Hope in God, the best Hope there is

Hope is keeping your eyes fixed on the promise God has given you without giving up. It’s how we look at things, our perspective.       

There are many things in life we hope for. We hope for a new bike for Christmas, we hope for a new car, we hope we can go to Disneyland for our birthday, we hope Grandma’s cancer will go away. In some of the things we hope for they do come true and in other incidents they do not.

 

The best thing we can do with our hope is to keep our eyes fixed on the promises of God without giving up on them. Hope is a matter of how we look at things. It’s our perspective or viewpoint of something. There will be days when we feel like we have no hope but that isn’t true. There is no such thing as “no hope.”

 

Recently in the Philippines with thousands of lives lost and homes destroyed they must feel like they have no hope. In some ways when you put it up to the light and look at it they don’t have much hope. However, there is one thing that tornadoes, hurricanes, tidal waves, and earthquakes cannot destroy and that is the hope we have in Jesus and in the promises we are given.

 

If you read your Bible you will find countless numbers of promises for us to hang on to. Promises such as “God will never leave us nor forsake us. In Christ we can do all things, God is preparing a place in Heaven for those who believe in and follow Him” and many more promises.

 

It’s not a matter of how we are “feeling.” As I tell the grandkids don’t go by your feelings, they are fickle, flawed and cannot be trusted. It is a matter of focusing on God and the hope we have in Him. Too often Satan will try to get you to focus on the bad things around you that make you feel hopeless. When he does you need to sit down with your Bible, turn to the Psalms and get caught back up in the promises God has to offer you and pray, pray, pray!

 

You can read the Bible front to back ten times and you will never find a promise that says you will never feel pain, you will never be hurt, everyone is going to love you, and you will never have a reason to cry, fear, or suffer. You won’t find those because God knows we live in a fallen world who has given in to ungodly ways and poor choices.

 

It is through the pain and suffering we go through that we finally will focus on the promises of God. If we had it good all the time we would be like Adam and Eve in the Bible who didn’t think they needed God let alone listen to Him. It was that attitude that got them kicked out of the garden and placed in what must have seemed like a hopeless situation.

 

Just remember no matter how bad life seems to be there is hope in God, let that be your focus, your choice of attitude, your way of life.

 

© 2013 Karen J. Gillett at Pencil Marks and Recipes Publishing for KarensKidsKorner