Hope Makes Him Marvel
We may think dozens of thoughts in a week about how God’s movement through life’s circumstances impacts us. We sit over coffee with friends and chat after church about our new job or relationship or our parent’s illness – all through the lens of how we’re receiving God’s choices for our life. I gave years away to thinking about why God opened my girlfriends’ wombs and left me barren.
I think we give little thought, however, to how we might impact the heart of God.
Consider the centurion from Matthew 8. He made the son of God … marvel. The Jesus who wept over His people and bled His life into the messy dirt underneath the cross is capable of being moved by our perspective on His ability.
To hope that He can do the impossible while also recognizing that He may sovereignly choose not to leaves us in the unique position of reaching for the emotions residing in His heart. Hope opens up new, broken-yet-faithful ways to approach the almighty God. Hope makes accessible an unconventional, but deeply alluring, love.
If my womb stayed barren forever – yet I kept praying that He’d heal me, open to the possibility that He just might not — I still had the chance to move God’s heart by my hope.
Hope moves us from intellectually relating to Him as a transactional God, to sitting on His lap and calling Him Daddy. This perspective shift, birthed from holding on to tenuous hope, may be the very reason He keeps us in that waiting room.
By Sara Hagerty. A mother whose arms stretched wide across the ocean for her children, and who lives in Kansas City, writing and hoping. She is the author of Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet: Tasting the Goodness of God in All Things (Zondervan, October 2014) – with foreword by Katie Davis, author of Kisses from Katie . Visit http://
