| Subject: Where does hope come from? |
Author:
Yeager
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Date Posted: 07:52:39 05/07/02 Tue
First of all I enjoy reading all of your commentaries, you all are unique. I was telling Angela though that I love to read Adam's because the fun is getting prepared for it. I love to sit down with my cup o' joe in a relaxing position, take a deep breath, and prepare for the exegesis that Adam brings forth out of life. It is great.
This particular topic sparks many uncomfortable and scary memories for me. The text says rejoice in suffering because it produces perseverance. Perseverence then produces character. Character hope and Finally hope doesn't disappoint us because our source of hope is in God. I agree with Adam's friend in that this text is all well and good until you try and practice it. It is like trying to tell my wife what my job is like. I could be the greatest narrator in the history of mankind and she would still not understand how difficult my job is. To me, this is like reading in the Psalms where David says, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me". Great verse, but I doubt we put much effort into understanding or really knowing what David went through when he wrote that. I can't imagine the amount of stress and anxiety at the time of this authorship.
The points that I believe I have learned from the former passage is that although I go kicking and screaming through perseverance, it still produces character. This character is more precious than anything we could buy or achieve and we could not receive this without suffering and perseverance. This character is the molding by God into a Christ-likeness that we could not do on our own. To use the analogy of a pair of eyeglasses, this molding into Christ-likeness gives us better "eyeglasses" to see like Christ would have seen, not to be blinded in the sinful nature with which we were born into. If you read "the power of prayer" page on coolhombres, I wrote about my dad's recent experience. Let me tell you that I know my dad is a man of character. He persevered in his sufferings. His character gave him hope. And he knew or believed that this hope would not disappoint, because his hope was in the Lord. My argument then is that because if we finally achieve character, we have the faith to hope. Because through this character we already have built up the necessary "eyesight" to have hope. In other words, the character we have is Christ-like. And because the character is Christ-like we are more in tune with the faith that Christ had in the Father. Therefore, we can trust in faith to have hope in him. I hope that was not too confusing.
I think that this suffering is worthy of rejoicing because it purges out "self" and forces us to trust in God. And he does such a better job in my life than I could do. To me, this is the importance of this suffering. It is necessary to say, "I am in a jam God, but yet you are the only one that can get me out" so I will trust in you for the outcome. What is interesting, is that despite what our mind says will happen, this is the hope that does not disappoint us. God will never let us down and always produces a better result than what we could do on our own accord. This is true hope, only achieved through character, which was achieved through perseverance, which started with sufferings. I believe now, that God is always working when we surrender ourself to him, however, we may not see how he is working until a later date.
Finally, the issue of "I don't have any more left to give" I think is a real issue and problem, that my wife and I have definately experienced. The verse I always have to cling to is I Corinthians 10:13 "And God is faithful, he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it". If we could some how obtain more character, I believe that we can honestly rest upon that verses facts.
Yeager
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