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Day 13

Hope in the Source, Not the Resource

by René Schlaepfer

Do any of the worthless idols of the nations bring rain? Do the skies themselves send down showers? No, it is you, O Lord our God. Therefore our hope is in you, for you are the one who does all this. [Jeremiah 14:22]

As a child, Bill Wilson experienced the hopelessness of abandonment. “One day, as I walked down a street with my mother, we stopped to sit for a while,” he says. “She told me to sit there and wait for her to return.” Bill waited for 3 days. She never came back. A Christian man who saw Bill sitting there stopped to help him… and changed Bill’s life with a message of hope.

Out of his own experience with hopelessness, Bill developed a heart of compassion for at-risk children. In 1980 he founded a church in one of Brooklyn’s roughest neighborhoods, known for its gangs, crime, drugs, and poverty.

Over the years, Pastor Bill has been beaten, stabbed and shot. Donations have at times dried up because of the seeming hopelessness of the mission. But his perseverance paid off: Crime levels have dropped, 22,000 children now experience the ministry of the church, and his influence on the neighborhood has been featured on programs like Nightline.

But how did he endure through the tough times? As he puts it, “You have to hope in the source, not the resource.”

You have resources for accomplishing your God-given mission. Yet your resources can — and do — let you down at times. Christ-followers often make the subtle shift from really trusting in God to trusting in other Christians, trusting in their church, trusting in their knowledge, trusting in their own strength. Then when those things disappoint, they wrongly believe God let them down.

If you put your hope in the resource, you will inevitably be disappointed. But the source, God Himself, will never disappoint.

Question to Consider

In what way am I struggling with hoping in my resources? How can I shift my focus to the Source: God?

Prayer

Lord, free me from hoping in my resources. Thank You for being the True Source of all my hope!