Is This Ever Going to Change?

The other day, I caught myself doing something I think a lot of us do without realizing it. I was praying about something that I've been praying about for a while now. It's the same prayer, the same thing I always say, and somewhere in the middle of it, I noticed that I'd kind of I'd kind of softened what I was asking for. Like I'd quietly lowered the bar without even telling myself I was doing it. Because if I prayed for what I was actually wanting and it didn't come through, I'd be disappointed all over again. And as soon as I caught it, I thought to myself, oh, that's what this whole season has been about. That right there. Hi, I'm Melissa, and this is my question for you. And I want to just welcome you to the finale of season three because this is the last episode in the series that we've been calling the question behind the question. And if you've been with me all season, I want to just say thank you, really, because we've sat down with some honest stuff together this season. We've asked why God's timing feels so slow, whether He actually sees us, what's the point if our past is the reason that our present is so hard? And then last week we sat with why we keep going back to the same patterns even after we've prayed about them a hundred times. And honestly, underneath all of those questions has been one quiet thread. Hope, whether we still have it, whether we can trust it, and whether it's safe to want what we want. And today that's where we're gonna land. So today's surface question is this Is this ever going to change? But my question for you, the one underneath that one is this. Do you believe God's story for you still ends well? That's the real question. And I think it's the one a lot of us have been quietly afraid to answer. Here's something I don't think we talk about enough. Hope is expensive. When you're tired, when you've been waiting a long time for something to happen, when you've had your hopes dashed before, letting yourself genuinely hope again starts to feel a little risky. In fact, it almost feels a little reckless. Because to hope is to put your heart back in a place where it could get hurt again. So a lot of us, without realizing it, have started protecting ourselves. We want things a little less loudly now. We pray for them a little less specifically. At times it seems like we soften the edges of what we're asking for, that thing I caught myself doing again the other day, so that if it doesn't come through, we won't be quite as devastated. We call that being realistic or being mature or not getting our hopes up. But somewhere in the middle of all of that, we stopped letting ourselves believe the ending could actually be good. So I want to name something gently because I think a lot of us are living inside this without even seeing it. You can be a faithful Christian, a Christian who's still showing up, still praying, still serving, and have quietly stopped expecting God to come through for you somewhere along the way. Not in a big way or dramatic kind of walking away way. Not in a big way, not with a dramatic kind of feeling. Just slowly, quietly, until one day you realize that what you thought was peace was actually you just giving up without telling anyone. That's where this question lives. Is this ever going to change? And underneath it, do I still believe God writes good endings? Or did I quietly accept that mine just might stay the way it is? Okay, so let's take this someplace in scripture, and I want to set it up carefully for you. Because there's a version, a verse here you've probably heard before, but I want you to hear it the way it was actually written. Let's go to the book of Lamentations. Lamentations was written by the prophet Jeremiah, and it wasn't written from a peaceful place. It wasn't written after his prayers had been answered. Jeremiah is sitting in the ashes of Jerusalem. The city he loved has been destroyed. The temple, God's house has been burned to the ground. The people he served are gone, carried off into exile. Everything that was supposed to last was gone. The book actually opens in chapter one verse one with the words How deserted lies the city once so full of people. That's where Jeremiah is when he writes this book, not in a sanctuary, he is sitting in the middle of rubble. And in chapter three, after pages of real grief, the kind where he literally says He has driven me away and made me walk in darkness rather than light. Right after that, Jeremiah does something remarkable. He turns. Lamentations chapter three, verses nineteen through twenty three. He writes I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope, because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail, they are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. I want you to notice every word of that. Jeremiah doesn't say I forgot about the affliction. He doesn't say I rose above it. He says I remember it. I remember it well. My soul is downcast within me. He's not pretending that everything is fine right there. And then comes the hinge of the whole book in one word, and it's a powerful word, we know it, we know it well. Then he says yet, yet this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope. He's sitting in the rubble, the city is still destroyed, the temple is gone, nothing about what's happening in his life at the moment has changed, and from that place, from literal ashes, he writes one of the most beloved declarations of God's faithfulness in all of Scripture. He says, Great is your faithfulness. We sing that in worship songs, we put it on coffee mugs, on t shirts, but these words were not written from comfort. They were written by a man who had lost almost everything watching the smoke still rise from the ruins. That matters more than I can tell you. Here's why it matters for us today. Most of the hope our culture sells us is conditional. It needs the circumstances to cooperate for things to turn up the way we think they're supposed to. It needs a positive trend, things to look like they're moving in the right direction. But if we're being honest, that's not hope. That's optimism. We talked about the difference between the two of those way back in season two. But what Jeremiah is showing us, what biblical hope actually looks like is something completely different. Biblical hope isn't built on what's in front of you. It's built on who God is behind everything that's in front of you. And it doesn't need the rubble to get cleaned up before it can speak. It can sit in the rubble, in the mess, and still say his compassions are new every morning. Because Jeremiah isn't hoping the rubble will magically rebuild itself. He's not hoping everything will work out the way he had originally planned. He's hoping in something deeper. He's remembering who God is, and that memory is enough to anchor him, even when nothing has changed around him. So real hope doesn't pretend the loss isn't real. It doesn't rush past the pain to get to a neat, tidy ending. It just refuses to let the rubble have the final word, because the rubble in the mess isn't the storyteller. God is the storyteller. Let me add one more verse to this because our friend Paul gives us something in Romans 8 that we keep coming back to, and I think it is the piece a lot of us are still missing. In Romans 8, verses 24 and 25, we're reminded that it says, For in this hope we are we were saved, but hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. Paul has taught us so much, and I want you to read that one more time. Hope that is seen is no hope at all. What Paul is saying, by definition, hope lives in this space where you can't see it yet. The moment you can see it, it's not hope anymore. It's a possession. It's something that you have achieved, that you can feel, something that's real. You're not hoping when you can see it. So if you're looking at your life right now and saying, I just don't see how this changes, that doesn't mean you've lost your hope. Hope was never meant to operate from a place of clear vision. Hope was made for the dark places, the in-between places, the rubble, the mess, the trash of it all. And that's exactly where God meets us. Okay, so let me bring this all the way in for landing, because I know somebody listening right now has been waiting for something specific for a very, very long time. Maybe it's a child you've been praying for, or a marriage you've been believing for. Could be a healing that hasn't come or a door that hasn't opened. It's a version of your life you can almost see, but never quite reach. And I want to say something carefully here. Hope doesn't promise the ending will be easy. Hope promises the ending will be good. That's the difference. And I think a lot of us have been mixing those two things up without realizing it. We've been hoping for an easy ending, a clean one, one that comes on our timeline and looks the way we expected it. And when that doesn't show up, we've started wondering if hope itself was just naive, if we were just fooling ourselves. But hope was never about easy. Hope was about good the whole time, and God's definition of good is bigger than ours. He turns ashes into beauty. He makes a way in the wilderness, the waiting that we hated. Sometimes that becomes the wisdom that we needed, the losses we couldn't make sense of. Sometimes those become the testimony that helps somebody else hold on because of your story, because of sharing what God has done in you. That's the kind of good that God writes. He's not in the business of small endings. He's in the business of redemption. And redemption almost never looks the way we thought it would when we first started praying. But it is always, always good. Okay, I want to take a moment here because this is the last episode of the series, and I don't want to rush past what we've walked through together. This has been a powerful series, and I hope you feel that too. We started this season by asking, why is this taking so long? And we discovered the deeper question was really about whether we trust God's timing. We asked, why me? And we found out underneath that was a question about whether we trust God with who He made us to be. We sat with what's the point? And we learned that being with the Father is the blessing, not the cost of the blessing. We followed that with, did I do something wrong? All the way down to the question of whether we're being punished for who we used to be. And we landed here, but your past is not your sentence. And last week we asked, Why can't I change? And we found that transformation is usually happening underneath in ways we just can't see yet. And today today we land here because every one of those questions has been in some quiet way about hope. Whether we can trust the timing, if we can trust the call, whether faithfulness is worth it, whether forgiveness is real, and whether the slow transformation is actually transformation at all. And it all comes back to one thing. Do I believe God's story for me still ends well? And friend, here's what I want you to know. If you've been listening all season, you've been wrestling with these questions, and you still don't have the answers yet. That's not a failure of your faith. That's what real faith actually looks like. Faith that asks, faith that wrestles, faith that sits in the middle of the rubble and still whispers yet. That's the faith God honors every single time. So before we get to the question to carry this week, I want to give you something small to actually do with it, because we've been together a long time this season. I don't want this to stay in your head. I want you to find a piece of paper or open a note on your phone, and I want you to finish the sentence. God, I'm still hoping for blank. I want you to fill in the blank. Whatever it is, the thing you stop saying out loud, the thing you're afraid to want anymore, the prayer that's somehow gone a little quiet. I want you to write it down. Not because writing it down makes God remember. He never forgets. I want you to write it down because you need to remember that you still want it, that hope is still alive in you, even if it's been quiet. And then, right next to it, I want you to write one more line. I want you to write, and I believe you are still good, even if this comes in a way I didn't expect. That's the yet. That's Jeremiah and the rebel. And that's hope that doesn't demand a specific ending, but it trusts in the one who's holding the whole story. You don't have to feel certain to write it. You just have to be willing to say it. So here it is. The question to carry, not just this week, but into whatever season comes next. You've been asking it, what is this ever going to change? My question for you, the one underneath is this Do you believe God's story for you still ends well? Here's what I've come to believe after sitting with this all season. The God who started your story is not someone who walks away from unfinished things. He's not the kind of author who loses interest, and he's not the kind of father who forgets what he promised. He's not the kind of God who starts something good and then leaves it half finished on the table. What he started he completes. What he spoke he keeps, and what he began in you, he's bringing all the way to its full and beautiful end. You might not be able to see it yet, and that's okay. Hope that is seen is no hope at all. But the rubble in your life right now, that's not the final word. It's a chapter, not the ending. And the God who is making all things new, present tense, Revelation twenty one five is already at work on the parts of your story you just can't see yet. This is the end of our series that we've been calling the question behind the question. And one more time, I just really want to say thank you to all of you for walking through this season with me, for asking the questions, for not looking away from the hard ones, and for staying when the topics maybe got a little too close to home. So if even one of these episodes helps something settling you, would you please do something for me? Would you please send it to one person? Someone in your life who might need it this week. Just one. And not as a way to promote my podcast. It's not at all what I'm asking you to do. But because hope multiplies when it's shared. And there's somebody in your life right now who might be sitting in their own rubble, quietly wondering if their story still ends well. And you might be the person in the way that they hear that it does. Okay, so now a little something to look forward to. Going to be starting our new series next week. Um, it's one that I've been praying over for a long time now, and it's called Prayers I Stop Praying. Because if I had to guess, and I think I do, at least one or two of you wrote something down a few minutes ago that you hadn't said out loud in a long time. Maybe it was a prayer that you quietly stopped praying or hope that you've stopped letting yourself want. And that's where this next series begins. What do we do with the prayers that we stop praying that we bury somewhere deep inside of us? And how do we find our way back to them? With eyes wide open, with that kind of faith that's been through something and is still here. So I can't wait to walk through that with you. Come back with us next next week. Um, stay close. If you haven't subscribed to the podcast yet, make sure you subscribe. Make sure you're signed up for the weekly email at myquestion4you.com because I'll be sharing this journey there on the website too. So if today's episode meant something to you, the website is also where you can find my weekly blog that goes a little bit deeper. So until next time, please keep asking, keep listening, and this week, believe that the ending is still good. Not because you can see it, but because the God who's writing it has never written a bad one yet. Before you go, if today's question stayed with you, I'd love to keep the conversation going. Each week, I send a short email called This Week's Question My Invitation. And it's a simple reflection to help you stay grounded, to pay attention, to dive deeper into God's Word, and to walk with God throughout your week. You can sign up at myquestion for you.com. Bringing you encouragement for your spirit and wisdom for your walking.