Hello all!

Sorry it’s been so long, I’m planning to try to write on here a bit more and do one shorter post a week. Putting my goal here publicly will hopefully help me stick to it!

This week I have been wrestling with what it means to really hope. Hope being not just the vague feeling that things might turn out ok but the positive expectation of good things coming from God to us. I realised I have felt quite resistant to living in hope, it felt exhausting to even try to keep hoping. When life seems to deal you a lot of disappointment, it can leave you wounded and sadly in response to that, it can feel easier to not hope to protect yourself from the pain of disappointment.

I had really got to the point where I felt my faith and expectation didn’t matter, things just seem to go wrong whatever I desired. But that is a victim mentality, that I have no power or influence in my own life, that life will just happen to me. We have to realise our hope and expectation really, really do matter.

“Didn’t I tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” John 11:40

The big word there is IF. Believing is how we participate in what God wants to do. Hope is believing that he will be good to us! If we believe, truly believe, expecting his glory and goodness to show up in our lives, then it will come. But if we shut the door and refuse to believe for whatever reason, then we will not see it happen!

This verse is Jesus speaking just before he raises Lazarus from the grave after four days. This is the glory God wants to bring into our lives, total resurrection and restoration, all our dreams that we think are dead and buried, he wants to bring them out of the grave and give us life to the full.

Will you hope again? Will you believe God desires to be good to you in every situation and circumstance regardless of what you have previously experienced?

Choose to hope again and open the door to receiving his glory and refuse to let it be closed!