02/17/2025
Hope
“Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and work.” - 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17
Because we believe that God loves us, that it is not His desire that we perish, but are rather brought to repentance unto salvation (2 Peter 3:9), we have an eternal consolation. We can know that if we have fallen down, He is more than willing, He desires to help us back up.
Beyond that, we have hope in His grace (the power, favor, and influence of the Holy Spirit) to do what we could not; to remember that we do not look to our own ability, but to His. Can we walk on water? No. But “if He” bid us come, we can! Can the storm stop us from doing this miraculous thing? Only if we put more faith in the storm, than in our King!
As believers, in every trial, situation, or season, we have a hope, a blessed assurance, an anchor for our soul. The fact that God loves us, and is not giving up on us, even when we mess up. Yes we can choose to rebel and walk away, we can choose to serve other things and depart from the service of our King. We can even choose hell over Heaven. We do have a part to play in all this. We do have to choose this day whom we will serve. God will not force us to love and obey Him. He gives us that choice daily. Yet He has also made available to us, all the resources of heaven to help us to make (and keep making) the right decision! So as long as our heart is still to please God above self, man, or demons, then there is still redemption from mistakes, straying, backsliding, moments of unbelief, and deception.
Sometimes, try as we might, we just miss it. We get tired, tricked by Satan, or distracted. Then the devil comes with condemnation and tries to convince us to give up. That God doesn’t want us. This is not true. Remember all that Christ went through for you. Think of the times He has used you to reach out to the most depraved of souls. You felt the loved that God had towards them. Yet with every little perceived inadequacy when measuring yourself against the personas of other men, you fall under condemnation and begin agreeing with Satan about how you don’t deserve your call, destiny, or promises.
It’s time to rebuke that. To speak to that mountain and cast it out. It’s not your power that brings God’s covenants about, it’s His! So have hope. You simply sit at His feet, worship, and learn the lessons, like Mary did. Stop trying to do everything and getting frustrated when you can’t and then blaming everyone around you for not helping you make it happen. Like Martha did.
God knows what He is doing. Yes, let Him correct you. But reminder that He corrects His children out of love, protection, and a desire to perfect them. Not out of rejection. So receive the realignment, grab hold of hope, and keep going!
Take your hands off the wheel and stop steering, it has to be His will, not yours. Let Him steer, and you won’t get off course. Now worship for a bit and then get back in the classroom of the Holy Ghost with thankfulness, expectation, and hope.
“Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.” - Romans 15:13
“For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God.” - 1 John 3:20-21
“and hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” - Romans 5:5-10
“Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath: that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us: which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil; whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.”
Hebrews 6:17-20
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