Thoughts that have come from various quotes taken from the book, "Victor - Breaking Free From a Victim Based Society" by John H. Hovis. Click here to link directly to the audio file.
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"It is my belief that God gives us opportunity after opportunity to see hope in the everyday tasks of our life. We kill that hope by turning opportunity into obligation when we live a “have to” kind of existence."
As quoted from the book "Victor - Breaking Free From a Victim-Based Society" by John H. Hovis Page 185.
Hope can be such a difficult commodity to recognize when things aren't going our way. I think part of the reason there are so many of us in a hopeless state from time to time is our definition of this important word. Hope for me has always been about my circumstances coming into alignment with the picture of what I think a good life is suppose to look like. When something comes against me that challenges my picture of a good life it can be awfully hard to hold onto hope. My definition of hope has failed me in victim thinking ways so many times I'm thinking I need a new definition for the word hope.
The dictionary defines hope as a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. That pretty much lines up with the definition of hope that has failed me over the years. Maybe it isn't my definition for hope that needs some adjustment. Maybe it is what I hope for that needs attention. Hoping for things that aren't necessarily part of the plan for our lives at this moment can be a victimizing event when those things we hope for are slow in coming.
The Bible takes a totally different direction when it comes to the word hope. There are many places where words in the original languages of the Bible were translated as "hope" in the English language. The vast majority of the words used to express hope in God's word have to do with a really difficult word to comprehend. Hope in the Bible basically means trust!
The human race is not great at trusting. In the United States we are especially challenged when it comes to what trust is all about. I believe that we in the US are this way because of our past need to be rugged individualists. Our history has been such that we have had to break out of the molds worldly systems have tried to place us in. Freedom is what the US was founded on. World systems made it so that that freedom was something that could easily be taken for granted. The potential for abuse happens as freedoms are curtailed in society after society.
It took a special breed of individual to come to America and life out freedom. Trust in self replaced trust in government and systems. I believe much of the Victim Based Society symptoms we are dealing with today are a result of our society turning back to trust in systems and government and abandoning trust in self.
We are a people who have been spoiled with the taste of freedom. As those freedoms wain due to our trust being placed in worldly systems, victimization, either real or perceived, will always be the result. The more we stay in that place of feeling victimized, the greater the chance for victim thinking to take hold. This cycle is a disaster waiting to happen for those of us wanting to live out a life as the victor God has called us to.
I'm not advocating that we all make trust in ourselves be what our hope is based on. I've tried to go this route when it comes to trying to make my good life be the reality I want all the time. Complete trust is self is just as a failed strategy when it comes to hope as is trusting in worldly systems for the good life we all desire.
Trust and hope are connected in ways that make sense in the life of a victor when trust in self is combined with trust in God. It is through trust in God that the victimizing things of this world can be seen in a different light and endured in Kingdom building ways. As for trust in self, it is when we trust in what God says about us that our trust in ourselves becomes something that this world just can't stand against.
Today's Bible reading highlights the need for God to be at the center of our trust model. It says.
Can any of the worthless foreign gods send us rain?
Does it fall from the sky by itself?
No, you are the one, O Lord our God!
Only you can do such things.
So we will wait for you to help us. Jeremiah 14:22 (NLT)
I don't know about you but I have relied on way to many worthless idols for the good life to rain down on me. When placing my trust in those idols didn't work, I turned to trusting the talents and abilities God entrusted me with to try and make that rain happen all the more. By doing so, I turned the goodness placed inside me into something abominable. Let me give you a real life example of what I'm talking about.
I have always felt a drive to have three characteristics in my life. I have always felt the need to have impact in this world, to accomplish things and to have an element of busyness as a part of all that I do. When one or more of those traits went missing in my life, I wasn't very pleasant to be around. When all three characteristics were missing in action victim thinking really took hold in my life.
One day I was praying about these traits in my life and asking God to remove them. I saw them as idols in my life. I was way too interested in appeasing these idols than pleasing the God that made me. I was desperate to have them removed so that my relationship with God could flourish. I literally begged God to destroy those idols.
As God so often does in all our lives, God chose to surprise me with His answer to my request. He said He couldn't destroy those idols in my life. That one caught me way off guard. How could a perfect and all powerful God not be able to destroy something in my life that was making it so that I could never reach any level of the perfection that He wants for me? God is good at destroying idols, why couldn't he destroy the ones in my life?
As I asked Him that question, He responded in a way that once again proved His status as a Father to this Child. He said, "I can't destroy those traits because I put them there. It is part of how I made you and to destroy those traits would destroy you." Wow - that changed my thoughts in a big way. He then went on to show me that it wasn't the traits that were idols, it was how I was using those traits that made me turn what God meant for good into something that He never intended.
I now am on a journey to discover how to trust in the traits God gave me in a way that enables trust in God be what makes my hope more of a reality. I wish I could say that I have that process down - I don't. I'm learning that my view of reality isn't always the best for me when it comes to trusting God. That's still hard for me to accept at times. When it is I tend to fall back on the failed method of trusting my view of who I am to try and make things happen the way I want them to.
Trust is a lesson that I don't think I will ever be done learning. But even that reality is something that is making my relationship with God grow in ways that make trust such a foundational part of the hope I have. I believe that is what is fueling the fire for me when it comes to victor living. The more I live this way, the easier it is to believe in my victor status when my picture of what a good life doesn't happen as I want it to.
What's your hope in life? How has the issue of trust played a role in you working to make that hope a reality? How do you handle those frustrating and victimizing times when your reality doesn't match up with what God might be seeing a a better reality for your life? As a victor, we need to deal with these questions so that victim thinking doesn't linger too long in our lives.
Take a stand on the complete definition of hope in your life. Trust God in what He says about you and let the victor you are shine out in all that you do today.
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