It’s a new year! It’s interesting how the change of one number– 2024 to 2025— brings us a sense of hope and expectancy every year. We create a moment to pause, refresh, and dream for what could come. Maybe you have already made your New Years resolutions have been scouring Booking.com for trip ideas!
We always start off the new year at ICB in 2 weeks of Prayer & Fasting— setting aside time and physical needs to hear from the Lord. We draw close in hopeful anticipation that He will also come close to us. We pray, ask, and wait for a “word of the year” or specific direction for where He is taking us. What plans do you have for me, Lord? What exciting moments will happen this year? Our anthem is the verse we know all too well (usually printed on mugs and corny t-shirt) Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”
But what about those of us who cannot see a future and a hope? …the ones who have had their teeth kicked in repeatedly this past year? If you have not yet found yourself in a place of hope deferred, friend, your moment will come at some point. You’ll know it when you slowly begin to begrudge the always-optimistic worship songs (where has lament gone?). You’ll understand you are ‘there’ when talk of “hope & a future” is almost heard in a mocking tone. It’s not a fun place. It’s not a season you can intellectualize yourself out of. When all feels lost– who cares about a future?
It is in this moment of hope deferred, of grief, that we can actually know God most intimately. When nothing else satisfies or fills us, when we cannot place any of our hope in a future, then the only place left is on our every-present, ever-close, ever- loving God. After all, God said through the prophet Jeremiah a few verses later “In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me.” That is a guarantee. He is “findable”. He is close.
If you are walking through a season of hopelessness and fear… if you find yourself not able to dream about a future… then I encourage you place your hope not on a future right now, but on the person of Jesus. Dream OF Him, so that one day soon after slowly healing with your Father, you may dream WITH Him.
If you were to ask me for my New Years Resolutions, echoing Peter’s words in Acts 3:6 “I have nothing to give you. But I’ll give you what I have.” And what I have is an unwavering hope in the person and presence of Jesus.
Audrey Wells 