Hope and Hope!

Hope and Hope!

Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost. Romans 15:13 KJV

God is known all over the world as different things and at different times. Even for the fathers and mothers of faith of the old testament, God was known to them on a personal level, and no one had the same story as the other. To one, God was the El Shaddai, the Breasted One, who has supply sufficient for all needs, and whose supply can NEVER be exhausted. To yet another, he is the El Gibbor, the Lord of enforcement, the warrior and champion. There are so many other levels of personal encounters with God that the Bible records, and each story is a study in God's unique ability to meet the needs of all men everywhere, no matter how complex the need or deep the pain. This is a God who has given every living, as well as dead human being a unique fingerprint, which cannot be duplicated for any other person. If this God could gift over 7 billion people on earth unique fingerprints, he sure has over 7 billion ways he can solve a particular problem. This is the God Paul knew and prayed to, and the God he seeks to introduce to us here. 

Which God have I met? Which God have you met? The challenge is that problems, trials and success have odd ways of revealing the contents of a man's hearts and the gods he has raised up in his heart. As I grow older, I make friends at the marketplace, the place of work, business, academics and impact. As I grow in these relationships, they impact me one way or another. Some will push me to know more about God while others will seek to pollute the divine which I already know. How I respond to or embrace these influences speak to the kind of future I am looking ahead to. How can a man embrace that which pollutes the divine and still look forward with hope to eternal life with God? How can a man kick against the divine and still demand that the divine work for him? If I am seeking the hope spoken about in today's extract, my life must align with the source of that hope, who is called the God of hope. You cannot demand from God that which you life's pursuits and priorities cannot attract. 

For Paul to pray that the God of hope fill us with all joy and peace, it means that I must have come into faith in God and believe in the God who has all power to seal eternal life for me. The God of hope cannot be real to people who have not come into a personal knowledge and experience of Him. God only gives that which he has, and what he gives are for those who belong to him. Do you belong to God? In fact, the question should be: Does this God know and recognise me as his own? Does he reckon with my heart and can he trust that nothing - success, trials, pain or gain - can distract me from a daily walk with Him? There is joy and peace linked to knowing God. It does not mean that pain will not come or that storms will not rise; it is that the waters, the winds and the pain cannot disrupt the balance of peace and joy that God's presence brings. That is the guarantee that the presence of God in a man's life gives, and which is the precursor to eternal life with God. 

The Holy Spirit is the reality of the presence and the power of God in a man's life. He is the one who assures my heart that all is well, even when the physical does not line up with my expectations. I note also that joy and peace constitute the fruit of the Holy Spirit. I cannot pick and choose that which makes me comfortable, but I must settle for that which God wants to do in my life through the Holy Spirit. When He is present in a life, that life is headed in the right direction. Hope is useless if there is no end product or a reason for its existence. Hope has an eternal destination, and it has to be with God, or else it is not really hope. Who looks forward to that which itself is not guaranteed tomorrow? If it will be hope, it has to outlive me. Do I have this kind of hope? Is the divine a daily reality in my life? Is there anything that keeps me focused on God, or are there some 'viable' distractions keeping my heart occupied? The eternal must be the focus; all other things will fall away with time. His time of favour is here.