A few years ago I was chatting to a friend, who remarked, “There are two kinds of people in the world, those who see it as negative, dangerous and threatening – the majority- and those who see it as full of opportunity – the minority.” It was an off-hand remark, but it struck me. Immediately I knew which group I was in.  It seemed that the Holy Spirit was speaking to me. I was reminded of a saying that my mother often repeated, “Two men looked through prison bars, one saw mud and one saw stars.”  Do I tend to see the negative things rather than the positive?

In English the word ‘hope’ has the idea of a wish – “I hope you have a good day,” for example. The Greek word in the Bible has the idea of expectancy. If we have hope in the Biblical sense, we are expectant about the future, anticipating good things.

Our world seems to be getting worse. You may have health challenges, financial worries or relationship problems. Life has many troubles, (Jesus said we would have troubles in this world).

I think faith is built on confidence in God’s goodness. Hope or expectancy is important. Having such an attitude is not accidental. We can chose to think this way by reminding ourselves of the truth, instead of being cast down by lies and unbelief.

I’ve been challenged lately to do a bit of “self-encouragement.”  By this I mean that I need to exhort myself to ‘forget what lies behind, refuse to be influenced by what present circumstance look like and to choose to look to the future expecting God to be present with me and that he will ultimately give success in all that pertains to me.

Let’s be self-encouragers

Peter

10 Feb 2018