Hope against Hope

The Holy Spirit has recently been speaking to me from the life of Abraham, in Romans 4 he is called the "father of us all" because he lead the way in believing God's promise against impossible conditions.  This phrase in Romans 4:18 stood out to me, "In hope against hope he believed...".  As I looked into the commentaries it seems that there was a war going on within Abraham between natural hope (in he and Sarah's own ability to conceive a child) and the supernatural hope (God's ability to bring His promise to fruition despite no hope in the natural).  There were two dynamics happening within Abraham his hope in he and Sarah bringing the child to fruition was dying (natural realm) and yet God had been working in Abraham to believe more and more in God's ability to do the impossible (supernatural realm).  Could it be that Abraham had to come to the end of his hope, so he could receive this gift of hope that was solely rooted in God's power to bring about what He had promised?  This is a crisis of hope.  Abraham had a choice though, he could have kept pursuing natural hope beyond Hagar (and then Ishmael) to another natural way but he gave up.  This is often the point in our lives when despair sets in, since hopelessness set in and takes the dream away.  

The promise and dream in my heart have been to know the Father's Love and bring many into the reality of the Father's Love for them.  As I face my own crisis of hope, realizing that I have come to the end of my own hope to see this happen there is a new hope and faith arising within my heart.  The genesis of this hope is not in my own ability, striving, or attempts to must faith but an assurance of His ability to do what He says He will do.  At one point when my hope was thin, the Holy Spirit spoke to me saying "Jesus came to make a way to the Father, did He fail?".  If you are the author of your own hope, then there will be a time it will fail but if God is the author of the hope that you carry then it is unshakeable.

The Holy Spirit asked me another question about 1 1/2 years ago when I was in Toronto, He said "You have never asked Me what My purpose was in your father's death."  I realized I was so seeking to heal from this deep wound in my life, walking through the daily struggles that I had seen from God's heavenly perspective.  The perspective that comes from being "seated in Christ in heavenly places" is a whole new realm of seeing versus being under our circumstances, season, or difficulty.  A growing understanding was coming that Father loves to take the weak things of the world and glorify who He is and that my carrying the Father's love had everything to do with His purpose and not just my healing.

In His Hope,
Bret