Have you ever been faced with the reality that what you have dreamed for, hoped for and prayed for will never happen? Has the giving up reaction in this one event spread into every corner of your life, effectively killing your faith in the unfailing love of God? Have you been seduced into believing that life is a series of situations over which you have no control? So why not just be satisfied with the good things that you do have, finding contentment in the things that satisfy most people? In other words, mediocrity!

Maybe you have not been there as many of us have. If not, these words and truths we are about to share might still be useful to you in encouraging others to reach for the stars! Did not Jesus give us this dream? Did not He set hearts on fire to believe the unbelievable? Did He not teach us to attain the unattainable? Did He not plant the seed in us through which we would do greater works than He?

Hope is the expectation of the overwhelming Goodness of God.

We must first of all realize that He is the author and finisher of our faith. Then we can be settled in our minds as to what the Creator of the Universe desires for us. It is His intention to stretch our imaginations and expand our horizons to begin believing for and working towards great and wonderful possibilities! It is time to forget the failures of the past and begin walking into a new day! Look around you for just a few minutes. In a short time you can easily see the immediate need for miracles everywhere! Then, if we lift up our hearts and arise into Him we can be the channel through which Jesus wants to bring these wonderful solutions!

The Lord might not be interested in formulas and rituals, but He does desire a relationship with us. From that relationship we can cultivate a faith, hope, and love-filled life. Behold Him! His beauty! His Power! His unconditional Love! Become overwhelmed with the compassion that He has for all mankind! Realize from this that He thrills in opening His hand to those in need, and in using us to deliver them.

Jesus taught us to pray without ceasing and not to faint. Realizing there are situations that are beyond our understanding, we must come before Him in humility. Never giving up in prayer does not mean insisting on our own way. It means we are persuaded by God that the best interests of all of us are in His heart. We must never yield to thoughts that His love will fail us.

Hope is the expectation of the overwhelming goodness of God. Sometimes we have the substance of that hope in a specific situation, and we can cling tenaciously to it until the final outcome. Other times we can only trust in that goodness, the trusting being our only participation. The poorer choice is to fail to participate at all. This cuts us off from the life of God as it flows out to meet the needs of others. Far too many of God’s people have made this wrong choice. Today, however, He is giving us the understanding that there are so many more positive and creative options than before were realized!

Prayer is a petition for the well-being of ourselves and others, and it can be expressed in a number of ways. When there is an opportunity to directly affect a situation to bring it into God’s perfect will, the greatest prayer we can offer is our service to God. Obedience to Him in itself is a very powerful option. Other times we can only offer supportive thoughts and words as we enter into our spiritual communication with Him.

Miracles are God’s pleasure. When the conditions are right in us, He is pleased to demonstrate His power in this earth. This is what He instructed us to pray for, that His will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. Believe me, this does not ordinarily happen. It happens when we pray and never give up. Will the son of man find faith in the earth? That depends upon how you and I respond to Him in our present circumstances. He has freely given us His Word to rely on, and in that trust we obtain the power t[...]