Have you felt like giving up lately?
We all know what it’s like to feel like giving up on everything. Difficult uninvited circumstances, inner turmoil, relational problems, unanswered prayer… These all effect us badly and make us lose hope.
Yet if we give in we also lose the will to move on and stop believing that we can pull through.
The worst thing that can happen to us however is to turn away from God instead of sincerely turing to Him again and again. Indeed the Word of God equates being without God in this world as being without hope (Eph 2:12).
Even though all seems lost…
Despite its difficulty sometimes, choosing to hold on to His love and truth in prayer opens us up to a different reality altogether:
May the God of hope fill you all with joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit (Rom 15:13)
No one who trusts God has fallen so grievously that he may not hope and rise again. No pit is deeper that His love is not deeper still. As Chesterton says: Hope means hoping when things are hopeless.
This hope is not the same as being an optimist and just thinking positively. It is rooted in trusting the God who loves us, cares for us and will show us the way if only we turn to Him always and wholeheartedly.
Words of Hope
Why not hear and reflect on these words from the Psalms today and makem them your own or pass them on to someone who you know may need to hear them:
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God. (Psa. 43:5)
I wait for the Lord , my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope … O Israel, put your hope in the LORD, for with the LORD is unfailing love and with him is full redemption (Psa. 130:7).