What is the proper way to hope?
How do we carry our dreams and keep the right kind of hope alive?
I have times where I put my hope in the wrong place. My unfulfilled dreams become heavy and my heart quickly grows discontent. I am no longer loving my right now. I am not embracing where God has me or fully seeing what He is currently doing.
Hope gets attached to what we want. And when we want it. We become future-focused. We chase the next turning point. We forget to live today. Mentally we are already moving forward.
I can give you several examples from my own story.
- Senior year of high school. I applied to college extra-early and was accepted in September. I was not happy that whole year because mentally I was already at college. My focus was the future.
- After college. I lived my twenties with my heart focused on the next normal dreams — independence as an adult and eventually marriage.
- My 30th year. This was the invisible deadline for my marriage dream. But it did not happen.
Recently I was able to examine these more closely with a group of students. In each scenario, hope was connected to my dreams. And my dreams were tied to the turning points in life.
I needed to become presently-placed. I learned to love my right now and watch God unveil my journey in the small steps. The small steps are full of small dreams.
Changing our focus from the future to the present helps us to see the gifts in our current seasons and wait with our hope in God.
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Next week we will talk about this topic a little more and I will share a video with you.