Hoping Pt.4

Hoping When it Seems Hopeless
Part 4

Hope is made for situations that seem hopeless. We started this series with a choice to make related to the type of life we want to live: a) live in a religious box, or b) live an abundant, relevant life full of power, faith and freshness. God wants to do things that have never been seen before. Christ came for the purpose of drawing people to Himself not just for this time, but for all eternity.

You can have anything with God as long as you understand three principles that must be personally appropriated:
1. You must be fully persuaded (convinced);
2. Realize that every promise of God is accessed and received by faith;
3. You will only be filled to the level of your hunger and thirst. You can increase your hunger and thirst through exposure, fixation, and remembering and reflection. Why the comparisons to food? Because every physical principle comes from the spiritual side. Get your hopes up!
We left off last week with the knowledge that you can increase your capacity to hope.

Joshua 1:8 – God’s instructions to Joshua on bringing the Israelites into the fulfillment of His promise. God had a plan, and He allowed Joshua to see it. “Meditate” translates to the word “imagine.” The only way you can keep up with God is to imagine! Children are masters at imagination. Every promise of God is guaranteed, the only doubt lies with a person. Those of you observing to “do all” must push aside those that doubt! If you’re hoping for something you can see, then you’re way off course.

Mark 9:23 -- You have the ability or power to increase your hope. God makes the way known, but it won’t happen automatically. If you can believe, all things are possible for you. The key and subject is you, and He wants to know if you can. “Can” has to do with ability. There is a hundredfold return out there for you if you focus your ability to believe.

Do not allow the experience of others to define your hope. Experience is the number one criteria for the source of hope. Most of you have allowed others to define your hope in the life you live, including the job you have, the type of car you drive, how you eat, and even who your friends are. Let your hope be a beast!

John 14:12 – Jesus said the very things He did, we could do also. If you don’t, He can! God wants to do exceedingly, abundantly above all. So don’t do it your way. How can you have a righteous expectation if you aren’t obedient? People have called convenience obedience and haven’t seen a hundredfold return.

Hoping Pt.3

Hoping When It Seems Hopeless
Pt. 3

As children of God, we have hope (Ephesians 2:11). God is the God of hope (Roman 15:13). People who are unsaved can have hope if they receive Jesus Christ. There is no hope for the world. There is only hope for unbelievers through Jesus Christ. Our expectations as believers belong to God, not man. We have to put our trust in God alone. Every believer has an eternal, i.e. constant and abiding, hope. Our confession of faith is the source of our hope.

To review, we must ask ourselves what kind of life we want to live – religious or relevant? A religious life is following rules and regulations. A relevant life is having an intimate relationship with God. When you live a relevant life, you allow God to lead you in everything. Jesus Christ came so that we could have a relationship with Him. He came to free us from religion.

We hope through the power of the Holy Spirit (Romans 15:13). God wants to do in us something He has never done before (1 Corinthians 2:9-10). We need to be focused on the Holy Spirit today. God is never satisfied with the status quo. All the promises of God are accessed by faith (Galatians 3:26-29). We have to allow God to fully persuade us. Abraham against natural hope believed in the hope of God. Our faith has to match the level of our desire. A person will never be filled above the level of their hunger and thirst. Often, people will desire, but they are not hungry or thirsty.

Without hope, God can’t bring those things that have never been seen before into existence. Get your hopes up so that the power of God can flow through you! The Holy Spirit has been assigned by God to be our assistant. How often do we let the Holy Spirit work in our lives? We have not been called to a religious life. We’ve been called to supernatural living.

We can never live above the level of our expectations. Get your hopes up and trust God (Ephesians 3:14-21). Faith activates every promise of God. Faith is invaluable. You can’t put all the money in the world up against faith. Money doesn’t work in the spirit realm, only faith works in the spirit realm.

You cannot hope without faith or faith without hope. Most people don’t think that they can “be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3: 19). However, the Bible states that we are the temple of the living God. We can’t think or ask for something that we don’t expect. Every day we have to get our hopes up. “Him who is able” has to be in us, then He can do “exceedingly and abundantly above all that we ask or think.” (Ephesians 3: 20) The power that is in us is the supernatural resurrection power of Christ.

God can’t live somewhere that He is not happy. Faith can only produce what is expected. It gives substance to hope. Hope is the engine; it sets the parameters of what you will see. Faith and hope can never be separated – they are built into each other. Get your hopes up and don’t ever take them down. Dream big because God is big! If there is any problem-solving to do, then it will be done by the Holy Spirit. Our piece is to get our hopes up. God can give us the hope because He has the substance. God gives us what we can’t see. God works with our weaknesses.

You can increase your capacity to hope (Joshua 1:8). This means that we are unlimited. You can increase your capacity to hope by meditating on the Word. Another word for meditate is imagine. Without imagination, we can’t hope. Meditation is the source of hope. We “observe to do according to all that is written” in the Word by allowing the power of God to work through us by the power of the Holy Spirit. We “make our way prosperous” by our loyal obedience to God.

You have to pay the cost in order to get paid. We have to work for that which we can’t earn. We have to be engaged in God’s will and purpose. God gave us the power, so we have to use it. He gave us the power to hope, to desire and to imagine. It’s going to happen by the power of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we can’t worry, fret or be anxious about it. The power is not of us but with us. It is according to the power that works in us that it happens.

You control your hope. No one is qualified to define your hope for you, not even God, which is why He gave us an imagination. “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” (Mark 9:23)

Hoping Pt.2

Hoping When it Seems Hopeless
Pt. 2

There’s no use in hoping unless it seems there is no hope. Hope is like peace; it doesn’t operate when everything is going well. While the world is in chaos, there is always hope (not hype) with the people of God, those who have allowed themselves to be adopted by Almighty God. The purpose of this message is to alert the Children of God to the choice they’ve made to live on a higher level.

1. Decide (make up your mind once and for all) what kind of life you’re going to live. God won’t and can’t make this decision for you; you are made in His image and likeness and have free will. Will you decide to live the overcoming life that Christ came to offer all of us? Deuteronomy 28 outlined clearly the choice God gave us, along with the answer! It’s up to you.
Romans 15:13 – Will you choose to live religiously? Settling for the religious is the very thing Jesus came to deliver us from. Or will you live a relevant, purposeful life? This is not an impossible equation! Jesus is our example to show us how to live this life. We are who the Covenant says we are, and can do what the Covenant says we can do because God keeps His Covenant. You can no longer be satisfied with your life.
Philippians 1:4; 2, 12, 13 – God has a life for you beyond your wildest dreams. This takes confidence to expect that what God has begun, He will also finish for His good pleasure! It’s not about you! You are not to work for, but rather to work out the salvation by faith (fear and trembling) God has already planted inside you. Our time in here is “practice time.” Coming to service and spending time alone with God is practice. Going out into the world is “Game Time.” Be excited about practice – this is where you need to show up –on time – to be equipped with all you the potential you need to overcome the world.

2. God wants to do something never seen before. God has plans for you, it doesn’t matter if you know about them or not! Behind the scenes, He has a gift, a plan, and a purpose for you beyond what you can even hope or expect for. And while the manifestation will bless you, it will also bless others and give them hope as well.
1 Corinthians 2:9, 10 – Our answer already exists; it’s prepared and done, waiting for you to release your faith to go get it. Religious thinking tells us to wait for the “sweet by and by” but this is not scriptural. Proverbs tells us deliberately that hope deferred makes the heart sick.
• You must be fully persuaded. Romans 4:21
• It isn’t going to be automatic. Galatians 3:13, 14
• You’ll only be filled to the level of your hunger and thirst. Matthew 5:6

How to increase your hunger and thirst (both of which are a sign of good health):
Ask yourself this question: Where are you frustrated or disappointed in life?

• Exposure. Colossians 1:23; 1:5, 6. Being exposed to the Word.
• Focus. Psalm 1:1-3. You’ll be biased on whatever you choose to focus on.
• Reflection. Psalm 42:5, 6, 11. Remembering what God has done will build an expectation of what God will do again.

Hoping Pt.1

Hoping When It Seems Hopeless

Pt.1

We must hope when it seems impossible. Your senses will tell you it seems hopeless. When it comes to pleasing God and reaching your destiny, you must forget sight. As believers, we walk by faith and not by sight. Every born-again believer was given the measure of faith (Romans 12:3). We have the faith of God, not our own faith (Mark 11: 22). This gift – the faith of God – cannot be taken from you by the enemy. Instead, the enemy tries to inactivate people’s faith – by killing their hope. Without hope, faith is useless (Hebrews 11:1). If you kill hope, it is as though you have killed faith because faith operates on hope. The enemy mounts everything up against you to make it seem hopeless. But, as long as God is alive, there is always hope. God can’t die. So, you must start hoping when it seems hopeless.

God calls Himself the “God of hope.” (Romans 15:13) Hope is eternal and it will never die. This should give us an expectation. Joy and peace only comes with hope. As long as you live by faith, you will be filled with joy and peace because the God of hope activates your faith. You must raise your expectations. You must be convinced that you do not walk alone – everything you do, God is in. God didn’t bring you here just to go this far. The enemy knows that you will reap in due if you don’t quit, which is why he wants to kill your hope. If you walk by faith and not by sight, then you will have a fruitful and prosperous life. The closer you draw to God, the sooner this will happen.

You have to decide today what kind of life you will live – a religious life or a relevant life. Religion puts God in a box. A relevant life is a life that God uses. Living a relevant life means you allow God to lead you. Christ came to earth to get us out of religion. He came to call us into relationship with Himself. When we get involved with God working in our lives, it brings excitement, freshness and adventure into our lives. You can experience the full salvation of God – the full salvation of God is deliverance, preservation, safety healing and soundness. We don’t need these in heaven, but we need them here on earth. You must work out your own salvation with fear and trembling – this means walking by faith and not by sight.

In 2009, you have to hope like you never have before. God wants to do something through you have never seen before (1 Corinthians 2:9-10). You don’t know what God has planned for you. If you trust your life completely to God, then He is completely responsible for what happens to you.

How can you see things in your life you have never seen before? First, you have to be fully persuaded. This is something you permit to be done with you. Abraham against hope believed in hope (Romans 4:17-21). He didn’t consider what he could see. He hoped in what he couldn’t see. Abraham was strong in faith and gave glory to God. Nothing is too hard for God. If God promised it, we have to hope. God fully persuaded Abraham. Let God fully persuade you. Second, it is not automatic (Galatians 3:13-14). Everything you are going to get from God comes by faith. Faith without action is dead. Faith makes the things you can’t see real. Ask God: Am I being conformed to the world? What is important to You, God? This is walking by faith. If you walk by faith, God will make it happen (Psalm 37:4). Third, you will only be filled to the level of your hunger and thirst (Matthew 5:6). You have to raise your hope so that God can show you His power by the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 3:20). If God can bring life from death, can anything be too hard for God?