-Strenght for Today- “Dare to be Hopeful!” - Psalm 27:13-14.
It’s easy “to be worn down by hopelessness,” when there’s no platform to stand on for “divine expectancy. Because, “if you don’t expect anything good to happen,” “you won’t be disappointed when it doesn’t.” Because you’ve determined in your mind “that there’s no genuine place where your soul can find rest in the midst of its weariness.”
We all have to realize that “hope is more than a motivational thought,” or “a fading daydream.” In Psalm 42:5 that’s exactly what we have:
“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?” But after stopping to listen to his heart, “the psalmist goes on to encourage himself in the Lord. Likewise, we must diligently “give way to the Holy Spirit,” or “we’ll give way to a downcast,” and “disquieted spirit.”
Hope is what “stabilizes our frantic thoughts” and “quietens the storms of our emotions.” Hope is a “confident expectation” that “there’s no problem big enough to keep God from rescuing us.” Biblical hope “not only desires something good for the future,” “it expects it to happen.” In that secured arena of certainty, we can say, “nothing is impossible,” because “God’s fire wall,” which is His Word, “can’t be quenched.” So, “hope is an awareness” of God’s faithfulness, which is “the other side of our inherited hopelessness,”
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In other words, “whenever faith in God looks to the future,” “it can be called hope.” And “whenever hope rests on the Word of God,” “it can be called faith.” Hope enables us “to look beyond our wretchedness” to “the new worth we now have, because of God’s grace, (Ephesians 2:8-10), to which we can now “endure hardships” and “long waiting periods,” that God uses “to develop character” and “endurance in us.
To this Psalm 27:14 says: “Wait on the LORD; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the LORD! And again Isaiah 40:31 tells us: “...those who wait on the LORD Shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”
In Matthew 19:26, Jesus said: “...with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” It doesn’t matter “what the situation looks like around you,” “God is greater than any obstacle you may be facing.” Everything that has never been done “is impossible until someone does it.” So, “why can’t that someone be you?” This can only happen when you stop allowing your mind “to be a trashcan, to collect “the things you can accomplish in life.”
Starting today, “dare to be hopeful.” Regardless of “who you are,” or “the condition you’re facing,” there’s “no liberating success in life without hope in God.”
Author: Plez Lovelady, Jr., PhD