Dig through the darkness to find the light
Part 2 of an
interview with Nika Maples,
Author of Hunting Hope
Hope
hunters know how to excavate hope from hardship. There is dirt underneath their
fingernails and sweat on their shirts. They rake through the rubble of an
unwanted situation, digging into difficult circumstances because they have come
to expect that adversity will produce good. They believe that light always
triumphs over darkness. They have learned to walk through winter with their
eyes on spring.
Nika
Maples, the author of Hunting Hope: Dig
Through the Darkness to Find the Light (Worthy Inspired), became a hope
hunter after suffering a massive brainstem stroke that left her quadriplegic in
her twenties. Doctors warned that she had as little as 48 hours to live, and-if
she lived at all-she would never walk or talk again. There was no hope on the
horizon. So Nika started to hunt for it. Today, she not only walks, but she
speaks to audiences everywhere about the power of hunting hope when a situation
appears hopeless. She says hope remains camouflaged in the daily mundane. If we
are not looking for it, we will miss it, though it is right before our eyes.
Maples
uses real life examples and biblical insight to show readers how to become a
hope hunter by seeking God when they feel surrounded by darkness. She presents
20 truths about God's character and 5 daily disciplines that will develop your
character in crisis.
Q:
It’s difficult to grasp that God allows — or maybe even causes — hard times in
our life to accomplish His purposes. Why is this not inconsistent with His
character?
First, let me
clarify: Just because God allows something to happen doesn’t mean He endorses
it. Many times, He permits circumstances He hates, things that hurt Him to
witness. If He is omniscient, then He knew about your catastrophe before it
hit, and if He is omnipotent, then He had to have allowed it to happen.
The key to
making peace with this idea is trusting His character. Faithfulness is His
character. It is that simple. Sure, I could go on and on about Him based on my
experiences. He has been better to me than my words could ever tell. But His
character is not defined by our experience. The book of Revelation says His
name is Faithful and True. That’s who He is. And because He is faithful and
true, He is able to bring good from anything, from anything, from anything. If we could see or imagine
that good right now, we wouldn’t need God, we would be God. We don’t have to try to see or imagine the good when we are
in pain. That’s not our job. We can just let God bring it about.
God has an
enemy who wants to discredit anything He has ever said. Satan will send fear
and anxiety to our doorsteps, like terrible houseguests. The only way to combat
fear and anxiety is to get to work, reorienting our thoughts around what God
says instead of what we say or what the enemy says. Our perspective will change
when we expose ourselves to the truth in the Word.
Jesus promises
that His peace can flood our hearts in any situation, and in Philippians 4:6–8,
He tells us how: We access peace through prayer. Jesus says His peace is a gift,
and in John 14:27, He tells from where: We receive peace from the Holy Spirit.
Through these verses, we see there are some steps we must take to activate the
peace that is freely ours in Christ. Some people don’t want to do that work,
but that is exactly the kind of work I mean when I say we must “dig through the
darkness to find the Light.”
Q:
How much does the fear of suffering have to do with control?
Fear of
suffering is its own kind of suffering. It does no good to block future bad
experiences as it only blocks the enjoyment of current good experiences. One of
my favorite quotations is from theologian Alan Redpath: "There is nothing
— no circumstance, no trouble, no testing — that can ever touch me until, first
of all, it has gone past God and past Christ right through to me. If it has
come that far, it has come with a great purpose, which I may not understand at
the moment.”
Questions
about suffering are questions about sovereignty. We want to be the ones in
control, the ones who decide what can be used for good in our lives. Either God
is in control, or He isn’t. If God is in control, then what we know about God
is more important than what we know about our circumstances. For now, that may
not lessen the ache, but we can rest inasmuch as we are willing to rely on Him.
That is how we hunt for hope. Jesus is hope. And if we let Him, He will always
lead us to Himself.
Q:
You say it doesn’t matter what causes suffering in one’s life nearly as
much as what suffering causes in one’s life. Explain what you mean.
It certainly matters what causes suffering in our lives. But that
may be a distracting question that takes our eyes off a more important
question. What may matter more is what suffering
causes in our lives. If adversity brings about bitterness, fury and
disbelief in the Lord, then it will be a loss. But if it brings about humility,
patience and dependence upon the Lord, then it will be for His glory.
Q:
Who is your favorite biblical example of a hope hunter?
I
love Caleb! He was 40 years old when Moses asked him to be one of the 12 spies
who scouted the Promised Land. The situation looked grim — there would be
giants to defeat — and Caleb didn’t pretend they weren’t there. He acknowledged
them; he cooperated with God to adjust his perspective on that reality. He knew
that with God, total victory would be possible, and he encouraged the
Israelites to go after it!
Then
he definitely had to face some darkness. He wandered 40 years in the wilderness
with everyone else, even though he didn’t do anything wrong. He was one of the
faithful minority who had to suffer because of the unfaithful choices of
others. Then my heart thrills when we see him again after they finally arrived
in Canaan, asking his lifelong friend Joshua for his share of the land. Joshua
warned him there may be some battles to fight in the process. Caleb said, in
effect, “Don’t worry about me, I may be 85 years old, but I can still fight!”
Caleb was scrappy. He’s a hope hunter, for sure.
Q:
Why is obedience so critical during dark seasons? How does someone know what
obedience looks like for them individually?
When I mention
the essential power of obedience in hunting for hope, the person who is
heavy-hearted today might say, “Look, Nika, I don’t have the energy to hunt for
hope. I can’t muster the effort to pursue Christ right now. I am doing all I
can do just to keep breathing.” I want to encourage you. In James 4:8, God
says, “Draw near to Me, and I will draw near to you.” But the picture of this
is not one of equity; it’s not “Hey, you take a few steps, and I’ll take a few
steps.” No, the instant you lift your foot to take a step, He will cover the
entire distance between you before you even finish that first step.
The implicit
message of the Bible is that God always does more than we do. We make it too
hard. His yoke is easy. The way we know our individual step of obedience is to
sit quietly, without distraction, and ask Him. Invite Him to make “the next
right step” known to you. Don’t expect a long-term life plan or blueprint. Just
ask for the next right step. You don’t have to trust your ability to hear God.
You just have to trust His ability to communicate. When I go a long period of
time without sensing His direction, I immerse myself in Scripture. I cannot
expect Him to say something new if I am unwilling to surround myself with what
He has already said.
Q:
What are some of the steps to becoming a hope hunter?
Meditating on
Romans 8:24 led to a revolutionary discovery for me. It reads, “Hope that is
seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have?” We’ve all heard
people say that a situation or a person or something is hopeless. And then they
are done. That’s it. We have mistakenly thought we either have hope, or we
don’t. But this verse says something completely different. This says that if we
see or sense hope, then that isn’t hope at all! It’s counterfeit hope, and that
helps no one. So the real hope comes some other way. Apparently, when there is
no hope for a situation, that is when we are in the position to find real hope.
Who hopes for what they already have? If you don’t have hope, that is time for
the real work to begin. We go on the hunt, not for the hope that is seen, but
for the hope that is unseen.
This is
explained in another place, as well. In Romans 5:3–4, we read that we can
“glory in our hardship because we know hardship produces perseverance …” Did
you hear that? We don’t start with a heart full of hope. No, we have to hunt
for it, winding our way from hardship, through perseverance and into character
before we get to hope. If we will trust God, our hardship will wind its way to
hope. Trust is where it all starts.
Learn
more about Nika Maples and Hunting Hope by
visiting www.nikamaples.com or following her on Facebook (nikamaples) or
Twitter (@nikamaples).
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