Father God, how can I ever find the right words to worship You? You are my God and I love You with all my heart, mind and soul. Jesus Christ, You are Lord of my life. You are all I need, want and choose. Holy Spirit You reign in my heart and without You, my life has no purpose. Hallelujah! Amen!
Currently a very special person in our hearts is experiencing a health challenge and according to the doctor’s medical perspective, his condition is critical. Praise the Lord Jesus Christ that we are neither subject to the world nor to illnesses from this world. Amen! This has brought me to the point of praying very deeply for this person, proclaiming health and life with the hope of full recovery. A couple of times it seemed as if he was leaving us, but I believe that in these critical moments, it is when God wants us to stand firm in our faith and hope in Him. The gentleman is still in hospital and we keep on praying and proclaiming life in Christ. We know God rewards faith (Heb 11:6). Amen!
According to the online dictionary, hope is a feeling of expectation and a desire for a particular thing to happen. A few synonyms for hope are desires, wishes and dreams. God says in Ps 37:4, “delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” What we must remember here is that the verb is delight and that means you have to take action. God must be your all, He must be what you think, act, do and live. He wants to be your everything. Then the reference to desires and heart. We all desire many things, from being spiritual to a partner, clothing, a house and more money in our savings accounts. The truth is that this is the truth and it is no use for us to say it is not so. We do wish for more and better things in life and that is called being human. However, when our main focus is on desiring things for the wrong reasons, it starts contaminating our hearts and ultimately our lives. The key words in the passage above are delight, desires, heart and then also give. That brings me back to hope.
When we hope, it can’t be without faith. When we hope for something and it happens, we surely don’t hope for it anymore, correct? So, therefore we hope in expectation for something that must still happen. In order for hope to give birth to a positive result, we must exercise faith. Heb 11:1 says, “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of the things we do not see.” So now we know that delight, hope and faith is linked with another and the one should never stand alone. However, I want to also highlight the importance of the heart. Hope and heart goes together. Many times we hope for many things. We ask, we pray and we wait. Sometimes we are more patient and other times we want to see results quickly and if we don’t, we tend to question God. The question however is, did you have faith whilst in hope?
I believe as Christians we often think, see and hear with our minds. Is this not the same with hope? Don’t we more than often hope with our minds and because of that we doubt, we question and ultimately don’t receive the desired outcome (James 1:6 – 8)? Should we then not rather be thinking, seeing, hearing and hoping with our hearts? After all, the Holy Spirit is inside of us. That means the Holy Spirit should speak, should act and therefore also give peace in times of hope. The question is, do we allow the Holy Spirit or do we still hold back because we want to be in charge?
Many of us hope but how do we hope? I believe we should hope with our hearts, allowing faith and peace through the Holy Spirit to produce results that will satisfy the pure desires of the heart. Eph 1:18 says, “I pray also that the eyes of your heart maybe enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you.”
Lots of love
Princess K
PS: Dear reader, please remember that the scripture used are from the New International Version. If the scripture is read in another language and translation it might differ slightly. A verse in the NIV might be a different one in your Bible, i.e. Ps 37:3 in the NIV might be Ps 37:4 in your bible. This does not always occur, but happens in some instances.
