Oswald Chambers: Hope - A Holy Promise Sample

The true nature of a man’s heart is that of expectation and hope. It is the heart that is strengthened by God (cf. Psalm 73:26), and Jesus Christ said that He came to “bind up the broken hearted.” The marvel of the indwelling Spirit of God is that He can give heart to a despairing man. There is a difference between the human sympathy we give to a discouraged man and what the Holy Spirit will do for him. We may sit down beside a broken-hearted man and pour out a flow of sympathy, and say how sorry we are for him, and tell him of other people with broken hearts; but all that only makes him more submissive to being broken-hearted. When our Lord sympathizes with the heart broken by sin or sorrow, He binds it up and makes it a new heart, and the expectation of that heart ever after is from God. Reflection Questions: What more do I hope to receive from God than sympathy? How does God’s hope for me transcend sympathy? Why would I settle for sympathy when I can have restoration? Quotations taken from The Moral Foundations of Life, © Discovery House Publishers