| Hold On to Your Hope |

Hope.

Since then it is by faith that we are justified, let us grasp the fact that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him we have confidently entered into this new relationship of grace, and here we take our stand, in happy certainty of the glorious things He has for us in the future. This does not mean, of course, that we have only a hope of future joys—we can be full of joy here and now even in our trials and troubles. Taken in the right spirit these very things will give us patient endurance; this in turn will develop a mature character, and a character of this sort produces a steady hope, a hope that will never disappoint us. Already we have some experience of the love of God flooding through our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us. 

~ Romans 5:1-5 ~

I sat with several families around me listening to one of our church elders speaking at our annual Sunday night run meet, attempting, and very valiantly might I add, to motivate all of us. "Life is not a sprint, it's marathon," he said. I laughed at myself. Sprinting was what I was good at. Long distances...not so much. Growing up I could never run the one or two mile races as well as I could the dashes. They were some of my favorites. I thrived on the short term flight of speed. When it came to long distances however, that took training and preparation. It took thought and self discipline to pace yourself. Sprints only took a burst of speed at a whistle's blow. Quick victory, little work. Just run fast. In life it's true though, it's not a sprint but a marathon. One that seems incredibly long and filled with times you feel like you are going in complete circles, over and over and over again. in the sun. without water. uphill. without your left leg. 

How often in difficulties do we spend our energy on the first sprint failing to endure the long distance and ending up wanting to give in? Ideally, what we want is for difficulties to be short, quick, and easy, or more preferably non existent. And if, in the coming, the stretch of road you are on is not easy, we desire to command it to be short, to control it to be brief. We want to command God that if it must be painful at least rip the bandage off quickly.

I have been the catalyst of many prayers. I have prayed and I have had an army of people banging on God's door as well. It never ceases to inspire awe. After so much time of prayer, of petitioning to God, it can get disappointing when still there seems to be no fruit. Or at least not the kind of fruit I desire to see. So many people asking of the Lord for so long, you begin to wonder if your words are falling void. If they are somehow disappearing into the darkness.

It was not until a Christian church conference I was at several weeks ago that the Lord changed my thoughts. I was sitting in the third session during worship writing in my notebook what the Lord was telling me, when someone stood up on stage to tell the congregation the word the Lord had given to him. "Hold on to your hope!" he said and continued, "Do not lose your hope. Hold on to it. It will be richly rewarded. The Lord will change heaven and earth through your faithful prayers." And that was it. It was an "Aha" moment, only I felt more like it was a "Duh" moment. It was as if the Lord had just given me coffee for the soul. I was immediately renewed while I sat there knowing that those words were for me. Something so simple, yet such a powerful, needed reminder. – The Lord will change heaven and earth through my faithful prayers. – I needed that. I needed to be reminded that they are making a difference. That beseeching the Lord was not in vain. Each and every prayer I am praying and others are praying for me are not barren. They are not disappearing into a black hole. The Lord is not opening my spoken letters and forgetting about them. They are not going into celestial recycling. They are being heard. More than that, they are being treasured. There is no "lost in the mail" in heaven. This is God. My prayers are being heard and cherished––all of them, word for word, always and forever. He knows them, and they matter. Hold on to your hope. Your prayers matter. They are making a difference, and God will change heaven and earth because of them. Keep running with endurance.

I am reminded of the farmer.
What farmer goes out and toils in his field, preparing and tearing at the soil with his plow again and again until he feels it is prepared for his precious seed to thrive, and after planting will he come out the very next day and harvest his field? 

Many of us are good at buying our seed, with vigor we push to plow under the hot sun, toiling long enough that we might plant our store, with endurance we push to lay our seed into the earth. Shortly after however we lose our drive. We want the rain to come, the light to dawn, and the crop to grow up in instant abundance. We fail to see the seed under the ground growing and changing day by day. We want our harvest and in our haste, impatience, hopelessness, in our foolishness, we become that farmer who heads out early to reap his field only to find small baby seedlings are the harvest in his hand.
For whatever reason each of has a field, one we are praying for God to send rain to, one we are praying to grow. Do not lose hope. Hope will not disappoint. You will reap what you have sown. Patience brings the harvest. You will be rewarded. Heaven and earth will change through your faithfulness. It will be bountiful – God's way, and in His timing.        

For a long while I struggled with worrying that my prayers were faltering because I did not believe enough. I did not believe hard enough, strong enough, great enough. I constantly analyzed myself for unbelief, for the smidgen of doubt that was not yielding. "You must be doubting somewhere! Maybe that is why nothing is changing. You must need to pray harder!" So I would pray, people would pray for me, and I tried to believe with everything I had in me. "Lord I have an army!" I would say. "I have an army at Your door, surely that is great enough to release me?" 
I remember the day I was sitting at my desk happily musing when out of nowhere the Lord said, "One stone." It took me only a moment, I knew immediately what He was telling me. One stone. Goliath fell to the ground with one stone. David only had to use one small stone from that little brook to bring down the giant. The Lord didn't need my army. Did my armies prayers matter? Yes. Immensely so. But He wanted my one stone. He wanted my attention to be in place despite the others. He wanted me, a mustard seed of faith. That's all He needed. A mustard seed that He would use to move mountains.
Keep praying.


  // But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently........What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all—how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:

"For your sake we face death all day long;

we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered."

No, in all theses things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present, nor the future, nor any power neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. // Romans 8:24-39