Scripture of the Day:
Ecclesiastes 9:3
“This is the unfortunate fact about everything that happens on earth: the same fate awaits everyone.
In addition to this, the hearts of all people are full of evil, and there is folly in their hearts during their lives—then they die.”
Hope Discovery of the Day:
Recognizing the root of sin in disillusionment helps us to be free from it and find hope again.
Driving away from my former home, I took one last moment to look at it one last time at the end of the driveway. I contemplated the brokenness I experienced at this place and wanted to leave behind. Our home foreclosed upon, my children and I had found a place to live in, but the shock from our circumstances was hard to process. Sometimes just accepting our reality seems impossible.
I was not looking back like Lot’s wife, who gazed back at Sodom and Gomorrah when the LORD was delivering them and was turned into a pillar of salt. But I was looking at our home and saying goodbye to what I knew and letting it go. Little did I know that the LORD was also delivering me. What looked like ruins in our lives would be a testimony to how God protects and restores His people.
But sometimes processing traumatic events is made difficult by disillusionment. How do we overcome the powerful force of disillusionment? By knowing how disillusionment entered in and refuting it with God’s truth. Disillusionment takes root by many ways:
- Disillusionment is formed when my plans become my idols.
- Disillusionment is formed when I think I am entitled to what I know.
- Disillusionment happens when we think we should not have to suffer.
- Disillusionment is formed when I place my hope in things or expectations instead of in God.
- Disillusionment is formed when I do not have faith to see how I can navigate my new normal.
- Disillusionment happens when we don’t trust God because we are looking at the waves instead of His promises.
Disillusionment is an unwelcome friend at first until we realize that it is encompassed in hope. How, you ask?
- We are no longer naive after having experienced the reality that disillusionment brings.
- No longer deceived.
- No longer living in a fantasy world.
- No longer living to be comfortable, but learning to be content at all times.
- We are equipped by our pain to help others.
- We are set free from worshiping our circumstances and turn to worship God through our circumstances.
Recognizing the root of sin in disillusionment helps us to be free from it. Disillusionment can draw our hearts nearer to God or cause our hearts to grow hard toward Him. Choosing to accuse God will not deliver us from our pain. The God Who made us is able to use everything for our good and His glory because He is in complete control. When we don’t understand why, we can seek to understand “Who” – who is our Savior. Our Savior may or may not remove our problems, but He will deliver us through them.
When we realize that everything is not about us, but about God’s glory, we can let go of what we think we deserve and cling to Him alone. Laying down our dreams and objectives, we pick up His plans for us instead – and they are good.
Lord, thank You that you are with us at all times. In the valleys, in the storms of life, in the mountains. You are Lord over it all and our refuge.
Need hope? God has hope for us at all times. Join me on a 31-day journey to Hope Reinvented.
