Rebuilding Hope Team

Several weeks ago, our family, alongside others from our church, was given opportunity to serve a local family with some home projects.  The tasks included several jobs that our children could be a part of as well and we were thrilled to be able to serve alongside one another as a family.  As the days drew closer, we wondered what exactly it would look like to enter someone else’s home with a willingness to help where needed. It wasn’t without some hesitancy, some hoping, trusting, praying, and questioning of what we would be doing and how exactly will this all go?! But God! God, who knows the beginning from the end, had gone before us and had chosen a group of willing workers to uniquely help and come alongside this family.  Even the children involved with this opportunity were uniquely picked by the Lord to come together to encourage this family and their own children. We were blessed to witness the Lord at work in His people over the next several days. We watched Him increase openness, transparency, our work capacities, and our efforts.  His increase brought His glory to the forefront!  The days were filled with home projects, cleaning, decluttering, yard work, flooring, conversations, meals together, a birthday celebration, rain and sunshine.  The days were filled with His purposes for a greater good for every single one of us involved!  

Our team was called Rebuilding Hope.  

Rebuild: (v) an action; build something again after it has been damaged or destroyed

to restore, to repair, to reassemble

Hope: (v) to desire with expectation of fulfillment

(n) a person or thing that may help or save someone; grounds for believing that something good may happen. 

I’d imagine this family was also met with some hesitancy, some questioning, some hoping that allowing our group into their home, into their lives, would be a good decision.  They willingly made the decision to say yes to the help they were offered, hoping it would lift some of the burden they were experiencing, but they didn’t know for sure. They were hoping!

As we were able to spend those three days together, working alongside one another, eating together, laughing together, praying together, sharing life together, the word hope moved from a verb to a noun.  The Lord graciously allowed the simple work we could do as a group together to fulfill the desire they had for their burden to be lifted.  He graciously allowed us to be a part of rebuilding their hope, and in so doing, He rebuilt ours as well. The Lord’s work, through our hands and feet, became the grounds on which they began to believe something good may happen.  The Lord allowed each of us to behold in new ways those few days, that opening ourselves up to the help of His body produces intangible rebuilding of the soul. The work we did was simply an external means of bringing some order to the chaos of this fallen world.  The Lord is so kind to allow us to be His hands and feet! He is so kind to bring His hands and feet to those who are hurting! Whether we are the ones serving or the ones receiving on any given day, in each situation He is graciously rebuilding hope into all of us.  He is graciously restoring a deeper sense, a great confidence in His promises as we witness Him making all things new around us. He is continually moving us from hoping as a verb to settling us on hope as a noun, the person of hope, Jesus Christ Himself! His redemptive purposes are all around us, what grace that He invites us to partake in His work for His glory and our goo
 
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.  And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Eph 5:1-2 

…that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love,  may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.   Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.  Eph 3:17-21

Britt and Megan Steffen