Hope Like Heaven

Hope to me is a big deal but not for basic survival. The world is full of functional people, surviving people, who are basically hopeless. I think you have to have hope in order to excel and advance. Hope goes with progression like biscuits and gravy.

I think survival is way overrated and dreams achieved much less celebrated then they should be. One of the major enemies of our progression is the willingness to just survive the day. I don’t want to be a survivor. I want to be an overcomer. I don’t want to barely make it through the day and crawl into bed beat up and dreading the next day. Sometimes surviving stinks.

I want to win the race and walk off my battlefields victoriously. I want to be passionate and full of life. In other words - I want to be full of hope. Hope makes you love life instead of fearing it.

I think Christianity would be a lot more attractive to non-Christians if there weren’t so many lemon faces among us. Instead of singing praises, a lot of us sing Gloom, despair and agony on me from Hee-Haw. Two thousand years ago, Peter seemed to think it was a given that Christians would be noticed for being people outrageously hopeful. He said, “…be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you…” 1 Peter 3:15

One of the greatest side benefits of really walking with God, is you get to learn how to love your life. Oh the Brewer loves to love this life of mine because I can’t stand to be miserable. I hate self-pity and the terrible bondage of misery more than I hate black lickerish and Indian food.

So I guard my hope the way my grandfather used to guard his hidden stash in the cigar box. I wont let myself keep a list of unanswered prayers but I do keep a list of those I’ve seen come to pass. I try not to focus on what I don’t understand and make a really big deal out of whatever revelation I do have.

I figure if I am walking around discouraged, then I’m feeding myself with the wrong stuff. It’s not just my responsibility, but my privilege to be encouraged. I get to be the guy that lives life full of hope. I don’t want to give that up, no mater how many trash dumps I feed people in, orphanages I visit or truckloads of groceries we hand out, I get to be the guy that lives life full of hope.

If wishes were horses…

I recently heard an awesome man of God give his spin on what Hope ought to be. He said, “Hope is not a wish. Hope is the joyful anticipation of good.”

Instead of living life wishing things were different; I want to live a life expecting something good to happen. Why, you ask? Because God is good and wants to do good stuff. It’s really that simple. I partner with God by having hope and being a little ancy for really good things to happen. Turns out, hope is a fun thing to have.

The same man of God also said, “Any area of my life which doesn’t have hope is under the influence of a lie.” Hearing this statement made my baby leap.

Magnifying power
The Biblical term for making a big deal out of something is to magnify something. May God give us all grace to magnify the things that matter and pay less attention to the things that don’t. Jesus loves you and smiles when He thinks about you. There’s great hope in this and hopefully it’s contagious.

Job 36:24
“Remember to magnify His work, of which men have sung”

Contact the Brewer via www.FreshFromTheBrewer.com