Hold onto Hope

Hold onto Hope

Hold onto hope
I didn’t realize the word ‘hold’ is such a hope-filled and faith-saturated one. I was doing a search at Biblegateway.com and found an abundance of faith-affirming and uplifting verses that had the word ‘hold’ in them. Here are my favorites:

Don’t be bluffed into silence by the threats of bullies. There’s nothing they can do to your soul, your core being. Save your fear for God, who holds your entire life—body and soul—in his hands(Matthew 10:28, MSG, emphasis added*)

We are in God’s hands. Our entire life is in his hands. We don’t need to worry. We are safe and secure. There’s nothing that can harm our core being. We can hold onto hope that keeps us going. For God is reliable, loving, and faithful to his word.

Let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water. Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise. (Hebrews 10:22-23, NLT, emphasis added,*)

We can trust God with our everything. Nothing is too strange to God and nothing goes to waste. God knows us as we are and loves us despite of everything. But also his love for us is so powerful that he does not leave us where we are. He cleanses us and washes us with pure water and then sends us to share our faith, hope, and love with others.

We don’t need to be afraid that there would not be enough faith, hope, and love for everyone. Because when we are in Christ, we can’t use faith, hope or love up. The more we use faith, hope or love, the more we have. Because those are God’s gifts to us. And they are meant to be shared and celebrated.

Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives. That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original. (Gal. 5:25-26, MSG, emphasis added*)

The life of the Spirit is not just a dogma or an idea in our heads. And it’s not a sentiment in our hearts. We are called to hold onto hope and live our faith out in love. God can be trusted and God is holding our entire lives in his hands.

Everything begins and ends in God’s grace. But there’s work for us too: to trust God, to share his love with others, to hold on to hope and live out our faith. No need to stress out about it: our work is empowered by grace. That’s why we can hold onto hope no matter what happens in our lives.

 

Gracious God,
Thank you for holding us in your arms.
Thank you for pouring out hope, faith, and love in abundance.
Thank you for sustaining us along the way.
Empower us for victorious living.
Help us to always hold onto hope.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen

Q4U
:
  How do you hold onto hope?

Be blessed, my fellow pilgrim, as you hold onto hope!

* [As you might have noticed, I enjoy reading the Bible in different translations and love comparing them. I have started linking the Bible verses to Biblegateway.com so you can easily read (and compare) them in the different versions I’ve used while preparing each post.]

Photo courtesy of Ben Branum, design Mari-Anna Stålnacke. Linking up today with Faith-filled Fridays, Five Minute Friday and Faith Jam.

4 thoughts on “Hold onto Hope

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

RSS
Follow by Email