Inside Out: A 40 Day Journey to Transforming Your HeartSample

Hopeless Heart --> Hopeful Heart

When people become hopeless, death can seem more bearable than life. Life can hold such significant burdens. Destruction in our lives can seem unrepairable. Change doesn’t appear possible. Light doesn’t seem findable. Hope evaporates. Proverbs 13:12 says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.”

Hope links to our desires and expectations of what we think we need to be fulfilled. If our desires aren’t met in the ways we expect, in the timing we assume is best, then we begin to lose hope. The more our focus is on wanting our desires fulfilled by our circumstances, rather than on God, the more vulnerable we are to experiencing hopelessness. Is our hope in having an intimate relationship with someone? Is our hope in getting a specific career or position? Is our hope that our friends and family are safe and secure without sickness, pain, or death? If our hope is in these things, then our hearts will be stuck in hopelessness and despair. 

When we notice we are feeling hopeless due to a situation in our lives, our first step is to pray and ask God to help us not lose heart. Jesus said this in Luke 18:1, “And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.” God refocuses us to have hope about our eternal future with Him and not hope for the temporal things this world promises will satisfy us. Ephesians 1:18 says, “Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.” 

Hope can only come from God. Psalm 62:5 says, “For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him.” God’s plan is to give us hope. Jeremiah 29:11-13 says, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” We find hope when our greatest desire shifts from earthly longings to longing to experience Him in His Word. Psalms 130:5 says, “I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word, I hope.”

When we realize our hope can only come from God, we can grasp that our hope can only be in God. Psalm 43:5 says, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” Our greatest hope is in His love. In God’s love, He created us and has a purpose for our lives. By Jesus’ love, He willingly died a brutal death to save us from our sins and eternal separation from Him. It is because of God’s love that He placed the Holy Spirit inside of us to comfort us, conform us to His image, and communicate with us how to live this life moment by moment. Grasping God’s love for us is what gives us hope, no matter what desires are unmet in our hearts. 

Psalm 33:18-22 says, “Behold, the eye of the LORD is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love, that he may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine. Our soul waits for the LORD; he is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name. Let your steadfast love, O LORD, be upon us, even as we hope in you.”  Lamentations 3:17-25 shows us that when we feel hopeless, we must remember God’s love never ceases. “My soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is; so, I say, ‘My endurance has perished; so, has my hope from the LORD.’ Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall! My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The LORD is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’ The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.”

It is the role of the Holy Spirit to pour God’s love into our hearts. If we feel hopeless, we can cry out to the Spirit to overwhelm us with God’s love. Romans 5:3-5 says, “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” We will have hope, we will have endurance, even in great suffering, when we grasp how incredibly loved we are by God. He died specifically for you. There is no greater love. There is no better place to put your hope than in Him. Rest in His love, and He will give you hope from the inside out. 

Take a Moment

• Where has your hope been misplaced onto things of this life rather than on God?

• How can experiencing God’s love lead you to maintain hope in your current circumstances?

Prayer:

Heavenly Father, I want to pray Romans 15:13 into my life.  “May the God of hope fill me with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit I may abound in hope.” I also pray 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17 into my life. “Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort my heart and establish me in every good work and word.” Help me to experience Your love in such a way that I abound in hope. Amen.