What Are You Looking Forward To?

Proverbs 13:12 (AMP) says,"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the desire is fulfilled, it is a tree of life."

My question to you then is this, what are you looking forward to? Are you even looking forward to anything? I know that after the death of my youngest son, we as a family had to make ourselves look forward to things on a daily basis. We made the decision to go on a family cruise as our Christmas present to ourselves, and with the passing of each day prior to the cruise we would say to each other, "We're one day closer to our cruise!" We had an expectation that helped us to cope with the loss of Noah.

Well, it's been nine months since that cruise, and I was asking myself today, "What are we looking forward to now?" We have had changes come to our lives in the past several months, with me out looking for a job and Cheryl working full time in the work place. (She has always worked full time, it was just in the home and now is at the shoe store.) It seems as if we have just fallen back into that surviving mode which happens with major life changes. You don't really try and make as much forward progress as you might have once done, and life just becomes hard.

That's what I think this Scripture is saying, if you defer your hope, life will get tough. It is easier for me to pull back, not engage the world and just want to stay home with my family instead of pressing forward and living the John 10:10 life which Jesus promised me. Life is going to be hard, there are always going to be things that we don't like or challenges in our lives that we never thought we would face, but if we let our hope get deferred, who's fault is that? I think it rests squarely on our shoulders, and no one else's.

The definition of the word deferred is: Put off (an action or event) to a later time; postpone. Life is about choices, I think that we can all readily agree on that. And if life is about the choices that we make, then we must make the best possible choices on a daily basis. And choosing to look to something in the future, and not putting it off or postponing it will do wonders for our souls I think.

Well hopefully this has given you something to think about, strength and honor for the Kingdom and the King!