God, our Sure and True Hope

Towards the end of 2025, I decided to read through some of my journal entries from the year. As I moved backwards, from the most recent ones to those I wrote at the beginning of the year and end of 2024, I realised that many of them contained the same theme, only expressed differently. 2025 was a year of struggle, of going back and forth with God – experiencing seasons of joy, contentment, and hope, and then drifting back to seasons of doubt, hopelessness, and sorrow. Paging through these journal entries, I saw a girl who was weak and frustrated, trying to push back against a current that was far too weighty for her to overcome. However, she knew the answer to her struggles was faith; she knew that, to move forward from glory to glory, all she needed to do was to trust God. Nevertheless, she found herself in the same predicament month after month after month – in a low point in her faith again, fighting to trust God:

7 December 2024

The Lord is here as I walk; He is here as I stumble and fall short. In Him is where my trust should lie. I should know that no matter how many times I trip over, He will always be there to catch me. His mercies are new every morning.

18 June 2025

I'm in this strange season where I feel like trusting God is all I have.

As though, if I let go of that trust,

I will fall into a never-ending hole...

of emptiness...

11 July 2025

Life is strange. Not really, but...you just never know what might come next. It’s just up and down and all over the place. A lot happens, and sometimes all at once. Is resting in and trusting God not the most important thing? Well, it should be. How else can one make sense of everything in this life – all of the experiences, thoughts and feelings?

21 July 2025

Immanuel, God is with me. Thus, I keep on moving, despite the inconsistencies, pressures, confusion, difficulties or weaknesses. What keeps me going is God, and the fact that He is sufficient for me, His grace is made perfect in my weakness.

I was a girl whose faith-meter kept depreciating, and I had to fight to hold onto the little faith I had that God would pull me out of the never-ending cycle I was in. And praise Jesus for that; praise Him for helping me not to give up and still have the faith to endure, even though my spirits remained low. And praise the Father for revealing to me why my struggle was as weighty and lengthy as it was last year:

My issue was not necessarily that I did not trust God. I did trust Him – I trusted that His word was true and sure, and that He could deliver me from any trial, no matter how fiery. There is simply nothing too great for the Lord Almighty! However, I did not have hope. I did not believe that His word would prevail in my life – His word of joy, peace, deliverance and healing. I did not completely and confidently believe that He would grant me the things I prayed for. Not because I did not believe in His love and grace, but because my focus was inward – did I deserve His grace, even with all my flaws and sinfulness, and the mistakes I had made?

John 14:12-14 states: “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works I do he will also do...And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.” Similarly, later in the book of John, Jesus is quoted again saying these words: “Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you. Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full" (John 16:23-24).

None of these Scriptures is dependent on how I think my spiritual standing looks – how many mistakes I think I have made and how imperfect I appear to be. These promises of the Father blessing me with what I pray for, in the name of Jesus Christ, are simply based on (according to the first Scripture) whether I believe in Jesus, which I do. I cannot tell you how freeing it was for me to read these verses and simply say: “Okay, Lord. I believe you. I have prayed my prayers, and I believe that you will grant me the things I have asked for,” – one of them being to step out of my lengthened season of hopelessness and the spiral of emotions it has taken me through, into a sure and solid hope based on the Scriptures and who He is.

Hope is steady. In Hebrews 6, it is described as full assurance. It is not desiring something and then crossing your fingers, praying that “hopefully” it will come to you. Hope is trusting wholly and confidently that God will do what He has said and will grant you what you have been praying and trusting Him for.

In Daniel 3, the Bible tells us of three men – Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego – who King Nebuchadnezzar had set over the affairs of Babylon. Certain men went to complain to the king that these Jewish men did not honour His command that all who heard the sound of “the horn, flute, harp, lyre, and psaltery [a stringed instrument], in symphony with all kinds of music, shall fall down and worship the gold image” (Daniel 3:10). Thus, in rage, the king asked that the men be brought before him, and once present, he commanded them to worship the golden image and threatened that he would cast them into a fiery furnace if they disobeyed. But the three men responded: “God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O king. But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up” (Daniel 3:17-18).

This made the king furious, and he commanded that the furnace be heated seven times more than it usually was. However, despite this, the three men were not consumed by it. Nebuchadnezzar exclaimed astonishingly when he looked into the flames: “Look...I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire; and they are not hurt, and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God" (Daniel 3:25). Because of their faith, God saved them from the deadly flames of the furnace. Not a hair on their heads was touched, and their garments were not affected. They did not even smell of smoke!

The three men had what I had been struggling with for months, and even years. They had hope – sure, steady, and confident hope in the Lord their God. I pray that you, too (as well as myself), will grow to have the same: full assurance that God will do what He has said and grant you what you have been praying and trusting Him for.