HOPE is a HANDLE

I always try to write out of a storehouse of my own experiences and feelings. I mean, when I present hope as being the anchor of the soul through a struggle, I'm not just throwing out a platitude.  I’m doing so from having lived through the paralyzing feel of struggle.  Many struggles.However I have learned that hope is a handle, that allows for you to open up the heavens through the struggle, replacing what is paralyzing with what is liberating.  I learned this in the dark, in the depths of the valley, standing over a large heap of ashes.   And I share it to publish the reality of  God’s grace --as it is the very map to help people navigate their troubles.And so I have this steadfast desire to develop and distribute hope which stems from the steady time in my life called prison, where holding onto the awareness of God’s thereness was the manifestation of my hopefulness.  I say "steady time" because it was there that God granted me a steady heart. You see, when you make the conscious decision to trust in the Lord in spite of the struggle, then His presence alone defuses the struggle. And if He doesn't defuse the struggle, He at least decodes the struggle. He tells us, “In My economy, nothing is accidental. Don’t try to figure Me out. But know that I’ve allowed this circumstance into your life for you to cling to Me now.”Trust me, I know firsthand that God may not remove the feelings of apprehension or the squeeze of the tension, but I also know firsthand how it is still possible to praise Him through the tribulation. And at the end of the proverbial day, it’s a choice to rejoice. You either take hope in your circumstances or allow your circumstances to take hold of you.In other words, you don’t find peace through the storm, you stop holding onto the storm and let the peace find you.  Jesus comes looking for every person in the storm to offer them His steady hand. (The Hebrew word for ‘faithfulness’ also means “steady”). We either grab Him and receive His strength through our struggle (Philippians 4:13); or we grab ourselves and blame Him through the struggle.  It’s quite easy to magnify our problems, but true help and hope comes by way of promoting the Solution.The Solution has a name. It’s Jesus!