Have you ever been in a situation in which the doctor is offering you no hope? You have no idea how wonderful it is to hear you have a 50% chance, or 40% chance when you are told there is no hope. I remember the day that the doctor told me at Children's hospital that there was no hope for my daughter. He said, "There is nothing we can do, take her home and make the best mother that you can for her." \ I told the doctor that I believed that God would help her and that she would eventually be able to do things. Later, I looked on the doctor's chart and these words were written, "Mother is in denial" HA! When you are offered NO HOPE, you should be in denial!
We have all heard testimonies of the world that offer no hope. Often people will say things like, "Once an addict, always an addict." Or something like, "All teenagers rebel, it is a part of life." I myself have prayed for many addicts that stayed clean, witnessed several teens that went all the way through puberty without ever rebelling. The world often offers us little to no hope.
Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. Prov. 13:12
There are hope suckers out there in the world. They suck the joy and life out of everything. It is very hard to be paired up with a hope sucker. What does hope do for us? It is hope that causes us to carry on, instead of dragging along.
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. Rom. 15:13
Our God is a God of hope, and joy and peace. What would happen if every person in the world was overflowing with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit? As many of you know, Angela was born blind, and her eyes roamed different directions at birth. It looked alot like the cookie monster on sesame street, one eye went one way, the other eye went the other way. I still remember the doctor telling me that my baby could not see, and never would see. If I hadn't believed that she could see, I wouldn't have spent all those hours holding up pen lights to see if she would turn to it, and putting different objects in front of her view. Against all hope, I still believed, because I serve a God of hope. Yes, it was hopeless, but, I still had hope because of my faith in God. It became obvious at about age one that she could see some, and her vision has continually gotten better, so then they began saying, likely she will never walk. If I had believed that she could never walk, I would have never spent all those hours leading her from object to object, showing her how to feel her way along. And yes, she can walk independant of me or any objects to help her along now. Then they started saying that she would never be potty trained more than likely. That is a hard thing to hear when your child is already 6 years old. If I had believed that she would never be potty trained I wouldn't have spent all those hours putting her on the potty. I got to the place in which I would put her 15 minutes on the potty, and 15 minutes off of it, but I'll never forget the day that her eyes got this spark, and she went over to her potty chair and sat down to tinkle on her OWN. What a glorious day! We had a party in the McCann household that evening, it was the hope that caused us to carry on, the hope that God was more than able to take a child, no matter what the handicap or IQ and help her move beyond her level of possiblities. My faith was in God.
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. Rom. 4:18
I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that someone is reading this right now who feels as if they are in a situation, and it is completely hopeless. It may be a hopeless marriage, a hopeless financial crisis, a hopeless relationship with a child, a hopeless drug addiction, a hopeless physical condition like my daugther faced, a hopeless past. Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed! There may not be one reason to have hope in the natural way of thinking, but put your mind on the supernatural, there is hope in God no matter how dark the problem is right now. We are living in a day in which everything just sucks the hope and the joy and the peace out of you. We are living in a time in which people are just overwhelmed with the impossibilities, and the darkness of this world begins to close in, because we have lost our hope of a brighter day. It is God that restores, it is God that renews, it is God that fills, it is God that cleanses.
where then is my hope? Who can see any hope for me? Job 17:15
You are not without hope and without God in this world. Get up and brush yourself off and press on in the hope in which you were called. What if I had taken the doctor's words concerning my daughter to heart? It took alot of time and effort to help her learn things that she was likely to 'never be able to do' If I hadn't held out hope to that child, today she may not be able to see, or walk, or use the toilet...what are you missing out on in life because you lost hope to get up and make an effort. We lose hope and we stop praying. I have heard people say, "Well, you can pray, but it won't do no good..." Hope suckers. I can't, never did. But to say that God can't or won't is calling him a liar. The truth is that my daughter received help from God to do the things that she is able to do, but, I had to hold on to hope. Will you hold on to hope today?
But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. Rom. 8:25
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