Saturday, January 29, 2011

Hope - The Anticipation of God

Last Sunday, my pastor started a new series called "Hope - The Anticipation of God."

If you haven't caught on by my first post of the year.  Hope is my one word for this year.  It is also the middle name we want to give our little girl.  It amazes me all the God winks we have been getting about the adoption process, South Korea and HOPE.

I wanted to share some of the notes from church last Sunday and hopefully the next 5 Sundays as well.


(Photo Credit)

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What is Hope?

Hope - desire accompanied by expectation.  An anticipation of fullfillment.  NOT wishful thinking.

A CHOSEN DESIRE.  {She is chosen.}

Hope is an anticipation for good in God.  Hope is not about striving, but resting and allowing His grace and His strength to take us through a "door of hope".

Hope is a perspective of an abundant life.

Hope must go from a concept, to a specific powerful virtue in your life.

Hope redefines our past.


(Photo Credit)


Hope is a lifestyle. It's where you grow to the place where you daily focus on "answers of hope, solutions of hope".

With hope- we see more with our eyes closed than we do with our eyes open.

Hope is an anticipation and belief in good from God, now and in the future.

Psalm 27:13 I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.

Hope gives us the ability to look out a very long way.

And my favorite...

Hope can become part of your fiber when the unseen world becomes more real than the seen.

How many times have I said that Heaven is so real now.  The unseen world (Heaven) and the seen world (Earth) are just separated by a thin veil when you have held the babies I have held and have been talking to Jesus as he ushered them into the presence of the Father.  Heaven is so real. 

Lamentations 3:22-24 says, "Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.”

Tomorrow morning, we will learn more about HOPE.  This sermon couldn't have come at a better time for me.  God truely knows what we need and when we need it!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love this entry. I think HOPE seems to be the theme of the year for many of us :)

Holly said...

I've always had and still have hope.

I like the photo that Franchesca created. I actually saved that one to my computer and was gonna add it to my blog but haven't yet.

Caroline said...

Beautiful post & there is always HoPe in anything.

Amanda said...

Beautiful words..Hope is a big word for me..It is Aubree's middle name, my middle name, and the word itself has so much meaning to my life which is why I titled my blog the way that I did! What a wonderful sermon..Ours was about healing yesterday..We also had an annointing ceremony. Our pastor made an interesting comment about how prayer doesn't work..God works. Prayer is just the median..interesting to think about..