wednesday, at the same time and place I received my first call about a file, was a reminder to me that I must seek HIM. I cannot put my HOPE in anything other than the GRACE of Jesus Christ. 

I must not try and figure anything out in this process: not the timing, not the provision. And at the end of the day, as Isaiah wrote in chapter 55 of his prophecy, and as the song declared as I wrote down these thoughts on Wednesday, “God deserves the glory,” and he wants it all for himself. It is for HIS renown that he will send me out in JOY and make me go forth in Peace.