Proverbs 13:12
Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
But when desire is fulfilled, it is a tree of life.
Patty cake. Patty cake. Baker's man.
Bake me a cake as fast as you can.
Roll it up. Roll it up.
Put it in a pan!
I would like to assume that everyone is familiar with this age old nursery rhyme. I don't recall when I first was introduced to it, but I do know for me it's fun playing patty cake with babies. I tickle their bellies when I say, "Put it in the pan," and they always laugh. A baby's laughter is heaven. Literally one of the best sounds in the world.
But happy September to you guys! Just want to give you all a heads up that there is a slight chance I may be a little extra this month because THIS is the month that I was born.
I must add that September is the month of the royals.
If you don't know, now you know!
People who were born in this month just happen to have a certain
je ne sais quoi about them that everybody needs to respect.
Haters need to move around and make space for our flamboyance because it's not going anywhere no time soon.
Unfortunately, I have not picked up a lot as far as what to expect this month. This is driving me up the wall! I can only assume that everything that will transpire will be unexpected, gasp worthy, and full of surprises.
None of which I am a fan of.
To be honest, I don't like not knowing what to look forward to.
Sucks, man.
Yet, if I were to give you any kind of encouragement for this month, it would be to stay ready, so that you don't have to get ready when it's time to be ready.
Your best bet will be to survey every area of your life and exterminate all of those critters for excuses.
Excuses in this hour are not going to do too much of anything for you.
They're not going to serve you well.
Capisce?
Moving right along.
¿Question?
What does your hope department look like right now?
Hope is defined as:
An optimistic state of mind that is based on an expectation of positive outcomes with respect to events and circumstances in one's life or the world at large. (Wikipedia)
What do you hope for? What have you been hoping for?
Have you any hope at all?
You know, this post was actually sitting in my drafts since December of 2014.
I had an idea at that time of what I wanted to touch on. But I guess, I hadn't lived enough in order to be able to touch on it with enough depth and perspective.
Five years later, I surmise that I must have a little bit of both of those, for Proverbs 13:12 to come knocking on the front door of my heart practically begging me to let it in so that we may commune.
While like an ambulance siren bellowing in the distance, the poetic words of Langston Hughes' Harlem,
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags.
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Hope gives you spunk. It puts extra skips in your step and twinkles in your eyes.
It's like adding sprinkles to some ice cream.
Yet as in the Message version of Proverbs 13:12 puts it, unrelenting disappointment makes the heart sick.
I've lived enough to learn, that one of the top issues that wears on one's tenacity are constant encounters with disappointment.
Nothing worse than to be building up a thing and watching it crumble right before your eyes.
Climbing up to higher heights only to be knocked down.
Digging yourself out of something and finding yourself falling back in it.
Expecting a big break but nothing happens.
How does one recover their hope when it's been kidnapped by something that's constantly changing its address?
I believe the answer lies within who had primary custody of your hope in the first place.
See you can believe God knows the plans He thinks toward you. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you a HOPE and future with an expected end.
But it's another thing to give that all back to Him where you won't find yourself drowning in a glass case of your emotions like Ron Burgundy in the movie Anchorman after the guy on the motorcycle kicked his dog over the bridge. (I legit just cried laughing.)
If you put your hope instead, in what you believe is supposed to happen to you,
whether great expectations or a grand scheme of favorable events,
you will be met with disappointment every rip.
Because God's plans doesn't run on our time clock.
Proverbs 16:9
A man’s heart plans his way,
But the Lord directs his steps.
Hear me out, God is not the baker man and His plans are not patty cakes that can be baked as fast as He can. His plans are strategic. They are thorough and intricate. They have a lot of components and variables.
And it is God's desire that they not be presented to you half baked.
There are people now, who may appear as if they are experiencing desires fulfilled. Yet some of these people are actually behind the scenes squaring up with the effects of premature plans of God. The plans they pulled off of His divine assembly line too soon.
Which is requiring that they rely on a greater grace from God in order to keep from succumbing to the pressures and burdens that accompanied these semi-raw blessings.
Anyway, when you place your hope in God and not necessarily in His plans, time becomes your ally and not your enemy. You'll begin to take advantage of the opportunities to glean from God's plenteous fields of process.
Catch that please.
Once upon a time, there was this woman by the name of Hannah who was married to a man named Elkanah in the book of 1 Samuel 1. Hannah had not been able to conceive a child through her covenant relationship with Elkanah.
However, her sister wife Peninah, bore him a few weetots. Elkanah, still loved Hannah dearly though. As he would give her double portions of meat when they would go up to Shiloh to make sacrifices and to worship.
But the love of her husband would not shield her from her sister wife Peninah's torments and insults. She would come for Hannah and her inability to conceive until it drove her to tears and ruined her appetite.
The bible says that this would go on and on, year after year.
When I was first introduced to this account, I automatically took the position of capping for Peninah.
I didn't like her.
My thing was, ma'am you have everything! Why are you provoking someone who has little or in your eyes, who has nothing?
Wew!
I can go off on a tangent right there. Because...
I'm not going to go there though.
Welp, my opinions of Peninah changed slightly, literally a couple of days ago after I decided to look up the etymology of her name.
HERE I GO!
Guess what her name means?
Her name means, pearl. And in Greek her name means, precious stone.
Anybody knows how a pearl is made?
It is birthed through AGITATION.
I briefly touched on this process in a post from last year.
Pearls are found in oysters, clams, and mussels when bacteria creeps in and as a defense mechanism they produce layers upon layers of coating called nacre, around the bacteria.
And VOILA! The pearl is formed.
Hold on to me guys as I explain this.
After enduring this emotional stress caused by Peninah, Hannah took her laments to Shiloh and prayed so hard the bible says Eli the priest thought she was drunk.
She defended her purpose and expressed that she was deeply grieved and not intoxicated.
Eli prayed for her that the Lord would answer her request.
She would eventually some time after this, conceive and give birth to Prophet Samuel.
I saw in this account how Peninah actually acted as the irritant necessary to initiate the kind of prayers in Hannah that would take on a form like nacre to coat the irritant.
Ultimately, resulting in her giving birth to her pearl, a man child.
Isn't that something????
Hannah knew what to do and where to go when Peninah's agitations got real. She knew what to do when her heart became sick because of a hope deferred.
She went back to God!
I don't know where you are in your journey.
But if you're feeling extreme anguish at this current moment because it appears as if your desires are not being fulfilled or you're surrounded by people who are making it a strong effort to remind you that they haven't,
I challenge you to grab the reigns of your frustrations and shift your focus back to the One who told you He had plans to prosper you and not to harm you.
Deliberately, take your mind off of what hasn't happened for you yet and LIVE in the moment.
Place the responsibility of your desires' fulfillment back on God.
You'll feel much better.
I guarantee it
For myself, I don't even know what the plans of God for me look like and I've long sense given up my personal desires. I'm basically like a blank canvas. I've just been gleaning away as best as I know how in His fields, holding onto to the belief that it isn't all for naught.
Even still, I've been facing the most aggressive levels of irritations, I've ever experienced in my journey thus far.
A few days ago though, I promised God that whatever kind of precious stone He's agitating me for, once it's actualized, I will first appreciate it with my whole soul and take care of it with my whole heart.
Then give it right back to Him with my sincerest humility.
Just as Hannah did when she gave birth to her son. Once he was weaned, she sent him to Shiloh where he was groomed into his calling.
It's a hefty promise, that I'm actually very much eager to show God just how serious I am.
This is the beauty of making time work with you between your desires and their fulfillment. It affords you the ability to establish something like an appreciation bank that you can expend when it's time to make the type of sacrifices the plans of God will inevitably request of you.
This is also, the beauty of building your hope off of God and letting His plans for you mature without disruption, to produce a tree of life.
whether great expectations or a grand scheme of favorable events,
you will be met with disappointment every rip.
Because God's plans doesn't run on our time clock.
Proverbs 16:9
A man’s heart plans his way,
But the Lord directs his steps.
Hear me out, God is not the baker man and His plans are not patty cakes that can be baked as fast as He can. His plans are strategic. They are thorough and intricate. They have a lot of components and variables.
And it is God's desire that they not be presented to you half baked.
There are people now, who may appear as if they are experiencing desires fulfilled. Yet some of these people are actually behind the scenes squaring up with the effects of premature plans of God. The plans they pulled off of His divine assembly line too soon.
Which is requiring that they rely on a greater grace from God in order to keep from succumbing to the pressures and burdens that accompanied these semi-raw blessings.
Anyway, when you place your hope in God and not necessarily in His plans, time becomes your ally and not your enemy. You'll begin to take advantage of the opportunities to glean from God's plenteous fields of process.
Catch that please.
Once upon a time, there was this woman by the name of Hannah who was married to a man named Elkanah in the book of 1 Samuel 1. Hannah had not been able to conceive a child through her covenant relationship with Elkanah.
However, her sister wife Peninah, bore him a few weetots. Elkanah, still loved Hannah dearly though. As he would give her double portions of meat when they would go up to Shiloh to make sacrifices and to worship.
But the love of her husband would not shield her from her sister wife Peninah's torments and insults. She would come for Hannah and her inability to conceive until it drove her to tears and ruined her appetite.
The bible says that this would go on and on, year after year.
When I was first introduced to this account, I automatically took the position of capping for Peninah.
I didn't like her.
My thing was, ma'am you have everything! Why are you provoking someone who has little or in your eyes, who has nothing?
Wew!
I can go off on a tangent right there. Because...
I'm not going to go there though.
Welp, my opinions of Peninah changed slightly, literally a couple of days ago after I decided to look up the etymology of her name.
HERE I GO!
Guess what her name means?
Her name means, pearl. And in Greek her name means, precious stone.
Anybody knows how a pearl is made?
It is birthed through AGITATION.
I briefly touched on this process in a post from last year.
Pearls are found in oysters, clams, and mussels when bacteria creeps in and as a defense mechanism they produce layers upon layers of coating called nacre, around the bacteria.
And VOILA! The pearl is formed.
Hold on to me guys as I explain this.
After enduring this emotional stress caused by Peninah, Hannah took her laments to Shiloh and prayed so hard the bible says Eli the priest thought she was drunk.
She defended her purpose and expressed that she was deeply grieved and not intoxicated.
Eli prayed for her that the Lord would answer her request.
She would eventually some time after this, conceive and give birth to Prophet Samuel.
I saw in this account how Peninah actually acted as the irritant necessary to initiate the kind of prayers in Hannah that would take on a form like nacre to coat the irritant.
Ultimately, resulting in her giving birth to her pearl, a man child.
Isn't that something????
Hannah knew what to do and where to go when Peninah's agitations got real. She knew what to do when her heart became sick because of a hope deferred.
She went back to God!
I don't know where you are in your journey.
But if you're feeling extreme anguish at this current moment because it appears as if your desires are not being fulfilled or you're surrounded by people who are making it a strong effort to remind you that they haven't,
I challenge you to grab the reigns of your frustrations and shift your focus back to the One who told you He had plans to prosper you and not to harm you.
Deliberately, take your mind off of what hasn't happened for you yet and LIVE in the moment.
Place the responsibility of your desires' fulfillment back on God.
You'll feel much better.
I guarantee it
For myself, I don't even know what the plans of God for me look like and I've long sense given up my personal desires. I'm basically like a blank canvas. I've just been gleaning away as best as I know how in His fields, holding onto to the belief that it isn't all for naught.
Even still, I've been facing the most aggressive levels of irritations, I've ever experienced in my journey thus far.
A few days ago though, I promised God that whatever kind of precious stone He's agitating me for, once it's actualized, I will first appreciate it with my whole soul and take care of it with my whole heart.
Then give it right back to Him with my sincerest humility.
Just as Hannah did when she gave birth to her son. Once he was weaned, she sent him to Shiloh where he was groomed into his calling.
It's a hefty promise, that I'm actually very much eager to show God just how serious I am.
This is the beauty of making time work with you between your desires and their fulfillment. It affords you the ability to establish something like an appreciation bank that you can expend when it's time to make the type of sacrifices the plans of God will inevitably request of you.
This is also, the beauty of building your hope off of God and letting His plans for you mature without disruption, to produce a tree of life.
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