Isaiah 40:31
³¹ but those who hope in the LORD
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint. (NIV)

We live in a world today where love is supposed to alleviate all discomfort, yet the God of love still allows us to experience discomfort. Today’s passage reminds us that times will come when we need hope. Hope is not faith. Faith is believing God will move in a certain way, but hope reflects times when we are unable to even conceive what God should do. But we put our hope in God that He will do whatever is good and right even when we can’t see what the good and right thing would be. And God allows us to go through these times.

We don’t like it. We don’t want it, but God allows it. And if He is allowing it, He has a purpose in our pain and bewilderment.

He is working through a moment of disbelief and heartache to renew our strength. It seems oxymoronic to say this. How can my strength be renewed when my life is crumbling all around me? Yet, this is how we receive strength. If we acknowledge that we need to be strong in this world and that God is the giver of strength, then we must embrace desperate moments as the place of strength refueling.

In our hopelessness, we can’t see how things can improve. We toggle on the verge of giving up, walking out, and ending it all. But if we can turn our eyes just slightly away from the nightmare that is our life to God, we will be strengthened in the hopelessness.

Because we cannot see any solution or even imagine any kind of miracle God might do to rescue us from this moment, we must remember that God sees what we don’t. He knows what we can’t. He is able when we can’t even form a plan. Hopelessness, if we don’t give in, will force us into a place of humility before God. As we debase ourselves, we lift Him higher. Our hope that God can figure out something is an act of worship that connects us to Him where all strength is born.

Meditating on His ways being higher than ours and reminding ourselves that He is God and we are cloaked in praise to cover our despair. As we worship, He descends into our hearts, and in that hopeless place, we praise Him and His strength fills us again.

Prayer: Lord, let me never detest hopeless moments, but teach me to move back to You. When I bring my hopelessness to you in praise, I am strengthened for another day. Amen.