Make Room: When Hope Hurts Too Much to Hold

There is a sentence some of us have learned to whisper to ourselves before we ever say it out loud. It comes up when somebody hands us good news and our chest tightens before our face has a chance to smile. "Do not get my hopes up."

If you have ever said that — to a doctor, to a friend, to yourself in the rearview mirror at a stoplight — you are not alone. And if you have not, then you probably love somebody who has.

Sunday at Peak City was Mother's Day, and our friend Pastor Lindsey Bosma opened up the Word for us. She took us into 2 Kings 4 and the story of the Shunammite woman — a wealthy woman who built a small upstairs room for the prophet Elisha to stay in whenever he passed through her town. A bed. A table. A chair. A lamp. She made room for the man of God before God had ever asked her for anything in return.

And one day, Elisha turned to her and asked, "What can we do for you?"

That question is the hinge of the story. Because there was something she wanted. She wanted a child. She had wanted one for a long time. And when Elisha told her she would be holding a son in her arms by next year, her response was not joy. Her response was protest.

"No, my lord. O man of God, do not deceive me and get my hopes up like that."

That is the sound of a woman who has been disappointed before.

Lindsey walked us through three words on Sunday, and they are still rattling around in me. Desire. Disappointment. Hope. I want to slow these down with you, because I think God wants to do something in your inner world this week through these three.

Desire. Psalm 37:4 says, "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart." Lindsey pointed out something we forget — true desires become petitions God is actually willing to satisfy when they come from a heart delighting in Him. The desire is not the enemy. The desire is part of how He shapes you. Stop apologizing to God for wanting things. Bring the want to Him.

Disappointment. Lindsey gave us the cleanest definition of disappointment I have ever heard. Disappointment is the grief we feel when desire meets an unmet expectation, a delayed promise, or a broken reality. It is not the same thing as unbelief. It is often the ache of hope that has been wounded. Some of you have been called weak for grieving something you wanted. You are not weak. You are human. And the human Jesus knows what it is to want something and grieve it. He is not embarrassed by your ache. He touches wounds, and He heals them.

The goal is not to abandon desire. The goal is to anchor desire to hope.

Hope. And this is where Sunday landed. Hope is not a feeling that things will go your way. Hope is the confident expectation, anchored in the character of God, secured by the promises of God, sustained by the power of the Holy Spirit, that what God has said, Jesus has bought, and redemption will finish. Romans 15:13 says God is the source of hope. Not your circumstances. Not your timing. Not the doctor's report. God Himself. And when you trust Him, the Bible says you overflow with confident hope.

The Shunammite woman did get her son. The story has more chapters after that — chapters where it looked like she had lost everything again — and in every one of them, she brought her disappointment back into His presence. That is the move. Not to stop hoping. Not to stop wanting. To keep making room. A bed. A table. A chair. A lamp. A life with an upstairs room reserved for the presence of God.

You can rewrite your story in your head a thousand times this week. But you cannot actually rewrite the story. What you can do — what Lindsey invited every one of us to do Sunday — is let Jesus redefine desire, disappointment, and hope from the inside out.

Make room for Him. He will not deceive you.

We'd love to have you join us on Sunday.