Greetings from the high desert Antelope Valley region of southern California. I am at the Spiritual Leadership Conference hosted by Lancaster Baptist Church. I am meeting many wonderful people. I will be back in the Flint area on Saturday July 15.
We are on the edge of the Mojave desert and there is not much grass, many trees or much shade. Makes me think of things "more or less."
I love you all and miss you dearly!
“I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 15:13 NLT)
When you stop to think about it, "Less" plays a big role in our lives. On the one hand, it's good to be fearLESS, wireLESS, ageLESS, cordLESS, errorLESS, guiltLESS, painLESS, and odorLESS.
On the other hand, we don't want to be jobLESS, friendLESS, homeLESS, penniLESS, fruitLESS, spineLESS, aimLESS, careLESS, or lifeLESS--especially lifeless! But of all the things we don't want to have less of, none is as important as hope. We definitely do not want to be hopeLESS!
In Romans 5:3-5 the apostle Paul had a way of explaining why hope is so important in our life. It is so important because hope comes from a strange place. It comes from tribulation or times of trouble.
Paul wrote: “We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love."
When we lose hope in the face of trouble, it means we need to strengthen our faith in God's love that was poured out in our heart. To be afraid can mean we should check just how much we trust God. It can be that we are becoming faithLESS. FaithLESS becomes hopeLESS because we feel God has given up on us. To be faithless diminishes how much we understand and believe that God really does love us. And to lose touch with God's love--to be loveLESS--is to lose touch with the greatest thing of all. “Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love." (1 Corinthians 13:13)
Hope, then, is a measure of our realization of God's love. Grasp His love today, and you will grasp hope as well! If we are faithFULL, we are made hopeFULL, and when God’s love fills us and we overflow in the FULLness of His love we have a love that is MORE than we can understand.
God knows nothing of hopeless people or situations.
Become “faithMOREFULL,” “hopeMOREFULL,” and God will “loveMOREFULL” than we can understand or even question.
Hello Again!!
7 years ago
