X men and hope.

X-men

What a great movie.  Action and emotional impact set aside (my two favorite elements for a good film), there was one part in the film that grabbed my utmost attention.  It had everything to do with the things I had been learning as I have been getting knee deep in the bible.  

It was when professed Xavier told himself something along the lines of "experiencing your pain and enduring your pain is necessary and the only way to ignite the reality of the existence of hope.  Hope was the last human condition when all other things failed, that could save them."  

And I watched that scene as a tear fell down my cheek.  You don't look very hard for hope unless you get desperately in need of it.  

Nothing has been more painful and yet more hopeful and life changing than facing the sin in me and ripping it off, piece by piece.  Things I held dear, like beauty, reputation, comfort, respect and control had all become idols in me that bred all kinds of side effects like anger, greed, selfishness, self criticism and pride if and when they were jeopardized.  Seeing my sin was painful because they were things I initially desired, before they became sin once I had begun desiring them MORE than God.  My identity was in some of those things.  So when it was threatened or as it naturally faded or collapsed, I would too.  That's when I realized I wanted to put my identity in something that would never collapse, never fade, so that I, too would never collapse or fade.  I would be free to not have to be or prove myself in anything in this life of roughly 60 more years, because my hope was in Christ who imputed His perfect righteousness on me.  What is higher than eternal perfection?  I was free to not be offended.  Free to help others rather than straining to get mine first.  Free to forgive since I was also more forgiven by God.  Free to give love to someone who mistreated me!  That's powerful stuff!  Like to genuinely love someone who disses you is impossible if you don't first realize how genuinely loved you are by a God who you dissed and disrespected for so long.  It's gotta make sense first before anything else.  It's starting to make more sense to me, and I know better now than to think I had much to do with such a grace.  Understanding is a grace from God.  He gives grace to the humble.  

I see grace everywhere, in everything now.  It's all over me, and I'm loving it!  So much so I'm like....scared to even give the slightest hint of thinking "well maybe that was coincidence or just me", because I don't even want to entertain a single notion that might veil my eyes again from all this glorious grace!  Who cares why I have it, I'm just grateful it's there, and I'd like to keep it forever.  

Hope.

Hope changes a person's will.  

They say "where there's a will, there's a way."

So the question begs, "where does one get the will to find the way?"  And the answer is in first searching for believable hope.  The kind of hope you find at the end of everything, there's always one last glimmer of something that you pretty much have to go all in for.  It's in the movie, and it's in real life...it's in the bible! 

"they reeled and staggered like drunken men and were at their wits’ end. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress."(Psalm 107:27-28 ESV)

When you reach "rock bottom" or the "end of yourself" that's where you'll most vividly see that after all the more mediocre things have been exhausted, there at the end is your "one last hope".  And that is where you will begin to pick up the will to find the way.  The way to life that is bursting at the seams with unfading, unceasing, permanent eternity.  What could possibly offer more hope than that? 

Hope.

What do you have hope in?  

My hope is in Jesus, because everything else has an expiration date. 

I mean that's why I am doing this...entering this relationship with an invisible God, and to be honest...it's way more joy than frustration, and that was very unexpected.