Get Your Hopes Up Again & Look Forward To Tomorrow

You may not want to go for a swim today, but prepare your heart. We are jumping into the deep end of the pool.

a new assignment

It’s a cold plunge kind of day because in this blog, you’re going to see the importance of you getting your hopes up specifically this season. If you’ve been someone who senses that there’s a change or a shift on the horizon for you or you sense this new assignment then this blog is going to encourage you and remind you that you’re gonna need to get your hopes up, especially if it has felt risky to try something new or to step into a new assignment that God is nudging you to start. I have prayed in advance that you’ll understand you don’t need hope in heaven, but you need it today. You need it for the places that God is going to take you and the spaces that he’s called you to inhabit.  Hope plays a huge role in your peace, actually. And I’m convinced that peace becomes malnourished in the soil of a sick heart. You  Did you know that your heart (aka your soul) can be sick? Your soul is the essence of who you are. That’s your heart. It’s what everyone is gonna miss and long for when you die  We don’t miss your hands, your crooked nose, or your lacking lashes, or in my case, my cellulite spider veins of my thighs. Praise God, you’re going to miss me, the essence of who I am, and we’re going to miss you, the essence of who you are.

When you die, we will bury your body, but your spirit will go to be with the Lord. This is your soul, your heart. We’re going to miss the way you laugh, the way you care about things, and the impact that you made. Even though your  body is wasting away day by day, your soul…your heart will live on in all the areas where you served and sowed in faith. Just last week, my husband showed me the cutest interview of a woman who is on the verge of turning 100  and she went on to explain how confused she felt because in her soul or in her heart, she still feels like she’s in her fifties. Your soul never ages, but it can be sick and the reason for a sick heart or a soul, according to the scriptures, has to do with hope. Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. That’s Proverbs 13:12. More on this later. Becoming a hopeful person is a skill, which is good news because that means you can learn how to do it.  And I’ve had to learn how to do it, and I’m still learning how to do it. 

keno and scotch

Ask my husband and he’ll confirm. I can spiral in hopelessness real fast. I come from a long line of hopeless women in my family. It runs deep. I mean, I have vivid memories from when I was a little girl of going to the liquor store with my grandmother. She drove this tannish gold Mercury as-wide-as-the-road car. She left the windows cracked just enough for her to flick ashes out. I would sit beside her on the soft cushions and my tiny little seven year old fingers would trace and pick the crusty edges of a cigarette burn hole from a flick gone wrong. “Stay here, I’m gonna run in real quick and grab the keno numbers for tonight,” she would tell me.  But I knew she was also gonna come back with her fresh daily bottle of scotch. I’m not sure what age she started numbing out and distancing herself from believing that good things can come, but she was hopeless as a person can be. And most of the women that I was raised by were. If we had a family crest, it would read “we expect crumbs” or “every man for himself”. We would raise our glasses, numb the pain by drinking, smoking, and some would go on to partake in drugs. 

That’s what I was rescued out of the day that Jesus offered me a way out at age 25. The offer was like a neon sign, Hey, do you want to reap a life by being in a relationship with your heavenly father? Or do you want to go down this road that you’re already on? I could see my future path of hopelessness if I followed in the footsteps of those who raised me. I was actually already on that path with a secret drug. And there was the out-in-the-open, alcohol abuse. Just by looking around, I could see where I was going.  So yeah, when I was invited into a relationship with a Heavenly Father who could open up doors and who would walk with me and guide me and take me on a better path that was adventurous and light and incredible, I said YES.

knowing there was something better

I was all in because I had seen the fruit of hopelessness and it’s not the path that I wanted to take. I wanted to get married and have babies and I didn’t want to be at the liquor store getting the keno numbers and buying booze. So  here’s where we’re going. Getting your hopes up is a part of our worship. I expect God to do great things on this earth, despite the screaming culture, or in my case, my family. My family has fully bought in to the idea that there’s nothing good about the world and nothing good is ever going to happen. 

The reason I’m telling you all this is because the greatest gifts I’ve ever received was that moment of salvation–when Christ called me to himself–and he gave me hope. Hope is the anxious expectation that God is up to something good on behalf of all of his children. It’s really, it’s one of the biggest reasons I wanted to become one of his children. You and I live differently because we know we’re looked after, we’re guided. He’s able to put us in rooms and places that allow us to hold in our hand something that we’re dreaming about in our heart. If you’re feeling even a little bit excited when you hear that, it’s a good sign that you’re ripe for hope. And if you’re finding yourself rolling your eyes or backing away in your spirit because you know that God can open doors and he just hasn’t, because you aren’t holding yet in your hand the things that have been in your heart for a long time, well then that’s even a bigger sign that you’re ripe for a message of hope. 

deferring hope

So let’s chat about what it looks like to defer hope. If hope is the anxious expectation that God is up to something good on behalf of his people, then deferring it means you don’t believe it.  

Here are seven common ways that you’re going to defer hope today. 

Number one: you’ll brace yourself for bad news. Like, maybe someone you haven’t talked to in a while reaches out and your initial thought is, uh oh, instead of expecting to hear something good, there’s this part of you that has a deep underlying feeling that you’re going to get bad news. This is like waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Number two: you assume you won’t ever win anything because you never do. You’ll see this flavor of hopelessness big time when it comes to watching raffles or giveaways, especially if it’s on Facebook. The comments will flood in “I didn’t expect to win. I never win anyways.” It’s such a dangerous state of being. It reveals that there are things that you don’t even get in the game for or you have this why bother attitude when it comes to getting in the game, because you have an agreement that runs deep. What’s the point of getting in a game if I’m don’t believe I’m ever going to win anything anyway?  

Number three: you assume a person will never change. This is a biggie. Who do you believe will never going to change? Is it your spouse, your kids, one of your parents, you? When you have decided in advance that someone is  unable to change, you’re deferring hope.

Number four: a person who is deferring hope is also deflecting compliments and encouragement that have anything to do with the desire in your heart. The compliments will make you wince a little bit. If you’re desiring to become a mother, you’ll shake your head a little bit when someone tells you that you’re going to be such a wonderful mother someday. It feels painful to hear it. Or if you’re wanting to pursue a new career or start your own business and someone tells you you’re just so gifted in this thing. But it provokes this deep doubt instead of cheerful confirmation. That’s a sign you’re deferring hope.  

Number five: If you invest a lot of time collecting evidence of why you probably won’t hold in your hand the thing you hold in your heart.  The underlying thought is if I was meant to have this, I would have it by now. As my beautiful friend, Marshawn, says, Trust. TRUST stands for Total Reliance Upon Supernatural Timing, T R U S T, Total Reliance Upon Supernatural Timing. Instead of thanking God for his timing, you write something off entirely because underneath there’s this thought: If I was meant to have it, I would already have it.  

Number six: you write things off as coincidence when it comes to your desires. This is the spirit of timidity and behind this is the question: is God really setting me up for this desire to be fulfilled? Now we have to turn that into a statement and then you have what you really believe. He’s probably not setting me up for this to be fulfilled.  If everything is a coincidence, then nothing can be orchestrated. This is another way we defer hope.  

Number seven: The last way we can practically defer hope is by having a boring prayer life. If you’re straight up bored in prayer or you don’t have a vibrant prayer life, this reveals hopelessness. God isn’t a genie in the bottle, so don’t treat him in this way. And so we just don’t talk to him. But yet we read in the scriptures over and over and over again, God emphatically invites us to ask and ask and ask and ask again. And he knows best when it comes to timing, our maturity, and more.  But, if we don’t enjoy talking to him about the desires in our heart for his kingdom and our lives while we are here, well then it’s possible that you believe you’re not good enough for it or he’s not good enough to do it. So a boring prayer life can really prove that we’re deferring hope.  

when you don’t even realize your heart is sick

If you resonate with anything on this list, you need to know that you’re not alone. They’re common and they all touch us at any given part of our day and in our life. In fact, most of the clients who start in my group program or hire me for one on one coaching, come in with really low hope. They have had years of unchecked negative thoughts, deferring their hope for so long that we have to start by uncovering where our hopelessness is and bring that to light first.  And guess what? I think you can actually be addicted to hopelessness in the same way you can be addicted to something like sugar. Your spirit is just so used to being sick that you don’t even know you’re sick anymore. It’s crazy. 

When I look back, I used to work for this chiropractor years and years and years ago, long before I had children, and it wasn’t uncommon to talk to people who had no idea how badly they were really suffering. Part of my job was to discover all the ways they were suffering, but they couldn’t see it because they had suffered so long that they thought it was normal. Their eyes would get super wide when I would share facts with them like about how the average person only has 1-2 headaches per year. They would look at me in such disbelief because they were having headaches one to two times per week. Somewhere along the line, they just accepted that headaches were the norm. This is just the way it is going to be. And there it is–that’s the essence of hopelessness. Can you feel that? It’s just not meant to be for me. This is it.  I’m going to camp here. I’m never going to get better.  And here’s the deal. I knew and the chiropractic office knew that regular visits and some tweaks would help them tremendously. But because they were so used to deferring hope and they just believed that this was their lot in life, their sick heart would go on to list all the reasons why they couldn’t or shouldn’t move on with the protocol and sign up for the help they needed. Well, I can’t afford it. Or I’ll talk to my husband or, you know, I don’t really have time to come in twice a week, but the driving force behind their reasons, it’s not even because they didn’t just believe that they could get better. It’s that they didn’t want to get their hopes up that it was even possible to get better. 

You see, hope sometimes feels like a really, really risky investment. Emotionally, spiritually, physically. And from that place, they would make this decision not to even try, which would seal the deal that indeed they actually wouldn’t get better because they wouldn’t sign up for the program that could help them get better and experience positive things again. And what was typically happening under the surface is that they were wanting to avoid experiencing the disappointment of trying something, even if it was another thing, because if they tried to get better and it didn’t work, well, they just didn’t want to feel the disappointment of that. To them, it’s the possible letdown that would feel more painful than a couple headaches a week. So they would walk out and declare, “I’ll just deal with it. It’s not a problem.” And for humans, if something is too risky, it equals death. So I get it. We would see a lot of people just walk out because they had been deferring hope for so long that it just hurt to even think that it could possibly get better. 

you reap what you sow

Here’s the deal. That’s not what we’re called to as believers and followers of Jesus Christ.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Those all work in tandem together. That’s from 1 Corinthians 13:7. Here’s the truth: reaping and sowing are very much in effect right now. You will reap what you sow. You won’t reap what you don’t sow. God says you’ll also reap what you didn’t sow. 

Let me just throw something else in here. Why else do you think the enemy works overtime to increase hopelessness on the earth and preach to you so often the doom and gloom messages?  Because it’s super effective. You being hopeful is dangerous to his mission. Because if you have hope, you might actually believe that something is possible. And when you think that something might be possible, you take action and do something putting the seed in the ground.  You might actually hire the chiropractor, stop having so many headaches, get your life back and tell other people how it happened so they can do it, too. You will step into this really powerful position that says, I am ready to give an explanation for my hope. It is God that led me here and I believed. And then you might stop being ready to explain to everyone how all is hopeless. This is our work. Our work is not to control our outcomes and try to control when God is going to bless us, but to keep our heart healthy by the hard and vulnerable work of getting your hopes up. 

Okay, so how do we practically begin the process of halting hopelessness? How do we stop deferring it and start engaging with hope again? Because in order to break up with worry for good, you first have to get honest about the condition of your heart right now. You have to assess your hopelessness.  So how’s your heart? Does it feel sick? How often do you defer hope? And how many times can you defer your hope before the heart gets sick? I can tell you something, too. Look, I’m not just going to throw affirmations at you. Affirmations that you don’t believe are not going to increase your hope. There’s no scripture that you can slap on a sick heart to make it better or make the difficult times go away. You’ve got to give your brain time to consider and wrap itself around getting your hopes back up. Because, remember, if it feels too risky to be full of hope again, then you’re likely not to engage. It feels like death. Okay, so I have a simple recommendation on how you can start a process to get your hopes up today.

If you’re a note taker, feel free to pause right here and go grab a notebook because I’m going to give you the process in order, okay? 

the process for getting your hopes up today

Number one: the first thing you need to do to get your hopes up is to What is that thing that you’re longing to see God do or better yet, what is something that you’ve longed to see him do years ago? For some of you guys, God is bringing you into a full circle moment where a desire you had 10 years ago is finally in season to be fulfilled, which makes it feel a little bit more tender to acknowledge that desire. But listen, do it anyway. 

Number two: confess out loud and write down how you currently feel about it. Get honest. Remember, God already knows and bondage can lie in your suppressing your feelings and thoughts about your desires not being fulfilled right now. So let’s just get honest. Put it on paper. How do you feel?  Does it feel painful?

Number three: confess to the Lord all the ways and all the reasons why possibility feels risky, but also confess that you’re possibly open. This is how you open your heart to hope again. You have to start very basic and elementary. Thank him in advance for helping you get your eyes to see possibility again. 

Have you read the book of Ruth? That is my favorite book because God is never mentioned in that book, but everything was labeled as it just happened to be that Ruth and Naomi were in this situation. It just happened to be that Naomi was from Bethlehem and she was going to go back to her town. It just happened to be that, you know, Ruth. and her Redeemer were related to Naomi. It just happened to be that they got to access to this new field, and they got to glean. It just happened to be. And everything was so coincidental–and yet nothing about it was coincidence. Everything had been set up for Ruth to meet Boaz. Everything had been set up for Christ to come through their lineage. Everything had been pre-orchestrated and designed. And when we fail to see and we fail to understand that nothing is a coincidence, then we fail to live in this place of hope. We fail to see how God has orchestrated every single delay. He’s orchestrated every single thing that maybe you desired a few years ago, it didn’t come to pass and now all of a sudden you’re grateful that thing didn’t come to pass. Yeah, that is for your good. So you have to be on the lookout for proof of possibility. Collect the evidence, write down the scriptures, write down things that are happening around you, write down when someone just happens to text you and it has to do with the desire.

Practice marveling when these things happen. It will change your life. 

good things are on the way

The enemy wants you to think that everything is coincidental. Do these things for the foreseeable future until you begin feeling giddy again. That’s a clue that you’re getting your hopes up.  Depending on how worried and hopeless you are or have been, it could take you some time. Practice might take you a week, two weeks, two months, two years…depending on how sick your heart has been, you might need to give it time and that is okay. There will be a time when this is a distant memory. You might even need to hire someone like a cognitive behavior coach for a season. They’re like a personal trainer, but for your mind. Just like a personal trainer would show you the workout and keep you accountable, you might need somebody that is going to help you stay on track with what you’re thinking about. 

You’re being nudged to get your hopes up again on purpose. You want good things to happen, and that is a good thing. The scriptures say that you go from glory to glory, which means there is something meaningful in your desire. It’s meant to glorify God. And when that thing is fulfilled, it’s like a tree of life. That’s what the Bible says. Trees provide cover, shade, oxygen, a home, fruit or nuts, you know…the good lush things of life. When you see a vibrant green tree, you can’t help but notice how beautiful it is!

Hope is directly tied to what you are working on or you’re avoiding working on. That desire that you need to step into requires action. So that’s why hope and productivity are linked. God created us for glory, and there is no way for us to find a switch that will turn that off. We are inveterate glory seekers.  And the thing that distinguishes a good man from a bad man is what he finds glorious, not whether he finds something glorious. Scripture even describes sin in terms of falling short of the glory. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. So it’s not a sin to pursue glory. It is not a sin to be ambitious for glory. It is actually a sin to surrender your glory. 

prepared to give an answer for the hope within us

We’re called to give an explanation for our hope and it’s only when we’re stepping in and doing things in faith–when we are taking on our important role which was designed by God– that people wonder, why are you doing what you’re doing? And you can say, because I know that God is up to something good, and I’m willing to partner with Him to be somebody who ushers it in. 

It’s time to get your hopes up, sweet friend. Your next destination and your next assignment needs your heart healthy.  Thank you for reading the blog. If this blog blessed you, would you do me a favor and tell a friend about it? More people need to know that they never, ever have to lay down their peace. If you liked what you read here, I have more content in other places. You can find me over on social media.You can also find out ways that you can partner with me or work with me for a season. You can get more information at leslieburris.com.