Hello beautiful women of God! So I have to be honest, when I heard the Holy Spirit tell me that May's theme was going to be "hope", I wasn't thrilled. I walk in the gift of faith and have never struggled with hope before. (All glory be to God for that!) So I wasn't sure what I was going to write, and record, on the theme of hope this month. However, I recognize that many people do struggle with hope. And we are living in a world where many people are actually feeling hopeless, which breaks my heart! But in my search, and spending time with the Lord, He has showed me a lot about hope. And as I already have 3 podcast episodes done for this month, I am understanding hope in a brand new and deeper way.
Now I'm going to continue to be honest with you, I've taken hope for granted. It's something I've always had in my life and so I haven't given it much thought. I've relied on hope for a large majority of my life and it's just a part of my being. But as I looked at hope, and studied it from the Bible's perspective, it has become clear to me why people don't have hope - because many of them don't know the Lord.
Psalm 62:5
For God alone my soul waits in silence and quietly submits to Him, For my hope is from Him.
Hope is attached to God so without God, hope doesn't exist. Hope is the stillness before God moves and does a miraculous thing. As we hope, we wait upon the Lord with anticipation for Him to move with power. It's the crescendo that leads up to the big reveal.
I love to imagine how some of the Psalms must have sounded. Each one being a beautiful musical tribute to the Lord. What was the melody, what was the harmony? Did an angelic choir also sing along from the heavenlies? To be able to sit in King David's court and be a part of the musical mastery that He created for the Lord must have been just incredible! But as we don't know what the songs actually sounded like, it's a chance for you and I to make up our own tune to sing to the Lord.
Each song has a beginning, middle, and end - hope is in each middle part. Hope is the crescendo to a beautiful ending. Hope connects our beginning to our end.
In the Psalm above, King David reminds us to wait upon the Lord and to submit to His ways and timing. It's a chance to be still and humble ourselves before the Lord. It's an invitation to let go of man's ways, the world's ways, and refocus on what truly matters in this life - God. We exist because we delight God and God has a perfect plan for our life in accomplishing His will. Our life is about Him, not about us. And in times when we hope, it gets us back on track. It's a time for us to re-prioritize. It allows us to retreat from the world and focus on God and what God is going to do. Hope is the beautiful free gift that God has given us so that we can stay on the path He created for our lives. Hope makes us better because it makes us refocus on God's power instead of worldly things.
Father God is so good to give us such wonderful and free gifts! He is such a lavish Father!!! He gave us His Son, Jesus Christ, He gives us His own Holy Spirit, and He gives us all these free gifts; love, forgiveness, mercy, grace, peace, hope.
God offers us hope because He is hope. He is our only hope. And we need the guidance of the Holy Spirit to remind us that God wants us to hope in Him alone. As the multitude of civilization is "hoping" for the world to get back to some kind of normal, they are hoping in man's solutions instead of putting their hope in God. We've misplaced our hope and it's become a false idol. But God is standing right beside us, waiting for us to call upon Him. God is waiting for us to put our lives back into the order that He created, by putting our hope in Him, and only Him.
After this verse on hope, the next verse, in Psalm 62:6 says, He only is my rock and my salvation; My fortress and my defense, I will not be shaken or discouraged.
As we accept God's gift of hope, and stand on it, He becomes our rock. We stand on His firm foundation. And God's foundation is not shakeable. The world may quake around us, but we won't be moved by it. By choosing God's hope, the Holy Spirit can help us navigate the woes of this world so that we aren't wounded by it's ways.
I encourage you to make this Psalm your declaration for the month:
Psalm 62:5
For God alone my soul waits in silence and quietly submits to Him, For my hope is from Him.
Wait upon the Lord. Wait for the perfect timing of the Lord. But as you wait, wait with anticipation and expectation. Know that hope is just the middle part that leads you to a beautiful ending. And because our God is a good Father, that ending is going to be lavish!
Every Monday morning our podcast is released on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify. Let's look deeper into hope together so we are further equipped to offer it to the world.