Hope is a necessary ingredient in the life of every believer that sets us apart from the world and allows others to be attracted to the light inside of us.
Sometimes we take hope for granted and assume everyone has it. However, when we are faced with something that causes discouragement and disillusionment, we realize that hope is very valuable and we need to function well in life.
Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life. Proverbs 13:12
Hope is a necessity for our spiritual and emotional well-being, and we should fight to keep hope alive in our lives.
The scripture tells us that when one can’t reach what they have hoped for, it can make the heart sick. Obviously, we don’t want to hope in unbiblical things or based on our imagination. We want our hope to be tied to what God has spoken and what we know to be true Biblically.
Furthermore, we want to ensure as the scripture in (Psalm 37:4) tells us to delight ourselves in the Lord. He is the one who will give us the desires of our hearts. And those desires become a tree of life. We want to hope and have confident expectation in Godly desires. When those desires come into fruition, they impact the Kingdom of God and show the true life to others.
We also have hope and expectation in our relationship to other people. We hope and expect that people are going to keep their word and that they are going to come through for us. In a culture of last minute changes and cancelations, it is important for us to keep our word. That could be keeping our word to our spouses, children, friends, coworkers, etc.For example, you may decide to cancel having coffee with someone. What if the person you were going to have coffee, was looking forward to it the entire week, and had been isolated for a long time!? You decide to cancel because you don’t feel like it, or something more interesting came along. They may even look busy, but it does not mean that they are not lonely or isolated. So it is important that when we make a commitment to other people, to the degree possible, to keep our word and be a source of encouragement to others.
Furthermore, in the current social and cultural climate, most of what we hear and see is negative and stressful. After consuming it on a daily basis, it is easy to lose hope and think that things are not going to change. That begins to impact our faith, hope, and love levels, and over time, we find ourselves becoming a different person based on all the stuff we have consumed on a regular basis. One of the ways that we can find ourselves losing hope is when we become cynical about things, and we begin to focus on all things that are not working right versus the good that is happening.
Are you a hopeful person? What are the things that steal your hope and make you feel discouraged or hopeless? What are you going to do about it?
I will continue with this subject in the next devotional.