The God of hope

Oh, hey. Sorry I'm negligent of my blog. It is what it is, though. What can you do.

This past weekend we had stake and regional conference, and I wanted to share some thoughts that stemmed from one particular talk. One of the counselors in our stake presidency talked about a trial in his life and the "what do I need to learn about me?"-genre questions which followed that certain event (or as he kept saying, in the third person, "What does John need to learn about John?").

He talked a lot about Abraham, one of my favorite characters in the scriptures. My sister and I talk often about how his "qualifying trial" is an example of what we must all face in this life. We will all have really hard, soul-stretching, life-altering trials come our way, and there will come a point where we'll have to ask ourselves, "How far can I go? How long will I remain faithful? How much will I trust in the Lord?" I used to get to hung up on why I had to go through certain trials when Heavenly Father knew that I was willing to be faithful through them. Wasn't it enough that He knew my heart and knew that I would remain faithful to Him no matter what? But there are lessons to be learned—lessons about ourselves—in those qualifying trials, maybe the biggest of which is hope and trust in our Heavenly Father.

Back to Abraham. So here was a guy who, right from the very first thing we read about him, had some pretty sweet promises from the Lord. He was promised land, titles, posterity, and just wonderful, wonderful blessings. The most poignant one to me, however, is the promise given to him and his wife, Sarah, of a child. This promised blessing was something that was just impossible. It just was. The scriptures say "Sarai was barren; she had no child" (Gen. 11:30). And Abraham himself was freaking old: "Abraham and Sarah were old and well stricken in age; and it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women" (Gen. 18:11). For him it was maybe just bad odds; for her it was impossible.

But, man, his faith! "Being not weak in faith, [Abraham] considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sara's womb: He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform" (Romans 4:19–21). He didn't doubt that Sarah could carry a baby in a womb that was "dead"! That just blows my mind. He just didn't even doubt that the Lord would fulfill all His promises. He knew that the Lord "was able."

But not all of those promised blessings came soon. They had to wait, like, their entire lives for some of them, and even longer for others! And then, when that promised, impossible blessing of a son finally came, Abraham was asked to sacrifice it. Like, again, impossible. But Abraham, I think, had already learned something about Abraham. He had learned that he trusted God. More than that, "Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness" (Rom. 4:3). He held fast to those promises and he knew without a doubt that they would be fulfilled. He had hope: "the confident expectation of and longing for the promised blessings of righteousness" (Guide to the Scriptures, "Hope"). Have we, through our qualifying trials, learned to trust God? Do we believe the God of hope?

As this counselor in the stake presidency pointed out, Abraham is our great example of hope; of holding fast to promises. He "against hope believed in hope" (Rom. 4:18) because, through his waiting on blessings, he had developed faith and trust in Heavenly Father and knew that He was faithful. I also love how that attitude rubbed off on his wife, who was skeptical at first (is that just a woman thing? Doubting that God can do the impossible in our lives?) but ended up receiving "strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age (when it was impossible!), because she judged him faithful who had promised" (Hebrews 11:11). I guess Sarah learned something about Sarah, too. She was strong when she believed.

I guess all of this is just to say that Abraham was awesome. And God IS AWESOME. His promises are great and they are sure. He will fulfill them all in His time and in His way. And He can do impossible things. And thank goodness for Abraham's example of hoping and trusting in God and believing Him. Because we saw how it all unfolded for him, and, I think, if we can try to be as faithful throughout our trials as Abraham was throughout his, then not only will we learn what we need to about ourselves (hopefully that we have more trust and faith and hope in the Lord than we thought) but also we will see things unfold with that same fullness as they did for Abraham.

So here's to hope. Here's to trusting in Heavenly Father's oh-so-sure promises and believing Him when He says He is able.

P.S. I made this little sign for my office of a scripture that someone mentioned in our work devotional last week. I thought it went right along with this!