Hope, God's Way!

Hope, God's Way!

Now may God, the inspiration and fountain of hope, fill you to overflowing with uncontainable joy and perfect peace as you trust in him. And may the power of the Holy Spirit continually surround your life with his super-abundance until you radiate with hope! Romans 15:13 TPT

First of all, there is a God. The world teaches about several other options, but there is only one true God. He introduces Himself to man in different ways, but He is still the same God that met different men at different times, in different dispensations, yet brought them to the same place: the place of a personal experience of Him. This is the God who is again brought before me today to consider. 

He is called the God of hope here. Maybe it was because of the Romans, people who in that time, were considered outsiders to the grace of God. The Jews had appropriated solely to themselves the benefits of the promise to Abraham, and could not imagine any other culture enjoying those benefits, least of all Gentiles. But here they were, beneficiaries of the promise simply by the grace of God. It had nothing to do with what they could bring to the table but with what the grace of God could do with lives that believed in Him. 

And it is their faith that laid the foundations for what today's extract underscores. It is faith, from first to last, that opens the door to hope. When a man is certain of where his life will end up, he can endure the most difficult of circumstances. That is why joy and peace is linked to faith. You can look forward to trials and tribulation; you can retain inner peace in the face of external tumult; all because there is a Presence that keeps you focused. 

That is why this God of hope must fill you. When He does, there is no room for despair, defeat or discouragement. When God fills you, what else can disrupt the peace and joy His presence guarantees? He is the fountain and inspiration of hope, and no one can give it or sustain it. 

You cannot give what you don't have, and you can't sustain something whose origin didn't flow out from you. When God gives it, be sure also that nothing from the world can contain or curtail it. The world cannot stop or hinder something it does not understand. You cannot remain ordinary when you receive the inflow. You cannot keep it to yourself; you just must flow out with it.  The joy is qualified as uncontainable and the peace as perfect. You can't get this combination anywhere else, because no other person can guarantee what He does not produce. Joy and peace are also part of the 9-fold fruit of the Spirit, so without the Spirit of God, you can't get, live in, sustain or abound in it. 

Of course, the Holy Spirit is that inner Presence. He is the One who keeps it ticking. He is the One who is the full expression of who God is. If I will get all that God is and promises, I should ask for the Holy Spirit. That God of Hope can give me all that He is, and the Spirit can sustain in me all that God is. We start with hope and end in hope. We believe in God's promises, and we live in Him, sure and certain that He has power to bring to pass all He has promised. 

And it ends with the hope that when this present earthly life is over, I will reign with Him in eternity. So, I rejoice and hold on to that true God, with all I have. I am certain He will bring me home at the end. His time of favour is here.