Having Hope

 

    If you want to have hope in your life, then you need to seek Jesus.  Open your eyes to the world around you, your true self, and seek the need for Jesus.  Don't shut down.  Don't try to avoid.  Don't pretend that the world is not messed up.  It is beautiful and wonderful, but it is also consumed with evil.  See reality and seek God for hope by understanding that he is bigger and stronger than it all.

    When you pray be courageous and open minded to what God is trying to tell you.  Allow yourself to be vulnerable and uncomfortable.  It is only then that He can transform you by helping you clean out all the trash in you making more room for the Holy Spirit to live in you and help you thrive.

    If you are a Christian, then you have no excuse to have closed eyes.  Your eyes were open to the truth upon salvation.  God is pursuing you.  Are you receptive or closed off?  Do you focus on Him or do you allow yourself to get distracted easily. What finger prints are you leaving in this world: good or evil?

    Allow your hope to rely on God completely.  It starts at salvation, but as you mature your desires start to align with His.  The more you are in His word, meditating on it, and prayer the more you see the truth.  The more you should desire God by seeing the truth.

    It is possible to know all about Jesus, but not have a relationship.  Demons knew who Jesus was and feared him, but they will never have salvation.  You can be religious, but religion will get you no where.  You have to have hope in the truth and really believe the truth to start a real relationship with God through Jesus.  It grows and matures with the Holy Spirit.  

    Don't miss the vital truth about who Jesus is.  He is fully God in a human body.  He did live a perfect life of example, die horribly, rose himself from the dead, and walked on the earth again until the day he ascended (alive) to Heaven to be with God until his return.

    To have the living hope in your life do not speak without thinking.  Jesus always used his words with purpose.  Christians need to learn how to do the same.  Words can give hope or crush it.  It is your responsibility to be responsible with your words.  Speak life into people by talking about your relationship with Jesus.  Tell people what he has done for you and how he has changed your life.  Speak with gratitude and resist complaining or focusing on the uncontrollable in your life.  Speak life into yourself and others.

    God has no desire for you to be a blind puppet.  He gave you free will as a gift to live your life as you decide.  That also means that you are allowed to ask Him all the questions that you want.  He encourages questions because the more questions we ask the more foundation is being laid in the relationship.  You can't have friends or any relationship without showing interest and questions are a form of interest.

    God will ask you questions in return.  He doesn't need your answer.  He knows it, but he ask to get you to think.  He uses people, conscience, the Bible, and introspection to ask questions to understand yourself and your relationship with Him.  We need to know what we believe and why.  Just because is not a good enough answer.  You will not have hope on just because.

    God's Word is mighty.  It holds power to condemn, convict, comfort, enrich, and enhance people's lives.  Every time you read it, it will affect you in some way.  That is because God used people to write it which makes it relatable.  He breathed life into it which gives it life.  He sent his son to tell a lot of the story which gives it hope in the eternal.  It is full of promises, blessings, curses, and reality.

    Jesus was so much more than a great man, teach, philosopher, or prophet.  He is God in the flesh.  He has the power to contain himself enough to be human and fully God at the same time.  To have hope, you have to believe this.  You have to have faith.  You have to know him otherwise all your hope is fleeting and reliant of life events.

Psalm 119:145-152, Luke 24:1-34 John 12:20-22, Romans 10:5-13, 12:9-13, & Hebrews 11:1-3