Adam Young- The Place we find ourselves.- Hope

Psalm 27
Hear my voice when I call, O LORD; be merciful to me and answer me.
I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.
Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD
There is a link between hoping and waiting. Hope involves groaning, longing. 
Hope is groaning inwardly while waiting expectantly, at the same time expecting it to happen. An atheist calls hope the evil of all evils. it prolonges your tourment. Hope is something that I want. I want a husband that loves Jesus and pursues Him above all else and a husband that pursues me. When I have wanted that for years and still have been let down over and over my reaction is to stop wanting it. isnt it foolis to think that someday i will have this when i have not had that longing met? The easiest thing to do is put my head in the sand so i will stop wanting it. Hope is letting myself want something when that desire has not yet been met. Hope is waiting expectantly. So to go back to the verse in Psalms 27- I will see the goodness of the Lord in this life. God will hear my cry and give me the desires of my heart. Hope is agonizing, yearning for that desire. Living in hope requires 3 things to happen. 1) Bringing my longings to God. 2)expecting God to meet those desires and 3) wrestling with the desire with God. (ie. the desire to have a intimate relationship with a spouse when God has not met that desire yet.) That is Biblical hope. So the Alternative to hope is deadening to desire and cynicism. You body naturally groans as children. they are always longing for something, food toys safety. Its the natural dispositon of the heart. BUt what happens when disappointments pile up and make longing for something too painful? If i didnt want that so much I wouldnt hurt so much. This goes back to childhood longing for their parents to love and accept them for them. You say to yourself that if i didnt want that thing so much i wouldnt hurt so much. You try to numb or deaden that desire. Instead of hoping that my husband will begin pursuing my heart I say to myself its a broken world. My expectations are too high. What am I doing? I am deadening my desire to be pursued by my husband and this is important, it is also a deadening of Hope in God to do the miraculous and turn my husband towards me to pusue my heart and Gods. 
in dan allenders book the wounded heart he identifies 3 places of powerlessness. 
Powerlessness is the core of our war with hope
1) When you experience powerlessness in your attempt to make your disfunctional family functional. what did you try to do to make it better?  The child can become a prisoner to the attempt to life moms spirits or keep mom from becoming angry.
the passionate desire to see the family change energizes the child to pursue academic athletic excellence. the result is deeper disappointment that mom or dad did not change. this leads to powerlessness. you tried something to make your family work better. but your efforts failed and that was immense powerlessnes.
2) When you experience the powerlessness to stop the abuse. what did i do to make it stop?what happened in my brain when the attempts did not help stop it didnt work?
3) When we experience powerlessness to stop the pain in your adult life. this is the most agonizing. you have tried so many different things counseling sermons conferences to get well. to heal my pain. That wrestling with God asking why wont you heal me ? what do i need to do to get you to heal me? 

If you have felt this powerlessness than you have had your battle with hope. hoplessness is a constant pull. the bible takes powerlessness and hopelessness very serious. the word for this in the bible is barrenness. Barenness was the start of Isreal ! This is what leads me to love Isaiah because he speaks of the barren woman. Sara couldnt get pregnant . aslo rebecca rachel hannah. the mothers of the first  three generations of isrealities were barren! do you think God is saying something here. Where is the Barrenness of your life right now? where do you feel powerless to create lifegoodness and newness. the whole point of the barrennesss is that God loves to work in the barren places in our lives. 
In Isaiah 49 God talks about how the isrealities will return from exile. I have an awesome message that was lifechanging for me and it was the last sermon that Kanon and I attended together before we separated. I think i still have the notes.  The Isrealities had been in exile for 70 years. the hope of returning from exile will be in the land of the living. it will be on this earth. the hard part is that we dont know what desires will be met. hope forces us to wrestle with god. if it be your will. you express your desire to god then say, " not my will but yours be done.".. as long as it comes after a 12 round wrestling match iwth God. we are called to surrender our will to Gods will. you cant surrender until you have wrestled with god. surrender only comes after exhaustion. from bringing the longing of your heart to God. you can talk about hope without wrestling. if you dont find yourself regularly wrestling with God you dont live with much hope. unfullfilled longings are what ultimately drive us to God so until you take the riskof hopiung that God will fullfill the desires of your heart. Until you bring your disappointment and anger to God over and over again, God will always remain strangly impersonal to you. He will be God the savior of the world but you wont know him as the God of my rescue. 
One of the reasons we hate hope so much is it requires us to live a 'both/and" life. both death and resurrection. we are to rejoices with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. optimism is the denial of the darkness that we live with in this world. some focus on the dark places of this world and we see it everywhere but we have a hard time seeing the beautiful places of Gods redemptive work. Some of us only focus on the beauty in this world but we turn a blind eye to all the darkness of the world. There is a spirit of optimism that the church has places that doesnt allow us to stay connected to the longings of our hearts. it allows us to turn away from darkness or pain. sentences that shame you for admitting that you have unmet desire. What do you do when someone expresses disappointment or sorrow. the tendancy is to 1 encourage them to believe in the soverignty of God. 2 wonder if they are making an idol to that longing ...like that is too important to you. suggest that they are wanting too much. arnt your expectations too much for reconciliation to your dad? what is going on? it exposes deep discomfort with those emotions in your life. you just tell them what you tell yourself.

The persistant widow Luke 18:  a widow goes to a judge to give her justice. She wears the judge down by her persistance.  Is prayer a matter of pestering God until he breaks down and gives you what you want? No, this is a parable of contrast, not comparison. God is not like the judge in the story. He is not reluctant in answering the prayers of his people. As a child of the King, you can turn to him at any moment. He never places you on hold or tells you to call again later. God loves the sound of your voice. Always. He doesn’t hide when you call. He hears your prayers and quickly runs to us like a Father. hope is still talking to God, pursuing God. Even when those desires arnt met i come back to God pursue and keep coming back. The bible calls that Hope. THe people who have suffered trauma usually have immense love for Jesus Paul wrote suffering produces perserverance and perserverance hope. Our hope is not in God it is God. The essence of rescue is not primarily recieving what I asked for but rather experiencing the responsiveness of God to the hurt in your heart. It is the rest of knowing i have a father in heaven who is deeply involved in the desires of my heart. i have a father who cares i have a father who responds. will you bring your disappointments back to God to keep your desires alive?