Doubting God - Finding Hope in Him

I was just playing a game of solitaire on my computer, and it looked like it was going to be a bad game so I went to hit the F2 button in order to deal again, but I paused for a second to think about what I was doing. I made the moves I could make with the opening cards and flipped through the deck once, and decided that was enough of a chance that I was giving that deal. In less than 5 minutes, I had given up hope of ever winning in that game. 

How often do we give up hope in life? How often do we doubt God, and doubt what he can do? 

My friend and I had a brief conversation about this the other day. She leaves Tuesday to study abroad for the summer and was really stressed about getting everything done in time to leave very early on Tuesday. My friend said, I know God will take care of it all, but it's so easy to doubt, and I doubt him all the time. 

One of my other friends dropped everything at home, packed up his bags and moved to Columbus to serve the Lord, after having lived in the South all his life. He said before one of the greatest struggles in this journey has been trusting the Lord will continue to provide for him. 

I could continue telling you all these times where people have doubted, but I'll only share one more, my personal experience, which played a major role in my conversion. Before my conversion, a personal relationship with God was a strange idea to me. I thought the whole idea of prayer and a relationship with someone or something I wasn't sure even existed was super sketchy. But I eventually gave it a shot...and realized God does exist, prayer life is important, and there is something beautiful about having a relationship with Christ. However, for the longest time I still struggled with hope. I struggled to know and to trust that my future was in God's hands.

When speaking on hope the catechism says, When God reveals Himself and calls him, man cannot fully respond to the divine love by his own powers. He must hope that God will give him the capacity to love Him in return and to act in conformity with the commandments of charity. Hope is the confident expectation of divine blessing and the beatific vision of God; it is also the fear of offending God's love and of incurring punishment (article 2090). When speaking on hope as a theological virtue the catechism says, Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ's promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit (article 1817). The virtue of hope responds to the aspiration to happiness, which God has placed in the heart of every man (article 1818).  

What does all that mumbo jumbo mean?

For starters, it means we as human beings are weak. We cannot serve our Lord without strength from him. It means we must learn to believe in the existence of God. Then we must learn to trust that He is going to give us the ability to love, if we let Him work in our lives. So in all reality, we need to be open to the idea that God exists. Then we need to come to believe in him through our searching and desires. And then, we need to allow him to work in us. We need to develop a relationship with Christ, so that we can trust Him and trust that He will provide.

We need hope in order to obtain the happiness that we desire. Therefore, we need to pray for the virtue of hope in our lives, trusting and knowing that God will provide for us, and rely not on our own strength, but on his.

This is not an easy task. I’ve been working at growing in the virtue of hope for about 6 months now, and it’s so beautiful, but I’m constantly doubting and questioning the power of our God. It’s so easy to but a limit on our God, but I promise you, our God is limitless, His power is endless – we just need to allow Him into our 
lives and to take control, constantly fighting a battle against the contemporary, materialistic world. 


For you are my hope, O Lord God: you are my trust from my youth 


Psalm 71:5