Monday, August 28, 2006, 05:17 PM
Hope
When we gaze inward we cannot see God’s light. Our hope lives in darkness and there is no light anywhere. When we turn our gaze to the heavens we see hope. God is an inexhaustible source of hope (Ps.43:5). When we have faith and seek God there is always hope. Faith won’t give up. A spark of hope can become a blazing inferno. Hope holds onto things that cannot be seen. It is like an anchor that holds the ship steady in a storm. We may be rocked violently and tossed around but our hope holds fast. In hope we pray for things that do not get answered by our desires. When this happens we can lose hope and doubt our faith. We believe God does not hear our prayers or maybe He does not really exist.
Jesus prayed to take the cup. Jesus prayed for hours and sweat great drops of blood due to His anguish. God still refused to take the cup. And we praise God that He did not. Because through Christ’s obedience, suffering, death and resurrection we are saved. If God had taken the cup we would all still be in our sins. There would be no hope.
God is always working for our good just as He did when He accepted full responsibility for our sins. We are to relinquish our rights to Him and God will give us His best. God is all-knowing. We have no knowledge of our future beyond this very moment. God sees the whole picture. His timing is always perfect for us. He is always our hope.
Hope is in God’s Word. It is in your faith in His Word by His Holy Spirit. It is in Christ Jesus. Praise Him for His gift of salvation. Praise Him for so many little things that are all around you. Praise Him for all things. Because all things work for the good of those who love Christ (Ps.31:24; Ps. 33:22; Ps; 39:7). Our love for Christ gives us hope.
We cannot be bored when we have hope (Heb. 611). We are excited about our future and we are excited to tell others about our hope. We know that there will be a great reward. This is our hope.
Our hope is in God and He cannot lie. “God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure” (Heb.6:18, 19).
Hope is not a vague feeling about life and the future. It is a positive and complete assurance of our victory through Christ. This hope takes us out of our circumstance and puts us above it. The Holy Spirit works this in us. When our life is centered around Christ we have hope (Eph.1:18).
We only grow through difficult situations. We do not rejoice in the heartache, pain or tragedy. We rejoice in knowing that God is working through life’s tragedy’s to bring us closer to Him. We develop perseverance and this will strengthen our character. Our trust in God will grow. We will see our future in hope (Rom. 5:3-5)
God moves us in love to work for Him. This love has been produced by faith and it is inspired by hope. This is the marks of an effective Christian doing God’s will (I Thess.1:3). When we do God’s will He fills us with hope.
“We must believe that Christ is truly in control of all events. When He rules our thoughts and emotions, we cannot be shaken by anything our enemies may do” (I Pet.3:15) Life App. Bible ft.note). Hope is sure and active in our heart.
“Faith is the foundation and content of God’s message; hope is the attitude and focus; love is the action. When faith and hope are in line you are free to love completely because you understand how God loves” (I Cor. 13:13). Life App. Bible footnote.
True hope is in the midst of crises. It is seeing from God’s perspective. Faith, hope and love are the ingredients for a Christian. Salvation does not come by what we know; it comes by whom we know. When we know Christ we know God and we know hope. “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit (Rom.15:13).
You can reach Nancy at:
Crossing the GAP
PO Box 384
Marshall, IL 62441
art@nancysgallery.com
Monday, August 14, 2006, 05:12 PM
Take My Hand
Imagine a line—one side is to give it all to God and the other side takes care of number one. You may straddle the line and say this is the part I will give over to God and keep the rest for myself. Sorry, this is not acceptable to God. Our life will not be all that it could be when we straddle the line. We give God our all by staying in His Word daily. We pray and we focus on Him in everything we do. When we start our day with Him we ask Him to walk with us in each and every decision for that day. We have made time for Him. We have put God first each day and that will always start out a good day. When we have made a decision that we no longer want it our way God will do the rest. And actually only by the power of the Spirit working in our lives can we make the decision of committing our lives to Christ. He does it by drawing us into His Word. He lays the truth of His will on our hearts and then we make the decision to give ourselves and our lives totally over to Him by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Do you trust Jesus for your salvation? Then trust Him with your every day walk. Take His hand and allow Him to show you the way He will have you go. If you trust Him for your salvation and yet do not trust Him in your daily life you have a lot of company. Most Christians struggle with this. And so how do we get this trust for our life here on this earth? We read and study His Word. We see what He did in the Old Testament and how He guided them through their lives. We look at the New Testament and see what He can do with our lives. And we look back at our life and see what He has done in our life. Do you see His working as a chance happening or do you see Him in control? Do you blame Him when bad things happen and take all of the glory when good things happen? These are important questions to answer for yourself. It will show you where you are in your faith and what you need to pray for.
As we walk down that road of faith with God do we get impatient and run ahead of Him? When we are ahead we cannot see Him. How will we know what to do when our eyes are not on God? We are not trusting in His wisdom. We are trusting in ourselves. We are to wait on His timing. If we have His hand we cannot go far because He will hold on to us and make us stay by His side and we will grow in our faith by waiting and hanging onto Him. We will know that we cannot do anything good on our own. We must see who we are and who God is. We must see our inadequacies and His perfection. When He has our hand we are depending on Him to do His will through us.
When we are behind we can only see His back and we cannot understand what He wants us to know or do. We are fearful of where He will take us and if there is a fork in the road we may take another path to go our own way because we believe we know best. We do this because of lack of trust in His divine wisdom. When we are behind we cannot hear his words to us. We fear the outcome of walking with Him. We trust our decisions above God’s, who sees all, knows all and is our creator? And we believe we can do it better? Think about that.
We cannot say God use me and take all of me but if something bad happens I am going to walk it alone. I will go ahead, come up behind or take that fork in the road. I will do it myself because apparently you do not love me to allow this thing to happen to me (James 1:2-8). Are you kidding me? He loves us so much that He gave His only begotten son for us. Christ suffered and died on the cross taking our sins with Him and we doubt His love for us? Look at it this way. God took your sins and died for you. He rose again on the third day for you, personally, so that you too will live forever with Him. He did it for you.
When we walk down the straight and narrow line at His side we can talk and visit. He can tell us many things that He wants us to know about Himself. As we grow to know Him better His words become more beautiful as our journey with Him continues through our lives. He stops often to embrace us and we are filled with His comfort and His joy. We are His child, brother, sister and friend. He accepts us just as we are with all of our flaws. We can see His love for us in all that He does for us. Even in hard times we may think He has let go of our hand but as the footsteps in the sand show He is carrying us through them. And as we walk through this life He will walk us right up to His mansion in heaven and have us to move in with Him forever. And that will be the reward to beat all rewards.
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will (Rom.12:1-3).
You can reach Nancy at:
Crossing the GAP
PO Box 384
Marshall, IL
62441
art@nancysgallery.com
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