I HOPE...!

I use this phrase a lot!

I hope you have a great day!
I hope you feel better.

"Real Bible hope is not 'wishing.'  It is earnest, intense, expectation that what God has said will come to pass." Pursuit of His Presence, Kenneth Copeland


The Word says that Faith is the substance of things hoped for!  Hope in this context is not a feeling it is an action. It is a real expectation of knowing what is to come.  In my devotion this morning, I read that "if people would just expect God to move as much as a child expects his grandparents to arrive, He could move on their situation and change things drastically by the power of His Spirit."

Do you have young children?  I don't know about your children, but if my kids hear that their grandparents are coming by to see them they STOP whatever they are doing, get everything together that they want to show their grandparents (artwork, dolls, clothes, etc), ask every 2 minutes -or less- WHEN they will be here even if we've told them it will be 4 more hours.  They KNOW their grandparents are coming to see them, they EXPECT their grandparents to come through that door any second even though they know it might be longer, they ANTICIPATE the excitement of hugging them and playing with them, they LIVE for that moment, and NOTHING ELSE MATTERS!!

Whew!  What a revelation this is to me.  I HOPE for God to move, but it often is in the form of "wishing" rather than pure expectation with a KNOWing that He will do what He has promised.  What has he promised?  Find his promises in the Word.  I have promises I have been standing on...with expectation that the fulfillment of His promise will happen any second!  Well, I wish I could say that was always true...sometimes doubt can cloud my hope.  Sometimes fear can make my hope turn to frustration.  Is my hope pure like a child waiting for their grandparents to walk through that front door?  No, not always.  I should have such strong hope in the promises of God's Word that NOTHING ELSE MATTERS!  Circumstances do not matter.  What people say does not matter.  What the bills say does not matter.  What the doctors say does not matter.  Are you hearing what I'm saying here?!  God's Word is more powerful than anything we can say or do.  His Word is alive and sharper than any two-edged sword.  Faith is the SUBSTANCE of things that you truly HOPE for.

Let's get our minds in gear.  Let's focus on the promise and not the problem.  Boy is that hard to do!!  How do we do it?  We get IN the Word.  Read it-Speak it-Think about it-Believe it.

Your Spirit man is like the muscles in your body.  If you do nothing, you lose muscle and gain fat!  If you are active & eat right, you will gain muscle and lose fat!  Not only that, but the muscle you build will be so full of life that it will continue to burn fat even when you are not working out.  Oh man, this is good....  Well, when you feed on the word and speak and act on the Word you are building your spirit man -with FAITH- like those muscles, and burning up the FAT, aka: doubt and unbelief.  And if your spirit man is built up, then even in those moments of discouragement that will inevitably come, your spirit "muscles" will still be working to burn up that doubt!!

I don't know about you, but I needed to hear this today and just had to share it with you.
So, I truly HOPE you have a great day! ;)