Hope

Hope is the one thing I hold onto when I start to feel fear creeping into my being. We have to remind ourselves of who God is and why we don’t despair in the face of tragedy, trauma and confusion. It’s so normal to feel like we have no answer and no out to our problems and grief. In those moments remember all of the things that God has done for you and what He has shown you. More importantly, remember who He is and what His love sounds like, looks like and feels like. It is in these moments of complete despair that I pray for hope. Romans 5:3-4 is a verse that I love. “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope and hope does not disappoint.” So the trial is the suffering and the reminders that we give ourselves is the endurance part of this. Suffering produces endurance because without it there would be no need for the reminders; the endurance. Eventually, that builds our character; our faith muscle. The product of all this is hope. Hope does not disappoint because it gives us the strength to rise again, to take just one more step forward. It’s the promise that we will find an answer and an end to the trial. Hope is the bridge between the pain and the promise. We will be blessed because the word says that “blessed is the man whose hope is in the Lord.” Psalm 146:5. God after all is hope. He is who we run to when we need freedom from problems, disease, confusion and He is the one who can give comfort and consolation when things don’t turn out as we anticipate and we have to face the great disappointments and loss of life.

So I pray for hope and the ability to feel it and live it out. I pray that you never lose hope and that you can bless others by sharing hope. Hope is a sweet perfume for the soul. It’s like incense arising into the atmosphere. I pray it settles on everything like dew on the morning grass. Let it saturate you from your head to your toes so that you carry it on your person and so that people around you can inhale the sweet aroma of it filling their lungs and running through their body to the innermost parts until the soul can soak in it. Let hope drown out fear and despair. Soak in the hope of God and His promises.