In the End
Be strong and let your heart take courage, all you who hope in the Lord. Psalm 31:24 NASB
Take courage– In the end, faith seems to be about perseverance. It seems to be “going on” when “going on” seems impossible. In the end, the kind of faith found in biblical characters is not the proclamation of doctrines or creeds. It isn’t membership of tithing or attendance. It’s just sticking with it despite everything else. That might be why David’s last thought is encouragement. “Take heart!” “Keep going!”
The Hebrew verb is ʾāmēṣ. “In the Piel stem the verb can be rendered ‘make firm,’ ‘strengthen,’ ‘secure,’ ‘harden’ (one’s mind). The Hiphil stem manifests the force of ‘exhibit strength,’ ‘feel strong.’ In the Hithpael stem the translation is ‘strengthen oneself,’ ‘persist in,’ ‘prove superior to,’ ‘make oneself alert.’”[1]
Roderick Logan recently spoke to a group of Christian leaders. He made some important points that have application here.
To be counted among those who walk in the ways of the LORD is to know that life and labor is a journey. It was for Abraham and Sarah. It was for Moses and Miriam. So, it is for you and I, collectively and individually. Thus, our response to culture must begin with self-awareness and self-regulation. We cannot lead or influence culture to move in a direction that we ourselves are not already moving towards. In other words, we must determine on the outset where are we going; never losing sight, never forgetting, and never giving up.
This is an eternal biblical principle, founded in the deepest wells of our salvation:
Leaving is easy, arriving is hard.
This is why, when parents ask me for advice about how to connect with a child suffering from attachment trauma, I tell them to sit with their child and dream. Dream with your child about what he/she would like to do, would like to become, places to go, things to see, and what they most like to achieve. I have suggested to parents and children alike that they dream about their family’s history and imagine what you would want written about your part of the story. In your imagination, what difference would you would like to make in the world?
William Butler Yeats, a renowned Irish poet of the 19th and 20th centuries wrote, “In dreams begin responsibilities.” It seems, Yeats is suggesting that by dreaming one comes to feel a sense of ownership of their part of the story and thereby accepting the weight of responsibility.
Here is what we know. Trauma replaces dreams with nightmares and replaces imagination with mitigation. Without an imagination there is no hope. Without a dream there is no reason for faith. Our response to culture must include sharing our dreams and our imaginations with the world around us, and then maybe we will discover that we have shared destinies. We must be open to thinking and talking about the future together. Our dreams determine our direction.[2]
Logan is right. David seems to have been a dreamer—a big dreamer. Maybe you need to be one too.
Topical Index: ʾāmēṣ, take courage, dreams, Roderick Logan, Psalm 31:24
[1]Feinberg, C. L. (1999). 117 אָמֵץ. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament(53).
[2]Roderick Logan, “How Do We Respond to Our Culture As Christians, Individually and As a Ministry?”, a paper presented to Christian Family Care Leadership Retreat, 23 May 2018.
When I read this, the word hope, I always think of Abraham when he hoped against all hope. Romans 4. 18..
It took me a little bit of study, and a lot of reflection to understand that the world system gives us a hope but it is not eternal, God gives us I hope system that is eternal, it is his word. It is alive and sharper than any two-edged sword, I think we know the rest. Reverting or changing over to God system took a bit of work, but now I am a dreamer too.. a goal-setter..
My hope is based on nothing less, than Jesus Christ and his righteousness..
A people without vision …………. “Parish”.
When I was a child I thought like a child but now that I am a man I live like a man.
A good place to dream…. Is about peace in every situation, it guides our feet.
Shalom. .B.B…
Faith is not in our understanding.
It is not the norm. Rather, faith is God’s gift of spiritual strength
that withstands all the inequities of life, putting your confidence
in the gift Giver, as He reigns supreme throughout all matters,
no matter what.
And, yes, the stuff of dreams is the high possibilities becoming real.
That’s what faith is made of: God’s possibilities becoming yours.
Hopelessness is the fruit of helplessness as courage is the fruit of faith.
Helplessness – the feeling of no choice – is the net result of all trauma; fracture; for fracture is the action of cutting us off from the choices we enjoy by means of our connections with others and reality. Choice is how we employ connections: love. Faith is the action of meeting the future with the choices of love. Sin, however, is the act of denying connection; therefore sin cuts us off from the choices that love represents.
Even the most evil have to depend upon the goodness (connections) love is producing for their energy, motivation, direction and reward. Evil absorbs goodness as a black hole absorbs light, for evil lives on an island off which there is no escape. Over its doors there reads “abandon hope, all ye who enter here”. Evil takes the raw capital of goodness and forges it into the chains of darkness and despair. The more it gobbles up what was supposed to be shared, the bigger the chains get and the blacker the darkness becomes. The most evil are the most helplessly dependent upon the good for survival. This is why evil is driven to desperation in its pursuit of the good. This is not optional for evil: it is inherent in its very survival. The devil is the most helpless of all, and the despair he exists in, knowing that his defeat has been made sure, drives the rage of the “roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour”.
I think if all the good were to turn and make a stand against all the evil, evil would cease to exist. I think it is not enough for evil to exist that “good men do nothing”: evil needs the active acquiescence of a good that does not want to take responsibility in that place. It is the fault of the good that evil exists; good that no longer wants the burden of being good in the face of evil, I think every time we turn and run instead of facing the darkness, we lose a little more (or a lot) of the blessings we were given to guard and increase.
We all suffer from the effects of sin. The difference between us and those who choose to sin even more must then be in our response to the helplessness and hopelessness we feel in those places. Are we going to forge the chains even more and darken our understanding even more by choosing even more choices away, or are we going to recognize that it may be time to turn around? Hopelessness, like all other negative emotions, is a signpost pointing to the presence of quicksand under our feet. We must hurry and ” depart; for this is not your rest: because it is polluted, it shall destroy you, even with a sore destruction.” Mich 2:10.
Helplessness is the most pure place we have to learn where we must stay, for it is the place in which we can become convinced that self is not reliable, but that YHVH is. Helplessness is where we figure out what the true power of heaven is by learning how powerless self is. The curse of trauma is really the best chance we have been given to see clearly the truth about not only sin, but also the truth about our Saviour. This time, may I listen and learn what the results of sin have to teach me about Who I need to turn to and where I need to stay!
Laurita, you mentioned ‘the devil’. Do you know that the snake in Genesis is not Satan? Do you know that Satan is an angel?
I know Skip has a post or two about Satan but I can’t remember if it clearly discusses Satan’s role. I do remember him making a brief comment in his ‘Guardian Angel’ on YouTube about when this idea came about. It is definitely another one of those subjects that people tend to dismiss as being settled.
Satan’s role is very different from what most people think and the false ideas have hurt many lives in the process.
Yeshua had a different view on Satan and I have adapted this stance in life… Satan is me when I think and express human wishes desires and developments. Angels are us when we walk humble out the will of God being priests for others.
Good word, Skip!
A scripture I thought about while I was reading TWOT is found in 1st John, where John says “in the world you will have tribulation but be of good courage, I have overcome the world“. It is a good mindset to develop or we can easily feel overwhelmed in our own personal worlds.
Growing up for 18 years in a traumatic environment, most of my ability to dream or fantasize was killed. Never could understand the whole concept of Disneyland, even to this day. But God, heals and restores and gives us hope, The ability to see more than is currently on your plate. Isn’t that what faith is anyhow, “the ability to see more” ? Abraham is such a good example. Having nothing ( having nothing and yet possessing all things !)! and yet having the promise of everything, to be the father of many nations. There was a true dreamer!
Maybe John Lennon was dreaming when he sang “Imagine”.
The last paragraph you quoted from Logan’s paper was very good. Liked that a lot. I often talk to students about how good it is to have goals. Makes like more exciting. I set a goal to get on the Dean’s List one semester in university. I calculated everything down to the last test I had to take. I couldn’t get more than 2 wrong. Didn’t sleep much the night before. Speech pathology test. I did it! I was happy. In university, it was my dream to live in Europe. Thought it was impossible. How that happened is beyond comprehension now, but my dream came true! I spent 9 months going to the University of Copenhagen and about 3 months working on a farm in Norway and then my last semester in Japan. The exchange rate was horrible when I had to start paying my loans back but it all was a wonderful experience. Goals and dreams!!
What Logan said about dreams made me think of an NHK documentary that I recently watched on fb. Free to view for a short time. It’s titled ‘I Was a Caged Bird’: Psychiatric Hospitalization in Japan. It’s about the issue of long term, forced hospitalization of people in Japan with psychiatric disorders. I didn’t take any notes so I can’t remember how many years exactly, but a man by the name of Tokio was forced to live in an institution from around the age of 26 into his 60’s. After getting out —-ideas and laws changed—he went to see another patient who had also been discharged. The man was working in a field when he went to film this part. Tokio said ‘’Without a Dream, life is less rewarding. Step by step, let’s both fulfill our dreams.’’ Pretty amazing considering that he spent over 30 years for a condition he didn’t need to be locked up for though all the details of what led to that were not explained at all. A very sad documentary which got my blood boiling. Too much control of lives, ruining or destroying so much. Anyway, that also relates to the movie that you mentioned about PTS. How our lives are altered for reasons out of our control.
Then again it is said that depression is the sickness of the information age. The more you know the less you truly know… Very depressing concept chasing knowledge there is as much views as there are people alive. Nothing can be limited by a assumption of generalisation or average…