When Hope Isn't A Thrill
It’s Christmas time, those days in the year when popular lyrics like “a thrill of hope” are on the tip of the tongue. And yet, for some of us who fight depression, the idea of hope isn’t a thrill, but rather a briar patch of disappointment, confused emotions, and shame. Written by Gillian Marchenko
This is the season of hope but I realize that many of you are going through hard times and not feeling so hopeful.
Sarah and I recently had the privilege of interviewing Gillian Marchenko on the Hope Anew Disability podcast and you will be able to hear the interview the first Monday in January! One of the questions that we asked was, “How do you find hope in the darkness?” We had a great conversation about this in the podcast. Gillian went on to write about it further in a recent article on her blog and gave us permission to repost it on the Hope Anew blog here!
May it help you find hope this Christmas season.
A thrill of hope?
It’s Christmas time, those days in the year when popular lyrics like “a thrill of hope” are on the tip of the tongue. And yet, for some of us who fight depression, the idea of hope isn’t a thrill, but rather a briar patch of disappointment, confused emotions, and shame.
Depression is defined as hopelessness.
For me, hope often feels more lost than found when my mind is frost bitten by darkness. What in the world is a Christian supposed to do with all this?
“Gillian, how do you find hope in the darkness?” the podcast host asked me recently during a conversation about mental illness. A straight forward question with a layered and at times, seemingly complicated answer. How do I explain the inner turmoil that blows around my insides like a bitter, winter breeze swept up in a frenzy? Sometimes hope is a promise I can grab on to. Other times, it melts in my hands.
A positional hope
My friend Andrea and I are working through the book of Romans together and it talks a lot about hope. Look at some of chapter five:
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
Romans 5:1-2
Obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. This is a positional hope a person has when he or she responds in faith to the gospel. It’s solid, sure. It doesn’t melt away. We rejoice in hope of the glory of God. What does glory mean here? It’s who he is. We rejoice in WHO GOD IS. He is our hope.
But can I find hope?
The wording of the question in the podcast, find hope, stuck with me. Can I find hope? Paul says yes. He talks about the already and not yet of hope, already possessed through the gospel and something that should be sought after and grown. But how do we do that? How do we seek hope and grow it?
Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Romans 5:3-5
After Paul proclaims positional hope in the glory of God through Jesus, he then gives us action points to help cultivate hope in our day-to-day lives. We are told to endure in the faith (not give up) and to let that endurance grow our character (by living faithful lives obedient to God). Endurance produces character and character produces HOPE. How do we endure? By looking to the gospel and trusting God. How do we grow our character? By beholding Jesus above and beyond anything else in our lives, and we can behold him in scripture, prayer, and in fellowship with others.
The NIV adds the word ‘proven’ to these phrases in Romans; endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. Although my emotions my say differently on any given day, when I look back at my life, I see God’s proven faithfulness over and over again. And when I commune with God in a rhythmic way, Christ has ample opportunity to whisper these truths in my ear.
There’s hope positionally in me. And there’s hope for today.
Hope grows in suffering
We rejoice in our sufferings.
Romans 5:3
Is my depression, the one thing I would flick out the window as quickly as people flicked cigarette butts out of the car in the 70s, what is teaching me to hope?
Years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to stomach the thought that my depression would produce hope. But as I’ve grown in my faith and in health, in the midst of freezing out the world in dark nights of the soul, crying out to God for healing, and clawing out of the pits of pain time after time, I have learned and continue to learn this:
When Jesus is all you have, you find that Jesus is all you need.
My depression is training me to hope. Suffering produces hope.
The weary world rejoices
Because of Christ, I can rejoice in my achy limbs and muddied thinking. They aren’t happenstance. They have purpose in me. They stretch me to endure. They mold my character. Hope exists whether I feel it or not because hope isn’t the desire of a future want or need fulfilled, but rather Jesus Christ himself. It’s his life, death, resurrection, and pending return. And when I focus on these truths, my weary world rejoices.
Hope is a promise, not a feeling. And God, by his grace and in his great wisdom, is growing hope in me today.
And that actually is pretty thrilling.
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 15:13
Written by Gillian Marchenko
This article was reposted with permission. To read the original, please go here.
Gillian Marchenko is an author and a speaker. She lives near St. Louis with her husband Sergei and their four daughters. Find out more about Gillian at her website gillianmarchenko.com.
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