There is hope!

When we start to live our lives empowered by his free flowing grace, then we start to live the abundant life. But as long as we’re living our lives out of our own strength, out of our own effort and our own abilities and strength, then we’re not living out of God’s grace and it’s going to be short lived. We’re going to get tired, we’re going to get weary and we might even eventually burn out. I like how Romans 11:6 says, and if by grace then it is no more of works, otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then it is no more grace. Otherwise work is no more work.
 
It’s either grace or it’s works. It’s your ability or it’s God’s ability. And if you allow God’s ability, if that’s where your strength is, then, if that’s what you’re relying on and not on your own efforts, then you start to live the abundant supernatural life that God’s got for you. John 10 10, Jesus says that he came to give us life, abundant life to the full until it overflows. That’s his desire for you. And most Christians are sadly not experiencing that. I speak to her a lot of Christians and it frustrates me because what people say doesn’t match up with what the word says and it just seems like a lot of people just have, once again, this defeat theology, this defeat mentality that we just got to struggle through life. And I understand that people go through difficult times, but we should be the most joyful people on the face of this earth. We should because we have more hope than anyone on this planet and we should act like it. People should see us and see that even though we’ve got troubles in our lives, we are really doing well. Like we’re flourishing in our emotions and we’re happy!
 
Is Your Business in trouble? How are your finances doing? Is it a mess? Do you have difficult relationships? Problems with your kids? Maybe it is your spouse or your co-workers, your neighbour? How’s your health doing? Are you struggling with your health? Your life might be just plain hard/ difficult right now. Sometimes the things that we face in this life are more burdensome than would we would like them to be. You know? And, and we sometimes feel like we deserve it. Maybe because we’ve done something wrong. Sometimes we even blame God and think that the pressures and the burdens and the challenges that we’re facing are his fault. But the Bible shows us clearly in John 10, 10, the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. Jesus came to give us life and life abundant! God is not the one behind your suffering. And I can go into hours of teaching on that to show you from, from the book of Job or even looking at Paul’s thorn in his flesh from the New Testament – all to show you that God is not behind your suffering. He’s the solution to your problems. He’s not your problem and he’s not the cause of your problems. It might be that your bad decisions have gotten you into a pickle (bad situation). Or maybe it’s just because we live in a fallen world and people don’t like us because we are Christians and people just want to make things difficult for us. The bottom line is, is that sometimes life can just be plain hard and the pressures of life can cause us to feel overwhelmed.

You may feel like there’s no way out except maybe for taking your own life. I really sympathize for anyone going through a difficult time but you need to hear me: no matter what you’re going through; no matter how big and overwhelming it may be there is hope! As long as you’re breathing, there’s hope! There’s hope for that failing business. There’s hope for your troubled relationships and messy finances. There’s hope for your failing health, or whatever your challenges are, today. I want to encourage you that there is hope! It frustrates me that in a lot of churches, people are not given hope. They’re given excuses or encouragement to suffer. My encouragement to you today isn’t just to push through – it’s good to push through, but you don’t have to suffer! God wants to help you out of your suffering, today.
 
Your situation isn’t too difficult for him. It may seem complicated and overwhelming, but complicated and overwhelming are the perfect conditions for a miracle. Amen! They are the perfect conditions for a miracle.
 
In Jeremiah 32:27 God speaks and he says, “behold, I am the Lord the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for me?” Another translation says “nothing is too, too hard for me.”
 
We’ve got to realize that all things are possible with God. Nothing is too difficult for God. Luke 1:37 says, “for with God, nothing is impossible.” Nothing is impossible with God. The challenges you may be facing right now, whatever they may be are not bigger than God.

I heard a preacher say this once: before he was a preacher, he was a farmer with a lot of debt and financial troubles on the farm. He was being summoned to go to court because he wasn’t paying the people and he was in debt. And he was just troubled. Some of you understand that because you’re overwhelmed by debt, too. They wanted to take his home, they want to take his farm, they want to take everything he had. He was just panicking, and he went to a wise friend for good counsel and for prayer. The friend looked at him and said, “you know what? They can take everything that you have but they can’t eat you!”
 
It doesn’t matter what people do to you, they can’t eat you (there aren’t many cannibals around!). What can they do to you compared to what God can do for you? What men can do to you is nothing compared to what God wants to do for you. All things are possible with God. Don’t give up. Winners never quit and quitters never win. The Bible calls you more than a conqueror through Christ Jesus who loves you. How do you know when the battle is over? You’ve won! If you haven’t won, it’s not over! Don’t quit! It’s not over until you win.
 
We’re going to be looking at this over the next couple of podcasts. If you’re known as somebody who needs to hear an encouraging message of hope, please share this with them and get them to join us over the next couple of days as we look at how to turn negative situations around how to reignite hope in our hearts, in hopeless situations.