Posted on by intentional4christ

The Blessing of Hope

Yesterday, I was feeling very sorry for myself… feeling like my life is not going the way I want it at all. As I reflected on my life choices over the past two years it felt like other people are living the life that should have been mine. I woke up today wanting to feel better so I reached for a devotional and found some encouragement, which I share with you today: the blessing of hope!

You see, we move so quickly through our daily lives, often thinking about the next “to do”, next deliverable or project or responsibility to be fulfilled. As has been my experience, living a fast paced life leaves little room for pause, rest, and connection with God or discovering Him in His word. This may lead to us detaching from those God-given longings, dreams and desires that He wants to fulfil in us. Or perhaps, the rhythms of our lives have been riddled with disappointment and delay that those godly things that once has roots in our heart seemed to have withered away.

Today, I share with you about “hope” and why this blessing of God is so important in our lives. First of, I call hope a blessing because it is fundamentally grounded in God Himself and in His word and not determined by what will or will not happen in our lives.

Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God! I will praise him again— my Savior and my God!

Psalm 42:11 NLT

God gives us the gift of hope so our minds and hearts can be anchored in the face of adversity. When life as we know it feels like its gone off its rails or we feel like we are like a ship gone adrift in the storms of life, hope anchors us and keeps us grounded and sane. It reminds us that there is something bigger to life than what is going on in our mind right now.

We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.

Hebrews 6:19a

Hope takes center stage and is forged through adversity (Romans 5:4); this is where we experience hope’s greatest work in keeping us focused on what is most important, God and His plans for us. Hope brings us back to the godly desires and fulfillments in our hearts and rekindles the spark in us. Hope is that “scent of water” that causes a dead stump of a tree whose roots have grown old in the soil to bud and put out branches again (Job 14:7-9). When our souls and minds are overwhelmed, hope leads us to the rock that is “higher than us”- to a place of safety so we are not stuck in the dark doldrums of despair (Psalm 61:2). Hope pulls us out of despair and leads us back to God’s plan for our lives which is always bright and future oriented.

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future…”

Jeremiah 29:11 NIV

So this all sounds great and promising but if you are like me, you are asking, “How can I access this hope now or whenever I am feeling like my world has come crushing down on me?” Famous for this lament, Prophet Jeremiah said,

I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss. Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: The faithful love of the LORD never ends! His mercies never cease. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The LORD is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!”

Lamentations 3:20-23 NLT/NIV

I encourage you to start with an honest throwback of when God has been faithful and his mercies has been available to you. Recollecting how far God has brought us brings a perspective shift: that what we are going through today is only a page, a scene in our story and not the entire story. Allow God’s spirit to illuminate to your mind the instances of His goodness and kindness towards you and with these instances in mind, dare to hope! Call out to God and He promises to incline His ear to us and lift us out of the miry clay (Psalms 40:2). “This I recall to my mind therefore I have hope!”

I also cannot stress enough the importance of taking times each day to step away and retreat from the grind of life to reflect and pray. We have an example in Jesus who did this very often while He walked the earth to be alone with Himself and with God. Incorporating rhythms of Sabbath-rest during our day helps us to purposefully connect to the desires God has placed in our hearts. It helps us to evaluate why we are busy in the first place and if our busyness is in line with the future and hope promised in God. It helps us to reflect on why we are feeling weary and tired in our minds and souls and gives us opportunity to observe God’s workings in our lives. You see, when we activate hope, we are looking future-forward to a bright hope for tomorrow, which is hard to do when you are feeling hopeless. What better way to envision that bright hope than during intentional moments of pause when you can listen for God’s whispers as they rekindle the flames of your heart’s desires and consequently refuel your dreams, hopes, and aspirations.

Now I will back track to something that caught my attention in the passage from Lamentations. it says: “The LORD is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!” When an inheritance is bequeath to another unless that person gives it away, it is theirs for as long as they live and as long as the inheritance remains. What a blessing to have God as our inheritance; that even on our darkest days, God is our portion- He is ours and we are His! We are never alone. He promises never to leave or turn his back on us and that is cause for hope!

So dear friend, I don’t know what you are going through but I want to leave you with this prayer:

I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Romans 15:13 NLT

Yours Truly.

p. s. Adapted from and inspired by Colette Stewart’s ‘Rekindling hope in life’s fast lane’.

Posted on by intentional4christ

The Economics of Eternity: God or Money?

Last month I discovered something about myself: I have an unhealthy relationship with money. My everyday thoughts and functioning is subsumed by what I term “the economics of money in action” i. e. earning money, buying goods and services, paying for bills and utilities- it takes over your life completely. I realized my first thought in the day is about the everyday cares of this world and my last thought at night is about the cares of this world. As I have reflected about my relationship with money, I have come to realize how pervasive it is, even to the extent that all my relationships have become somewhat defined by the economics of money. My dealings with family, friends, colleagues, bosses, significant others, children, and even acquaintances have money at the center of it. Many of my friendships and relationships have been built on the capital of me giving of my time and resources (cash and kind) and while this is not necessarily a bad thing, God has been pushed away from center place in my life as the economics of money has taken centrality in my thoughts and actions. This poses some major problems.

First, money is fleeting and with it, the joy and stability it brings. Unfortunately, when we build on the foundation of the economics of money, the relationships, worldviews, and foundational principles are anchored in a system of shifting sand. Money comes and money goes and nothing that is built on this ephemeral concept has eternal value. Jesus told a parable to illustrate this:

“The ground of a certain rich man produced an abundance. So he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, since I have nowhere to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and will build bigger ones, and there I will store up all my grain and my goods. Then I will say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take it easy. Eat, drink, and be merry!” ’But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be required of you. Then who will own what you have accumulated? This is how it will be for anyone who stores up treasure for himself but is not rich toward God.”

Luke 12: 16-21 BSB

It is even more problematic when our relationship with God is built on the currency of the economics of money. Our prayers stop having Kingdom impact as we turn inwards to ask for our daily bread and our daily bread alone. Most prayers, like mine have been for the past 19 years, become about God’s blessing to make us comfortable in this world. Our trust in God is built on God’s ability to answer our prayer requests to meet our physical, material, and economic needs and has very little to do with the fact that He is God. How dependable God is judged by how quickly our prayers for things that have earthly value are answered or how quickly these prayers manifest into reality. Over the years, I have stopped praying for things that I think God may not answer quickly enough or may be too “big” for God to handle so I am not “disappointed in God”. Many of us have relinquished God to a genie in the bottle whose sole purpose is to serve me and grant me my wishes. Afterall, God operates on principles and so if I give like He instructs in scripture (tithes and offerings) to then He has no choice than to bless me. Such is a life that tries to build a relationship with God on the economics of money.

Jesus knew that besides sin, money has the greatest potential to keep us chained to this fleeting world so we are swept away with it at the end of all ages. He described the economics of money as mammon. The term mammon stems from the Greek word mammonas and related root words appear in Hebrew, Latin, and Aramaic. Mammon can be defined as “earthly goods, property, riches, etc.” Mammon are the things of this world that can divert our attention and love from God to the pleasures and comforts of earthly desires. Jesus theorized that there are two masters in this world, God and mammon and one can only serve one master at a time.

No one can serve two masters: Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

Matthew 6:24 BSB

Although mammon can provide fleeting happiness, ultimately it is a deadly distraction from the salvation of our souls. However, God in his goodness for us did not leave us helpless to the wiles of mammon. That is why He showed us the secret of how to overcome this dilemma. He encouraged us to seek His Kingdom first and leave the economics of money to God to take care of.

“So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need…”

Matthew 6: 31-33 NLT

Here is the secret: If you seek God and give Him centrality in your heart and life, the economics of money follows and you also store treasures that are of eternal value. But if the economics of money has centrality, it will consume you and at the end of times it will profit nothing you will lose it all; you will have no heavenly investments.

And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?

Mark 8:36 NLT

Today, I encourage you to reflect on which master you serve on a daily basis by examining what percentage of your day is devoted to God or to mammon. Compare how often you think about what you will eat or feed the family, what you wear, economic opportunities, paying bills and utilities, exchanging of material goods and services against how often you think about God’s kingdom being established on earth and your role in this endeavor, the masses coming to the saving grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ, the whole earth being filled with the glory of God and the part you play in this etc. Ask yourself, “who or what has centrality in my life? God or mammon?”

Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.

Matthew 6:19-21 NLT

Yours Truly.