Where I woke up

After a couple long flights, I got here. I'm in Colorado. I haven't even left my hotel room yet - I'm just enjoying the thought of complete lack of obligation for the next week and a half. I can already feel my brain slowing down, my body relaxing, my heart expanding with anticipation of what my God has on the agenda for the two of us. I have so many questions - stuff I have to actually wait for answers about, and He always seems to speak up while I'm here. Yeah, maybe it's just that I'm listening differently.

Expectation is an interesting thing - vital to our relationships. Without maintaining hope in someone - hope that they'll want to hear our thoughts, hope that they'll stay close - it's pretty hard to find any joy in that connection. "[Love] believes all things, hopes all things..." (I Corinthians 13:7) It's true. We call hope "faith" sometimes, but it's not the same thing. Hope is looking for something in someone, that thing you deeply desire to find, and when it is revealed joy is the firework reaction in your heart. If you never hoped, that joy is incomplete. Hope is the precursor to joy.

Faith, on the other hand, is being SURE of what you HOPE for, certain of what you cannot see. (Hebrews 11:1) So hope is a piece of faith, but not all of it. Faith takes it one step further - you aren't just looking for it, you are SURE it's there, and act accordingly, with no question. We are to pray with faith, and are told that without faith it is impossible to please God. Check it out:

"But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him." Hebrews 11:6

Most people hope in God the way we hope in our friends. We've met them, considered what we know about them, and proportionately bestow a certain measure of belief in them. They earn our hope. We decide how much we can trust them and what we're willing to put out there - how much of our heart, most often. And everyone's been burned, so it gets worse all the time. Convincing yourself to hope after you've gotten your heart smashed takes an insane amount of convincing. You've got to talk to your soul and say, "Dude, get up. Get up, get up."

We can't deal with God that way. He won't have it. We have to have actual faith - meaning we can't hope we know him well enough to trust Him (basing His merit on our own knowledge), we have to have faith that He is exactly who He says He is, and that His intentions are way beyond anything we could wrap our brains around. I think if we really got a glimpse of how He feels about us, we'd act differently. Knowing someone loves you like that changes everything.

I think the deepest joy comes with faith. Expectation that someone absolutely will. On one level, we start out hoping that maybe God exists. He responds with a rush of blessing - giving, among other things, the gift of faith. This enables us to start seeing with our spiritual eyes, moving differently - who He is affects your entire world. At first it's just fascination...and that should never really go away. Surprises are good. But later there's this beautiful, seasoned expectant waiting - the kind that you see on old Christian women, quiet with a slight smile at the mention of the name Jesus. It's sweet on their lips, in their ears...they know something. It's deep, real, intimate, profound, secure. It's hope turned to faith turned to love and that journey of maturity in a relationship brings much joy.

I want that. I'm seeing pieces of that even now - just that I am coming to Colorado differently this year...just quiet with joyful expectation - I will meet with God here. He already has the plan - all I have to do is show up and enjoy it. It's pretty cool, actually.