"The church needs to move people from Coping Skills to Hoping Skills." Pastor David Robbins, Coweta Community Church
The above statement resounded in my head for the last several weeks. I've asked numerous people what they do when they are losing hope. I've compiled a list of several of their suggested Hoping Skills with additional explanations. This is one of those posts meant to be saved for when hope is suddenly gone or fading fast.
Discipleship - See King David's rag-tag bunch of losers that he turns into a formidable army in the Cave of Abdullah as an example. Discipleship is necessary to a Christian's journey. Often, churches mistakenly label their 101 Membership Classes or Bible studies as discipleship. Nope. Discipleship combines the study of God's Word, eating God's Word (meditation), living God's Word (accountability), discussing God's Word (community), and acting out God's Word (obedience). Discipleship will renew your pursuit of God and transform your walk from nominal Christianity to one that overflows with the life-giving, resurrecting presence of Christ.
Delight in the Lord - There are many ways we should "delight ourselves in the Lord" (Psalm 37-4-6) and we should make a practice of each:
Reading (and meditating and memorizing) scriptures about God's goodness toward humankind, particularly his rescue of his people and plans for the future.
Reading (and meditating and memorizing) scriptures that quote God making a promise. Yes, yes, I know...some promises have a context that doesn't apply necessarily to us and our modern situation (e.g. Mary is told she's going to conceive a baby by virgin birth). Don't let that stop you. Every promise of God reveals an aspect of his character. And that, my friends, NEVER CHANGES. So is he the God who promises to route the enemy of Israel? Yes. Is he a router of enemies of his children—is that his character? Yes. Will he route your enemy too? Not only yes, but he has already done so!
Declaring God's promises to yourself and your family. (Say it with authority! God's words in your mouth are as powerful as they were in his because they are his words!)
Listening to recorded prophecies that you've been given in the past. Participating in the declarations of those.
Singing scripture songs that remind your spirit of the love of the Father.
Counting blessings—and sending some of those "blessings" a note of thanks.
Worship - This one deserves its own category because true worship—in Spirit and truth—breaks the yoke. Hopelessness is a yoke in case that wasn't clear up front. Break it by allowing the Holy Spirit to align you with Jesus and not your circumstances. My sisters and I have a Signal group where we share links to the worship songs that are meaningful to us and it's so good to share that with each other. So, go ahead—participate in the 24/7 worship that happens around the throne! I highly recommend dancing and worship-as-warfare, as well as soaking prayer and soaking worship. If you tend to be more "conservative" in your worship, break out of that box. If you tend to move your feet too fast, soak in a place of worshipful connection with the Father until his presence oozes out of your pores.
Give - Give what you can and where you can. Think of the boy with the fish and loaves. It wasn't much, but it was given and used to feed thousands. Being used by God to impact even one person lifts your eyes off your circumstances and up to the Heavens, where your help comes from (Psalm 121). Go to a soup kitchen. Mow a lawn. Make a bed. Arrange for food delivery. Drop off a food box from the church's pantry. Serve in the nursery. Give away roses to strangers. Give when you have nothing left to give and you'll find the source of your spring of Living Water again. Hint: It's not yours.
Speak In Tongues/Pray In The Holy Spirit - Read Jude 1:20-24 and you'll find a recipe for developing your faith from one of Jesus' brothers, including praying in the Spirit.
Ask For Help From God - Yes, God knows your "unspoken need" but a person who admits to no need can accept no help. (That's a paraphrase from C. S. Lewis.) We really do have to ask! We can ask others for prayer. (And do the prayer right then, not "I'll remember you in my prayers..." Nonsense. Very few remember.) But we must focus on asking God for help. And keep focused on asking for God's help until it comes. It's the latter part that most of us miss.
Be Still And Know - I find my bouts with hopelessness tend to come from burnout. I have to be still and KNOW my God. I have to meditate on the revelations I've previously received about his character. I have to pursue more revelation of who he is. I have to spend time in communion with God (taking communion and communing). This is not the easiest thing for a mom of two young kids, so I have to be vigilant. The best part about being in a place of waiting for God is that he is the God who comes. Without fail.
Check Your Diet - Times of hopelessness are NOT where a food fast or fast food comes in handy. Fasting is a wonderful, flesh-curbing discipline but not useful for restoring hope. To everything there is a season, Ecclesiastes tells us. Eat well (healthy) during a bout with hopelessness. Exercise well—even better if you do both of those with people! Rest well. If you need to fast, fast social media, the news, the internet, and worldly forms of entertainment. (Quite frankly, most people need to minimize their news consumption. Doing so would make a vast difference in our mental health immediately.)
Testimonies - I could have put this one under "delighting in the Lord" but it deserves its own category because it's not one we usually think of and it's highly effective. My cousin, Joanna Winter, a missionary and minister of the Gospel, reminded me of this one. Her family's missions organization, Frontline Missions, constantly shares testimonies of God's miracles of goodness happening in countries around the world. She said she wished testimonies were incorporated more into church services and I agree wholeheartedly.
I have to monitor carefully the bad and good news I consume. I don't want to stick my head in the proverbial sand—it is BAD out there—but it's also GOOD. God is moving. He's appearing to Muslims in their dreams and hundreds are coming to Christ because he came to them personally. Revivals are erupting in multiple countries and on college campuses. They may last only for a while (we can talk about why revivals fizzle another time), but we should celebrate that God is still on the move!
Another great resource for testimonies is the Jews For Jesus website or Facebook feed. Their stories of how Jesus reveals himself and upends these comfy lives to radically change them often make me cry with happiness.
Worship Barefoot - Not only does walking barefoot in nature do wonders for our bodies, but worshipping God while we are experiencing his creation does double duty: both our spirits AND our bodies are nourished. Experiencing God through his creation is one of Christianity's Sacred Pathways and there are many people who do not experience God's presence unless they are outdoors.
Get Out Of Your "Comfort Zone" - This one incorporates many of the above bullet points because we get into our own zones of worship, prayer, and living life. If we're experiencing hopelessness, then what we normally do is NOT WORKING. We need to shake things up. If you go to a predominately white church with typical white church worship, attend an all-black worship and testimony service or a charismatic worship night. It will blast you out of your comfort zone. If you do devotions early in the morning before the sun is up, make time to go outside and do them on the sun-warmed grass. If you pray silently, go somewhere where you can pray freely and LOUDLY, with some authority. If you regularly practice dancing and flag-waving, grab your pillow and lay down in the pews of an Anglican Soaking Worship event.
Surrender - This last one might be the hardest and most important. Hope and hopelessness have everything to do with the word "future." We are called to surrender the future—our future, our kids future, the world's future—to God. We have to surrender our expectations of what it was supposed to look like...all the "what ifs" and "what might have been." If we miss this, hopelessness turns to bitterness. So, surrender expectations and grab hold of a sense of expectancy that you are going to encounter the One Who Holds Your Future around each of the next bends of your life's path.
Grace made hope possible.