Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.Proverbs 13:12
The One Step Daily Devotional is intended to provide just one step each day for your journey with God. Every journey requires water breaks. Here is a water break for you.
Have you ever been disappointed? I know I have many times. Truthfully, as I write this, I feel the pangs of disappointment through my core. The unpleasant emotions of disappointment feel something like a combination of heaviness, sadness, pain, shame, and anger. Disappointment is quite the combination!
A more direct way to describe the emotions associated with disappointment may be discouragement and depression.* Said another way, disappointment is a sickness of the heart.
Hope deferred makes the heart sick…
When we hope for something, we desire to see an imagined reality come into alignment with our experienced reality; we look to the future of what could be and desire to live amongst it. When the imagined reality never comes to fruition, the disappointment we experience feels like sickness.
The stark contrast to this is when it does come together:
…but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.
When what we hope for comes to pass, it’s as if we are plugged into a source of joy and energy that we were made for! Celebration follows, and fruit emerges! How beautiful it is when the imagined reality and the experienced reality align!
…
The author of Proverbs 13 does not tell us how to avoid deferred hope. He only makes the observation of its reality for us.*
By the time 2012 rolled around, I had spent years crying out to the Lord, “hope deferred makes the heart sick!” The hope I had for a future reality never came into present day. Disappointment and sadness had become unwelcome companions in my journey.
I don’t know if God was just waiting for the right time, or if I just finally came to a place where I was desperate enough to listen, but God finally asked me this simple question: “in what have you placed your hope?” I immediately knew the answer: I placed my hope in what may come from God’s hand rather than placing my hope in God. There is a difference.
It may be that the only way to guarantee that our hope will never be deferred and that our desires will be fulfilled is to put our hopes and desires in things eternal.* It may be that placing our hopes and desires in the person of God can only guarantee that we live as trees of life.
Today, I’m going to take all of my heart sickness and bring it to Him. I’m pretty sure that if I ask Him to trade my hopes for His, I will feel a lot better.
Today, take a step.
Maybe today the one step God wants you to take is to ask the Holy Spirit where your hope is placed. Perhaps God wants you to put your hopes and desires in Him. Maybe God wants you to bring your heart sickness, disappointment, sadness, anger, shame, and heaviness to Him.
Whatever the step, ask God to direct it. Take a moment to take that step. Invite Him to speak. He will.
Life is a long road. Walk it with Jesus. Take a water break… we all get thirsty.
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*Ross, A. P. (2008). Proverbs. In T. Longman III, Garland David E. (Eds.), The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Proverbs–Isaiah (Revised Edition) (Vol. 6, p. 128). Zondervan.
Koptak, P. E. (2003). Proverbs (pp. 358–359). Zondervan.
Fausset, A. R. (n.d.). A Commentary, Critical, Experimental, and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments: Job–Isaiah: Vol. III (pp. 456–457). William Collins, Sons, & Company, Limited.