You are more powerful than you could ever imagine. There’s not a single thing life throws at you that can defeat you. Even the worst circumstances can’t stop you. Even the worst situation can’t make you less than who you are: a victorious, chosen child of the Most-High God who is limitlessly loved and abundantly taken care of.
However, when you’re right in the middle of a difficult situation, it doesn’t feel like this. It feels more like the wind is being knocked out of your sails, and all you want to do is give up. There’s no situation that can defeat you, but there’s one thing that is able to stop you: hopelessness.
Hopelessness: The Greatest Attack
Hopelessness is the overwhelming sense that there’s no way out. It sees no possibility of the desired outcome becoming reality. Hopelessness stains your perspective to only see the gaping holes, impossibilities and not yets.
Because your brain is wired to see what it already believes to be true, hopelessness feeds itself. The less hopeful you feel, the more powerless you feel, the less you use your faith-filled authority to influence your situation. When problems grow because they’re no longer influenced by faith, it only seems to confirm your hopelessness. It’s a downward spiral.
Without hope, it’s impossible to keep going. Without the belief that victory is possible, your power is depleted before the battle even starts. When there’s no good on the horizon, your steps are already tired before you’ve begun the journey.
Hope sees what’s possible, and without it, all that’s left is an overwhelming awareness of impossibilities.
Hope is what shows you that it is worth it. Without it, any effort is believed to be in vain, and feels like too much to handle.
Not Passive
In our language, hope has become a passive phrase, something to merely express a wish or a desire. “Hoping for” is sometimes more an expression of doubt than of faith.
This is not how the Bible portrays hope. Hope is not passive. It’s not waiting around for the winning lottery ticket, or for the flash of lightning across the sky.
Hope is a joyful expectation of a positive outcome, a trust in the good that’s coming. It’s a powerful force; one of the most important attributes of faith-filled living.
A Constant Battle
Hope is a constant battle against lies that attack your hope. These lies tell you that your situation can’t change, that your family won’t ever reconcile, that you will never get out of debt, that your marriage is beyond saving, that your dreams won’t happen. When you start believing these lies, you will lose the force of hope you need to keep going.
Hope is a daily choice to partner with truth. It’s an awareness of what you are choosing to believe, and confronting and replacing any belief that is not aligned with the word of God.
From Problem to Masterpiece
Hope is shaped by the core belief that “God works everything together for good for those who love Him.” (Romans 8).
No matter the current circumstances, God is big enough to make a masterpiece out of it. Is there a big strike of black paint all across the painting of your life? He creates the most beautiful image of the stars in the night sky. Ripped canvas? He patiently stitches it back together and transforms into a embroidered explosion of color. A gaping hole? He puts an image of Himself right in the middle of it. He’s the Creator of the Universe, and an expert in making things new.
Specific Truths
Hope is not just a general belief that God is capable of making all things work together for good, it’s also a collection of specific truths about your situation.
Pastor Steve Backlund says it like this: “any area of your life that is not glistening with hope, you’re believing a lie in.” Lies usually come in a very specific form that attacks a void of truth.
Big, general lies are usually not the ones that we struggle with as much as the specific ones. “You’re ugly” is an easy lie to recognize, but “you gained too much weight to be desirable,” or “you’re losing your beauty each year you get older” are both much harder to uncover for what they are: lies that are meant to discourage you.
Partnering with Truth
You don’t have to fight against the lies as much as you need to simply let the truth in. Just as darkness has to disappear as soon as the light is switched on, lies flee in the presence of truth.
You don’t have to spend hours digging into your heart to figure out what lies you’ve been believing. The Holy Spirit can show you exactly which beliefs He wants to highlight, and reveal His truth. He wants to give you hope by showing you how faithful He has been, and how faithful He will be.
Hebrews 10: 23 encourages us to “hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.”
Shattering Lies, feeding your hope
Wherever you are right now, God is inviting you to take a few few minutes to get infused with hope. Ask the Holy Spirit to tell you one or a few lies you’ve been believing. Write them down, and ask Him to reveal the truth about these areas. Also try to find some specific Scriptures that reflect this truth, and write those down.
This is now your weapon against any attack that may come. Put these declarations of truth somewhere you’ll see them multiple times a day and declare them over yourself and your situation. You can’t stop lies from coming at you and you usually can’t control your situation, but you can decide to daily feast on truth to feed your hope.
Becoming unstoppable
Hope makes you unstoppable. It allows you to keep going, even if your circumstances don’t seem to change. Start believing that God is true to His word, even when you don’t see the answer to your prayer yet. Hope will allow you to recognize His presence in the midst of it all, because a hope-filled gaze is always drawn to Him.
When you believe truth, it will affect every part of your life. Hope-filled beliefs will change the way you respond to people, the way you pray, the way you speak about difficult situations and the way you act.
Hope positions you to receive the breakthrough you’ve been contending for, and gives you a strong foundation to carry it once the promise has been manifested.
Contagious hope
Hope is also contagious. Sometimes all it takes is one person that sees the possibility of a good outcome. In a sea of negativity, one statement of hope can shift the whole atmosphere. One reminder of God’s faithfulness can shatter the power of a hundred lies of hopelessness.
You are called to be this person. You are called to have such high-level beliefs that your hope oozes out wherever you go. You are called to be such a person of hope that you are known to be undefeatable. People will come to you when their life is upside down, simply to get inspired by your hopeful perspective. You release hope, and make the people around you unstoppable because of it.
Are you ready to partner with truth and become the most hopeful person you know? Take some time with God today and write down the truths that you hear. Put them in a place you will see them daily, as a reminder to start fighting for what you believe in.
Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13)