PSALM 27:13-14
“I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord
In the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord;
Be strong and let your heart take courage;
Yes, wait for the Lord.”
According to this, to not despair and have hope is equivalent to gathering courage and remaining strong. The hope of God is a strong thing.
It is a courageous thing to hope with the Lord for something. Hope is about putting your daily life in the Lord’s hands with this note:“Not my will, but yours be done.”
Hope is about trusting God. It is about coming to the end of your day, and in prayer saying, Jesus Christ you are the living hope, and no matter what that is enough.
Before you see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living you hope for you.
I want us to think about directing our energy and life into a healthy hope. Tasting the sweetness of hope daily. Being giddy with excitement because we know the faithfulness of the Lord, that He is a good Father who wants to give His children good gifts.
Proverbs 13:12 says “Hope deferred makes a heart sick, but longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” So if you have a sick heart you might want to ask yourself when you took your hope out of the Lord’s hands.
I do believe there is a type of hope that is of the world, that I would equate more with intense long
ing, pining, or perhaps even just a dream twisted by envy. This is the type of thing that breeds bitterness.
However, I mostly want to focus on hope that is of God, and there are a few things I want to clarify about this hope:
In a hope of God you should be a reflection of the poor in spirit
Being poor in spirit is about humility. It is about being humble enough to put our own selves away and seek God.
Humility involves putting away our self and our wants, to put them to death, and to reach for the Lord with our whole being.
I do want to talk about our wants for material gain. To clarify, sometimes there are good things that are material that the Lord wants to give us. God is a good God, and he wants to give his children good gifts. I’m not saying it’s wrong.
However, there is a point where you’re not ‘hoping’ for things but coveting.There is a point where the material wants need to cease and in its stead a need for the spirit has to replace it.
Longing for the Spirit of God is a process that deepens the more time we spend with him. When you are in his presence you crave his presence. I hope for the coming of his presence ever time I enter prayer.
He is our hope. The hope of our lives.
When we really look at hope, it’s about Jesus Christ. Period.
In a hope from God there is healing
“Longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” -Prov 13:12
You will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Dreams fulfilled giving life to your spirit. Have hope, for there is healing from past disappointments. From wrong beliefs that the Lord just didn’t want us to have ____.
Of course the contrast to hope fulfilled is hope deferred. A continued disappointment that causes bitterness to swell our bellies until we are gluttons on complaints. I do want to state that just because you’ve longed for something and expressed daily complaints for it does not mean you have the right to it. First question: is it a hope or dream that is in line with Him or from Him?
If something is eating away at your spirit then I pray you would consider giving it’s dead carcass over to Jesus.
Hope begins when we turn over things to Jesus and there is opportunity for new beginnings. This is a place of healing.
The hope of God is apart of the personal battle for love
How will we ever love more in the depth and breadth of Christ’s love for others if we do not have hope?
If everyone is made in the image of God then I have guaranteed knowledge that they are amazing. And I have a hope they can make it past whatever it is they are dealing with right now.
Love fights for the image of God in a person, hopes for their best future, and has faith God will be there to lead them into their promise land.
I’m sure you know that for anything you hope for there is usually a battle for it. In prayer, in pressing in, in getting past personal conflicts. Sometimes we need to fight against disappointment because of a lack of patience. But, the Lord does not know slowness like we know slowness.
In all honesty, sometimes we hope and fight, and when we finally win it’s not all we dreamed of. But it was worth it because of our love for God. God is worthy of us fighting every battle.
There is a humility that is cultivated when we fight for hope. Because love always hopes (1 Corinthians 13:4-7), we are required to lay down our bias and judgment and be humble enough to look with eyes of compassion.
A mature spirit hopes and knows how to hope even when it doesn’t seem worth it.
So I pray that you give your hope to the Lord, that your fight for it, and that you cultivate a lifestyle of hope. And I pray this with you that you would see with eyes of hope on this new day: “Lord, give us this day our daily bread.”
With much prayer and love,
Coral Faith
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