Trumpeting Faith, Giving Hope, Serving Others with Love is the theme of The Daily Lily! We have blogged our thoughts in the last few weeks on serving others with love and trumpeting faith. Now, we are in our third part of blogging for our edification and renewal of Giving Hope.
“Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint” (Isaiah 40:30-31, NIV).
“Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the LORD.” Ps. 31:24
“Hope is what we cannot see, but still is the substance of what we believe. Faith is the substance of things hoped for...” Hebrews 11:1
As we take this blogging journey of renewing our Hope and searching for understanding to Give Hope we have launched out on a big ship headed for a worthy destination.
I find Hope the hardest of our three, faith, hope, love to understand. I look in my pocket for it. I look to others for it. I shop for it. I try to buy it, bottle it, serve it, but where is it?
I hope that I will have a new understanding and grasp on Hope as we go on this blogging journey to renew our menu of giving Hope to one another and our guests. The one thing, I think, I understand is that we need an anchor for Hope.
thedailylily.com 
Sara, in reading your blog, I’m thinking….”where are we without hope?”
“You are’ hopeless.
That’s exactly right, Gary!
Agreed with comments. If we don’t have hope in something with substance there is no hope really. And, that is hopelessness.
‘Hope is substance in what we believe.’ We could say we own our house. Why do we believe this? Because we have a title deed with our name on it? Why do we have hope in our faith? Because God has given the promises and we believe His promises. Therefore, without acting on God’s promises hope becomes hopelessness. Hope becomes substances with action. That is why and how we can give it as well as have it!
Hope seems allusive in many ways so I don’t want to lose it. Needles question, “where are we without hope?” Gary, answered, hopeless, and we sure don’t want to hang out there. God’s promise in the above scriptures are, we can have our strength and heart renewed when we hope in God. He is our anchor and our anchor holds.
One of the threads that I see running through two of the blog scriptures, as well as several I have been reading on hope, is that hope is in Someone and originates from Someone and that Someone is Jesus, our anchor. If I hope in the weather, the stock market, another person, myself, the economy…I can get hopeless pretty quick. But just reading the scriptures above and reviewing several others made me feel more hopeful because there is an Object of hope that is eternal and doesn’t fail or flucuate.
Titus 2:13 calls Him our blessed hope and that we are to look for His soon appearing. I Tim 1:1 says our hope is the Lord Jesus Christ. And Colossians 1:27 let’s us know that if Christ is living in us, we have a hope of glory. There is a prayer in Ephesians 1:18 that is hopeful in itself: “…that you may know what is the hope of His calling…”
Many times it has felt like my ‘pilot light’ was about to go out, faith wanes, love runs cold . But then reading a Daily Lily blog or comment acts like a match to light the flame of hope. For me, when hope is ignited, faith gets stronger, love is energized and the hope of my calling is revived. All three seem so interdependent and important but like Needles asked and Gary answered, ‘where are we without hope.’
Hope, the dict. says, is To wish for something with expectation of its fulfillment.
To look forward to with confidence or expectation and to expect and desire.
1. A wish or desire accompanied by confident expectation of its fulfillment.
2. Something that is hoped for or desired:
3. ONE that is a source of or reason for hope (to attain with God’s help
To hope against hope is to hope with little reason or justification.
I thought of Abraham when he was 99 years old, the Bible says, he hoped against hope…that is with little evidence that his desires would be fulfilled….but with God all things are possible.
It seems to me that faith , not hope, is the substance of that which is hoped for. For why would we hope for things we already possess? But faith does give substance to our hopes, that for which we believe and strive ,even though we have not seen it, yet. But having hope we wait patiently for the promises.
What HOPE can WE give to those who sit in darkness? thedailylily.org trumpets faith….proclaims faith throughout cybyerspace. thedailylily.org teaches on the service of love to those of the household of faith and as we learned last time, showing kindness and love to all peoples in Christ’s name. And the HOPE that can give those who read our blog is not the hope in ourselves, as Debi pointed out, but the one hope for all mankind that if you will believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and follow His way the you will be saved and your whole house (Acts 17) and this promise is for ALL who will come….whosoever will. That’s the HOPE we are talking about. That’s the promise of Heaven that is for all who come to the Lord Jesus Christ. And In no other is there any hope, whatsoever.
We can give hope to the hopeless by sharing our testimony of how Jesus Christ
has taken us from one valley after another to the mountains. How we have learned to lean more and more on him even through adverse situations and know He is on our side. We know that we have prayed the promises and can share that the promises are fulfilled always. We can share how through this walk on earth, we have come to believe our ultimate hope is to see Jesus someday face to face to thank him.
One of the ways I ‘raise my hopes’ is to have a vision in waiting and knowing that God is in control and He will act on the behalf of those that call upon His name.
Debi plays her guitar and sings a song that I just love, “raise your vision higher than it has ever been before…” I hear this song as you have to get your hopes up and decide to get your thoughts, words and actions in harmony with God’s Words, thoughts and actions.
For example, these words are vitally important to me,”All Who Call on the Name of the Lord Will be Saved” – Romans 10:13 Now, I read ‘all and call’… These two words sound fine but limit my thinking and acting and leave room for doubting. How, I could go around thinking that all that called out the name of Jesus would be saved. Might not be true, so I go back a few verses and I get a larger scope of understanding of Paul’s thinking. In the previous verses Paul makes his point that ‘anyone who puts their faith in Christ’, God is willing to bring to salvation, whether Jew or Gentile. I begin to align my thinking with Paul’s. I catch his vision, he is not writing so much about a rule on salvation but an open door to anyone, everyone, all, Jew or Gentile as long as they ‘put their faith in Christ.’
My vision in lifted higher, wider and broader and full of Hope when I have, faith, knowledge, understanding…Isaiah 11: 2,3…” The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him— the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD – and he will delight in the fear of the LORD. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears;”
Thank you Sara for raising the flag of hope this morning for us to see and for weaving its threads so we can get a clearer understanding.
Rena, great idea on sharing testimonies….Love to hear some. I know our readers would as well. Great idea for giving hope to others.
I thought the following scripture from Hebrews 6:18-20 on hope was encouraging and gives us an anchor.
“Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It leads us through the curtain into God’s inner sanctuary. Jesus has already gone in there for us. He has become our eternal High Priest in the order of Melchizedek.”
In this quote:
“If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”___(Antoine de St-exupery)
I thought …how Jesus ‘built” His (ship) i.e Kingdom ,when He was on earth, not by laws and rules so much as by instruction and teachings about the endless glory, the precious promises so that most of those with whom He came in contact with LONGED for the IMMENSITY of GOD and the KINGDOM of Heaven.
Testimony of Hope:
When I was teaching in elementary school many years ago, I had a child in my class who had many behavioral issues. She follow particular children when they didn’t want her around, she would kick them under the table. One day while singing in class, I noticed she had a beautiful voice that was so clear and pierced the air leaving you wanting to hear more. I prayed about putting her up for talented music and asked Sara to pray too. Sara got from the Lord that she had a voice like Barbara Striesand. With hearing what Sara shared with me from God I put her up for Talented Music. They didn’t really want to do it at first because of her behavior. She made Talented Music with fabulous scores. I went to a number of her recitals. I shared with her a book I had written and Debi had illustrated entitled then LEON AND THE CLOUD. She took in the pictures staring for long moments at the pictures. Years later she looked me up and wanted her picture taken with me. She was now a confident young women who was going into nursing school. She told me she still had the love of music in her. God did a miracle in her life. Prayer and God can change a life and free a child to walk according to his purpose.
Another student was having a lot of trouble reading. His Mom was concerned that he would not ever read. We were into Charlotte’s Web and I made a play out of it. Guess who got the lead roll? Of course he did. His Mom came back and said that play was the turn around for him reading. Years later he graded from a university in New York City and wrote a letter about the writing and acting and how it had helped him. Prayer (Year after year the dailylilies have prayed for the classes the lilies have taught) and God again worked in this young child and now young man in the editing field.
Are you racked with fear? Probably not as bad as I have been I hope. When I lived in Louisiana there was a 23 mile bridge between New Orleans and Mandeville. We lived in Mandeville for 21 years and out of that time probably about 15 years I did not cross the bridge by myself. I thought, “What is wrong with you? There was a Tole Painting organization in New Orleans and I loved to paint. I started praying that God would free me from this fear. One day without even giving it a second thought I was driving across the bridge – no fear – I remembered the prayer – I praised God all the way. He had done it. Nothing was holding me back. Yeah! Praise the Lord.
After that I ended up taking ladies across the lake to a university to participate in Drama classes. Freedom! That’s what God give us! Freedom!
What a joyful ROSARY of freedom that you have described above, Rena!! I thought of these Scriptures, “It is for FREEDOM that Christ has set us free” and “Whom the Son sets free is free indeed!”
(Jn. 8:36, Gal. 5:1)
David, the Psalmist also hoped in God’s freedom. Even though he had witnessed and or been a recipient of many mighty acts of the Lord in his life, there were times when he still cried out for deliverence from transgressions, enemies and even the heaviness of his own heart and soul. He often spoke to himself to stir himself up and remind himself to Hope in God for He was the source of His hope and would bring him through his difficulties.
“Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” (Psalm 43:5 NIV)
In checking out some reference quotes by C S LEWIS on HOPE, …..quote, ‘ in the chapter on Hope, C. S. Lewis makes fun about those who reject the Christian idea of Heaven….. because they don’t want to spend eternity playing harps. “The answer to such people,” he says, “is that IF they cannot understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them” ‘ The wit of CS Lewis, notwithstanding, I believe the HOPE of Heaven can be understood by the little children as well as the the ‘grown-ups”, by the way that Jesus Christ described the Kingdom of Heaven in the Gospels and the HOPE of the promise of eternal light and glory for those who make Jesus Christ the Lord of their lives. When the word Heaven is mentioned or there is a song with ‘heaven’ in the lyrics there is a certain nostalgic expression that comes over the faces of my little students when they hear or sing that word. It’s like, by some ethereal vision, it prompts respect, or soberness, or some
mystical idea that they might have concerning ‘children who are kind and giving get to go there.’ They may not understand the full-blown, mind-blowing concept of Heaven, (but then who can) but that little seed of eternity has been planted in their little hearts and hope springs eternal in their little souls until someone (probably a grown up) tears it down.
Joel Osteen gave this scripture and comment. I love it but I found it funny, humorous. How many people are running after me trying to find unity and the only common ground we have is Jesus…. and our focus is seeing others come to know Him… This is and would be real HOPE…OK, bring it on…..
“How good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity…for there the Lord has commanded the blessing…” (Psalm 133:1-3, AMP)
“Make the decision today to live in peace and unity with your brothers and sisters in the Lord. Look for common ground. Even if the only thing you can agree on is Jesus, focus on that. Focus on the love you have for God and for seeing people come to know Him.”
OOOOh, hold on, don’t want to forget the prayer Osteen lead me in…..
“Heavenly Father, search my heart today and see if there is anything that is keeping me from walking in unity with other believers. I choose love today. I choose peace today. I choose unity today. Help me to be an example of love to those around me. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.”
Sara, after reading what you commented on here, I couldn’t help but say to myself…”why would anyone want anything to do with hope, Christianity, or the church, if there is no unity or agreement on Jesus?” I looked up the scripture in Psalms 133: 1-3 that you posted and I’d like to share the footnotes. Read with me: ” David stated that harmony is pleasant and precious. Unfortunately, harmony is not always found in the church, as it should be. People disagree and cause division over unimportant issues. Some delight in causing tension by discrediting others. Harmony is important because (1) it makes the church a positive example to the world and helps draw others to the Lord; (2) it helps us cooperate as a body of believers as God meant us to, giving us a foretaste of heaven; (3) it renews and revitalizes ministry because there is less tension to sap our energy. Living in harmony does not mean that we will agree on everything; there will be many opinions just as there are many notes in a musical chord. But we must agree on our purpose in life– to work together for God. Our outward expression of harmony will reflect our inward harmony of purpose.”
Needles, at first your footnotes left me speechless. Then I reread the blog and found that I am on a journey. Therefore, I must stay steady in hopes of getting to my destination which is very worthy. “As we take this blogging journey of renewing our Hope and searching for understanding to Give Hope we have launched out on a big ship headed for a worthy destination.”
Rena, your testimony gives some big leaps of hope. We give hope and results pursue. We better get busy giving hope and your testimonies are the daily answers. Onward, onward, let us go…..
Sara, I agree about those testimonies. Anything short of that is like serving someone a beautiful glass and they expectently go to take a drink from that beautiful glass…and there’s nothing in it. It’s got to be filled with a good testimony to give hope and serve love.
Footnotes’ notes from Needles, “it helps us cooperate as a body of believers as God meant us to, giving us a foretaste of heaven; (3) it renews and revitalizes ministry because there is less tension to sap our energy…”
As I thought on the above notes and other comments, I asked myself the question, ‘what is the one thing that I would think that would give Hope and bring unity and fulfill all we have spoken about here?’ My answer is one power word…communication!
Brian Sawyer writes on facebook…” tell somebody about Jesus…its the best gift you could ever give them!!!!!” Now I agree with Brian. Also, I think this is giving Hope and shows good communication on the behalf of the giver.
That is really the truth…what would be better than to give the gift of Eternal Life.