After a much longer break than expected, I have finally found my pen. 🙂 Thank you to all who reached out and prompted me to write. I’m so happy to be back and I have much to share! But first, I want to share with you a thought that has been pressing on my heart. While I was looking through some of my previous posts, and I landed on a continuous theme: hope.
Hope is at the center of my writing; but I have noticed how my life is filled with unbelief. My heart is often tinted by tinted by discontent; even after tasting of God’s goodness, I am drawn to trade riches for rags. A few months ago, I began to feel distant from God and I wondered why my beaming spark was flickering. The answer I received was unexpected. Unbelief.
Hope is at the center of being in Christ; a hope in what God promised; a hope in what He has prepared. Our hope is fixed in what we can’t see, but in what we believe God will fulfill. While on earth, we only experience part of God’s redemptive promises. We know and believe that we are saved from sin and death, but we have yet to experience the full goodness of living in God’s presence. We are still waiting on the fulfillment of a new heaven and new earth. We know we will be perfected one day, but right now, we are overwhelmed by sin.
What we are hoping in is way beyond us, and the world can cloud us from the reality that our hope will soon be fulfilled. When we begin searching elsewhere, we stop trusting that what He has promised is worth the wait. At the center of any discontentment or misplaced love is unbelief.
The contrast? Hope. Hope is trusting that God’s promises are far better than anything we could have or experience now. Hope in those truths is not a feeling, but is a firm trust in God’s binding covenant with us. Our feelings fluctuate, but God’s promises are unchanging. Right now, we are called to keep believing, hoping, and anticipating that what we have in Christ is more than enough.
For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:17-18
Aww thank you for sharing. I love you ❤
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WELCOME BAAAAACK!!!! The heroic author has returned!!! [CUE TRUMPLET BLASTS, CONFETTI CANNONS, FIREWORKS, AND MARCHING BAND PARADES AROUND THE GLOBE]. So exciting to see the “New post from Created to Thrive” email pop up in my inbox! Sort of like early summer sunshine :-D. In all seriousness, I (and all your readers) am so glad you found your pen again.
And good thoughts! Reminds me of an excellent book I read awhile back and have been pondering again recently: God Is More Than Enough: Foundations for a Quiet Soul by Jim Berg. I’ll probably share some sections of the book in an upcoming Wednesday night study.
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haha thank you!! I can almost see the confetti!
I look forward to that!
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This post is so beautiful! Thank you so much for sharing about this topic. This is something I’ve been working through in the past year, and this post was a wonderful reminder to me to hold onto the Hope in Christ.
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I am so happy you were encouraged. And thank you for taking the time to comment 🙂
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As always, I am astounded by your wisdom beyond your years. Your words point to eternal glory which is precisely where our thoughts need to be to experience all that the Lord has in store for us in this life. All I can say after reading your post is “Amen!”
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thank you, and so true. 🙂
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Oh yeah… So glad you’re back!!!
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💗
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This is so good!!
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Love this!
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