Hope focuses on joy.

Thought of the day: fasting hopelessness 

Hope focuses on joy. The joy of The Lord is our strength. 

Don't allow your circumstance to shape your belief in God.

Allow your belief (His word) to shape your circumstance.

Hope keeps its eyes on the joy set before to overcome present circumstances. Jesus was able to endure dying on a cross by focusing on the joy of conquering death. 

The more we know... Him, the more we love Him, the more we trust Him.

Truth: God loves me. He is always with me and has great plans for me.

"We must focus on Jesus, the source and goal of our faith. He saw the joy ahead of him, so he endured death on the cross and ignored the disgrace it brought him. Then he received the highest position in heaven, the one next to the throne of God."

Hebrews 12:2

GOD'S WORD® Translation (©1995)

Hope is trust in Gods perfect outcome.

Thought of the day: fasting hopelessness 

How can we hope in trust when bad things happen to good people?

We trust in a Sovereign God. 

He has supreme power and authority. Nothing happens in our lives without passing through the loving hands of God. I know this truth is hard to believe. I have wrestled with it for 8 years. The night before my son's funer...al, was the first time I heard someone say to me, "God is Sovereign". A big word for my grief filled mind and heart to understand, but it's what I needed to navigate my way through grief. I needed a God bigger and stronger than my circumstances that day. I needed a God that gave me hope that the world could not offer. The night my son died here on earth was also the night he was born back into heaven. He went home, the home where I HOPE with confident expectation to one day be reunited with his precious embrace. 

Yes , bad things happen. I honestly believe He does not cause them but He is the answer to them. The hope He gave to me as I gave Him my grief was peace and joy. I am surprised and thankful for the lack of bitterness and resentment in my life. 

A truth I held on to was Jeremiah 29:11

"For I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD. They are plans for good and not disaster- to give you a future and a hope"-Jeremiah 29:11

His plans always lead us from our bondage to His freedom. So my trusting hope is always rooted in His love that works all things for good.

Hope requires us to choose.

Thought of the day: fasting hopelessness 

Hope requires us to choose. 

When I pray for hope in exchange for my worries my desire to obtain Gods help for an outcome MUST be rooted in the Character of Gods Spirit. 

If they are not rooted in Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self-control ...I pray that God would change my desire and re-root them. 

This is... the process of active faith - transform your mind to see suffering as a producer of the ability to endure and obtain character that hopes in Gods love to work all things for good.

Steps to walk it out:

Is our hope motivated/rooted by our flesh (evil) or Gods Spirit?

Hope - a desire motivated by our character.

Our character - a set of characteristics that make up who we are, they define us a person.

Characteristics of Gods Spirit - Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self-control . 

Our Character - the qualities (gifts) we receive as we Endure our suffering. 

Endurance- ability received as we experience our suffering.

"We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."- Romans 5:3-

Additional thought for today's fast of hopelessness

Is the suffering I'm enduring producing/making me lean upon :love,joy,peace,patience,kindness,goodness,faithfulness or self control?

Check your fruit, if you feel bitterness, anger or resentment ask God to help you work your way through those feelings and to transform them into the fruits of the spirit.

Why is it so hard to hope?

Thought of the day: fasting hopelessness 

Why is it so hard to hope? Is it because hope requires us to hold on to the promise of the good that is yet to come? What if the good never came? We have all experienced disappointment, sickness, lost friendships, death, lost passions and dreams. The temptation at this point is to stop hoping so we can avoid the pain that disappointment and loss often bring.

Truth is, hope can be painful. It requires us to surrender to our fears and to become vulnerable to trust. This kind of hope believes that we will not be forgotten, that God is really with us each step of the way. 

Asking for hope in exchange for our worries only deepens our sense of thirst and ache for His presence in our lives. Yes, hope is risky but it promises to lead us as we follow it to a life more abundant. 

"Narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. "- Matt. 7:14

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Create and cultivate an environment for hope to thrive

Thought of the day: fasting hopelessness 

Create and cultivate an environment for hope to thrive. 

The battle being fought over our hope begins in our mind, listen to your thoughts. 

Truth is that the enemy is more attracted by what you think than what you do. Your first line of defense is knowing who you are in Christ, this will determine how you think. The only way to know who you are in Christ... is to know what He thinks about you. If you know what God has to say about you then the lies of the enemy seem silly. 

If we begin each morning asking God for hope then we are creating an environment where God can thrive, work in our lives. Our petition for hope ushers is a confident expectation for Gods supernatural help. Cast out the lies of the enemy that produce distress , an environment that cultivates opportunity for the enemy's accusations which cause us not to trust. 

Remember, you were chosen by Him, while you were in your sin, to be someone He would die for. He loves us more than we can ever imagine... Begin to imagine, how He loves:)

Meditate on this truth today. Allow it to cultivate hope!

"So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:

They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.

We’re sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.

None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us" -Romans 31-39 MSG 

Our hope is placed in a Savior that's focus is restoration.

Thought of the day: fasting hopelessness 

Our hope is placed in a Savior that's focus is restoration.

"A saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God"

- the ragamuffin gospel

I began to search for hope when I realized that my messy life was a result of trying to do good apart from God. Any efforts I make to lead, guide, counsel, create, clean up or make better are no ...good without Christ. My hopelessness was, "look at what a mess I've made, how in the world will I ever clean up my life and the lives I had affected."

The hope that replaces that worry is, my God is a God of restoration. His plan all along was to help me understand how much I am in need of Him in all things I do. I confess I need Him and lay all my mess at His feet. This opens the door to His grace that allows His power to restore my old mess to new life!

"To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life's story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side, I learn who I am and what God's grace means. "-Brennan Manning

How in the "crush" of life's circumstances do we keep our hearts free to hope?

Thought of the day; fasting hopelessness 

How in the "crush" of life's circumstances do we keep our hearts free to hope?

Tranquility is an illusion; heartbreaks can be the door of hope. Hope is far more about the joy of being found in our mess and then being led out to freedom than it is about being lulled to sleep by the rhythms of Gods heartbeat. If we are honest, the threshold between joy and... pain is slight, so it has more to do with where we are being led.

So in the "crush" we pray for hope that opens the door to His presence that holds up our hearts and counsels us along the way. 

This kind of hope rouses us to say "yes" to life in the core of our being, even when we are suffering. We are saying yes to Him as He says - "I am taking you somewhere, and it's all about my love for you."

It's all about the journey through the circumstance. Give yourself to Him in the valley. Trust Him to lead you through. Hold on to hope while he turns your pain into pure joy.

"But then I win her back once again. I will lead her out into the desert and speak tenderly to her there. I will return her vineyards to her and transform the Valley of Trouble(the valley of Anchor  into a gateway of hope. She will give herself to me there, as she did long ago when she was young..." 

Hosea 2:14,15