Scripture

Under utterly hopeless circumstances he {Abraham} hopefully believed.

~Romans 4:18, Weymouth

Quote

Our goal is not to simply to survive the storm, but to triumph in it.

~Charles Stanley

Peter said, Therefore, get your minds ready for action by being fully sober, and set your hope completely on the grace that will be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed. Since June has been side lined, I have been forced to learn some things about the house. The stove, the washer and the dryer all have settings. Of course when it comes to baking, you may vary in your settings but June rarely changes her washer setting. When you set these machines, they function in a particular way, according to the setting. In the spiritual sense, you and I must set our minds on GRACE. Grace is our only hope. The storms are coming; they are a part of life. So the question is not if but when; and when the storms come we must be prepared mentally with our minds fully fixed on the hope we have in Christ.

Charles Stanley gives us some good advice in JEUS OUR PERFECT HOPE {page 343}. Think of being in a ship like Paul who was on a voyage to Rome. When the storm hits: [1] Remove all unnecessary cargo {baggage, hindrances}. Get rid of the clutter by doing a little house cleaning. There may be some things you need to get rid of; so throw them overboard. [2] Don’t panic, do not give in to fear. We make better decisions when we are calm and it enhances our witness. [3] Fix or set your hope on Christ.

Sanctification is an ongoing process of cleaning the ship and getting rid of useless cargo and baggage.There is some unneeded stuff in my life that needs to go over board. Since I am weak on number two, staying calm, I will move on to number three: fixing your hope completely on Christ. All our local readers know our situation: we have a daughter that is a drug addict and she has been in jail for close to two months. We’ve been in this storm for years; to be honest, I do not know when it started. We originally thought that prayer and understanding love and compassion would fix the problem but the problem got worse, not better. Then we tried rehab which also met with failure. Then we tried the shock approach: I tried to make her confess that she was a addict. That was water off of a ducks back. After years of struggle, three rehabs and thousands of dollars our daughter is still in the far country feeding on slop. Jail was our last hope so to speak and she has managed to outwit us once more. She not only uses drugs, she uses people and we are gullible because we keep hoping she will change and she is very good at pretending. You would think the LORD wants us to give up all hope.

Maybe that is exactly what He wants. Abraham didn’t have a son until he gave up and quit trying to make God’s promise come true. The Jews were scattered all over the world and although they had God’s word that the land would be restored, they had completely given up. Two thousand years after their land had be taken and they had lost all hope, God restored their land and the entire world was shocked. So I find myself in Abrahams sandals, I have no hope and yet because of Christ, I am not hopeless. I have one hope and it is in Jesus. He is my only hope. He is the only hope for HOPE.

Extra

LORD willing we will be taking June to the doctor today; a follow up on the gall bladder situation. Other than the problem above {child in jail} we had a great TG day. I hope you had one also.