HOPE AND THE HOLY SPIRIT By: Alton Garrison Faith and hope are similar but distinctly different. In addition to the measure of faith, Romans 10:17 (ESV) declares that faith can grow through the educational process of “hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.” Faith is more educational while hope is more emotional. Faith is related to miracles; hope is more about morale. Hope is a favorable, confident, happy anticipation of good things to come. Hopeful people are happy, generous, and positive. Hopeless people are negative, bitter, discouraged, and defeated. Satan’s attack is more against our hope than against our faith. It is easier for him to discourage us emotionally than to defeat us Scripturally. Anyone who has experienced loss, sickness, tragedy, or pain will often hear Satan’s lie: “If God really loved you, why would He allow that to happen to you?” When we lose our wealth, we are hindered. When we lose our health, we are handicapped. But when we lose our hope, we are emotionally paralyzed. When we look at our health, finances, relationships, family situations, or joblessness and all looks hopeless, we must not give up. What is the Holy Spirit saying to me? ACTIVATION Recognize that God is your source of hope. Believe you have not lost your faith. Write in your journal the emotions destroying your hope. Release those to God and let Him recharge the hope in you. PRO 13:12 NIV Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. ROM 4:17-18 NIV As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.” He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not. Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be . Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. ROM 15:4 NIV For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope. ROM 10:17 NIV Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.
Posted on: Mon, 30 Jun 2014 12:26:59 +0000
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