Hope Rises: Make Your Life, Love, and Leadership SoarSample

Hope Is the Best Strategy

Maybe you’ve heard the old saying that “Hope is not a strategy.” This is often said to emphasize that success requires more than merely wishful thinking. Success necessitates a plan of action. However, I would suggest that if you truly understand its nature, then hope is actually the best strategy. 

Hope is not passive. It’s very much active. Hope requires both crafting a plan and then garnering the energy and resources necessary to pursue that plan with vigor. Hope is a dynamic motivational system tied to inspirational goal-setting. Hope always has a plan. And in order for any plan to be successful, it must be pursued with hope. 

For the believer, there is an understanding that God has a plan for each of us. The Creator, who crafted you in your mother’s womb, has a plan for you. That plan is always for your good and for his glory. Hope is elevated when you understand that God can use every life circumstance to position you to receive his greatest blessings. Your setback may actually be God’s setup for your comeback.

Success is a matter of aligning your plans with God’s plan for your life. Having been fearfully and wonderfully made, he desires for each of us to lean into him to realize our potential. Hope begins when we set a course of action that is enlightened by an understanding of our God-given giftedness and calling. Then, hope increases as we appropriate God’s grace to persevere in our pursuit of such a calling.

Our heavenly Father’s heart is never to harm us, but to conform us to the image of his Son. That means that he sometimes allows life circumstances to come our way to smooth off the rough edges of our character. As he molds and shapes us through tumultuous times, he strengthens and deepens our dependence upon him. Hope is realizing that what he calls you to do, he will also empower you to do. So set an inspirational goal that reflects what you are willing to allow God to accomplish with your future. And remember, heaven is the limit.

Don’t let present circumstances rob you of the knowledge that God has a plan to prosper you and to give you hope and a bright future.