Building Hope in the Toughest of Times
Romans 5:1-6 |
God has placed within us an indomitable resilient spirit that allows us to hope even when life is difficult. We struggle with tragedy, illness, stress, and change, trying to breathe underneath the pressure of life. The result is that we begin to lose hope.
Hope is not merely wishful thinking. Hope is confident assurance.
If we will be honest with ourselves, we all want to have hope, but we do not want to go through the process to get there. But the fact is that hope is built through a painful process. We all would like to skip the painful part, but that is simply not the way that life works.
There is a process that produces the outcome of hope, and it starts with suffering.
"Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. Four our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So, we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." (II Corinthians 4:16-18)