Hope is God led, it is the final dot on the 'i' in our lives. Without Hope we cannot see the intricate path God has led us on to His answer to our imperfect lives.
If you have asked the question, 'Why is my life like this?' it is usually a response to a situation that we are in. And why are we in that situation? Perhaps it is because of the decisions we have made. Whether they were right or wrong they are all part of the rich tapestry of our own personal journey.
So we are not in a good place. Everything seems hopeless. Looking at the moment here and now there seems no answer. But our Hope is in the Lord as the psalmist says "In you Lord God I put my trust. I trust in you." (Ps 25:1-2)
How often do we say that and then complain that our prayers have not been answered. The fact of the matter is, we often want our answers now, but God is usually working on them and can be years ahead of us in the completion of that answer. But of course in Heaven there is no time, so God's answer is complete, he has answered already, but on earth the reality because it is time led means that the last pieces of the jigsaw might be in the near or distant future having traveled from the past on many winding journeys to get to that point.
I find it awesome to look at some of the pictures God has made with my life. The detail is incredible. But when I look really closely I see that it is in fact a jigsaw puzzle, but the lines are so fine that it is hard to see the joins.
An answer to pray may have started ten years ago, when we decided on a job, marriage, course, vocation etc. When we look back in hindsight from the fulfilled answer we can see the many people, actions, reactions, responses from all sorts of circumstances, that had a domino effect and went into God bringing about the solution that was made in Heaven for us. That is why Hope is God led.
Imagine if you are old enough, an old telephone switchboard system where you had hundreds of wires attached to a large board in front of you. Every scenario has a wire and if we walked down one road the outcome would be a nice straight line. However our life isn't like that and the large board in front of you probably looks more like Spaghetti Junction but a hundred times over and more. Now imagine that every one of those wires has a beginning and end and thousands of stops points in between and each of these stop points has a beginning and end. Am I getting you confused? Life is complicated! We make it complicated, often by trying to answer our own prayer. Okay well that is the sort of thing God has to do to get you to reach the point where you see the light of your prayer being answered.
If I have lost you in the above paragraph then just look at an event in your life and write down a list of how many people, and things/events there were in the fulfillment of that journey. Then you will see God's hand in putting those people and events together. That is why we can have hope, because when we look backwards we see the finished picture for that event. So we do not need to be afraid, we can see why our life was the way it was and how God led you to the answer. With that in mind we can with confidence the next time we say 'Why is my life like this?' trust that God has already answered the question, we just need to trust Him as we walk with Him to its conclusion. We can have Hope in God, we can stand on his Truths, because God has already answered our prayer in Heaven.
I hope this is helpful.
God bless.