Tag Archives: hope

Life Lessons

New Year of Hope!

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       We always hope that a new year will bring better things than the one that has just gone! But what about this coming year of 2024? In spite of all the predictions around the place, no-one knows for sure everything that will happen in this coming year! From a view of the nations around the world, life seems pretty uncertain for a lot of people, and yet this is exactly what the Bible predicts will happen. Nation will rise against nation, until the end of time. No matter how much the leaders think they have the answers, unless they take God and His laws into consideration, things will remain in uncertainty for this year as well.

    There is talk of AI and other new things that are being invented all the time, things that our grand-parents, and even our parents, never dreamed of! In the life time of older folk still alive today, just think of how things how evolved in that time!  From the days of horse and cart on the farm, then to tractors to move things, and then today the size and speed of farm machinery is mind boggling.

      Think of how in other spheres, technology has made such great strides, and even now it is not slowing down. Think for example, of how warfare is changing all the time, and when the idea of an underground network of tunnels contributes to modern warfare, it is mind boggling! Even the very idea of destroying a country only to take over the rubble that has been created doesn’t make sense.

   Without taking God into the equation, there is no hope of an everlasting peace left for this world. But those who have put their trust in Him have an everlasting hope, a certainty and knowledge, that all will come right in the end. While mankind refuses to acknowledge God, and just relies on their own  wisdom, things will never improve.

    So how can we have hope in this year of 2024?  Keep looking upwards, and not at what is going on around us. That is not to say to shut our eyes to the current events, but to realise that God has all things in His control. Yes, He could simply wipe out all these evil men who are doing these atrocities, but we must remember, that He has given each person a free will to choose to do right, or choose to do wrong. If we choose to do wrong, then we have to bear the consequences, but the trouble is, that it always affects other people.

So let us take heart, and look up to the One in Whom is all goodness and righteousness. Then for us, there will be a New Year of Hope!

Random Devotional Thoughts

Where is Your Helmet?

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David, the Psalmist in the Bible, could say… “For You are my hope, O Lord GOD: You are my trust from my youth” (Psalm 71:5).

 I was listening to a preacher the other day who was talking about hope. Not hope with the thought of it may or may not happen, but hope as a confidence and certainty. There is another verse in the Bible where it says to put on the helmet of the hope of salvation (1 Thessalonians 5:8). Once we have this helmet firmly on our head, no matter how many darts of doubt and fear Satan fires at us, we can overcome them.

    The law in New Zealand says that it is compulsory for every cyclist to wear a helmet while riding their bike on the road. It is no use carrying it on the handlebars of the bike, because that won’t keep us safe if we have an accident. We have to have it on our head  to be safe. Every time we have an impact, we have to adjust it and wear it properly again.

   So it is when troubles hit us on our ride through life, we have to adjust our helmet of hope and get on our bike and go on again. Every negative thought that Satan gives us, we have to counteract with our helmet of hope, and count our many blessings.

  It is no use counting our blessings on our fingers and our troubles on the calculator, we are to do it the other way around. Every new morning we are to put on our helmet of hope and count our blessings; we are to firmly fasten it with thanksgiving to God, and to resist negative thoughts which come from the evil one. We will then be able to face the new day with a positive and confident “hope” as we go to work.

Daily Devotionals

Our Anchor of Hope

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We had gone into a quiet bay for some rest and relaxation after a day of sailing, and dropped the anchor. But after a while we could see that we weren’t in quite the same place as we had been when the anchor went down. Somehow we had drifted, and were much further out in the bay. So we lifted the anchor, went forwards again, and put out more rope this time, pulling back on it to make sure that it had a good grip in the mud on the bottom.

It’s a lot like that in life at times. There will be times when we think we have a good hold on things and then we find that the winds of life have picked us up and carried us where we don’t want to be. It is in times like this that as we stop and take stock of what is happening around us; we are to go forwards once more and drop our anchor into the hope that God gives us in His Word, the Bible.

It is no use merely dropping the anchor; it is not the anchor that does the holding, it is what the anchor is sitting on. If the bottom has a lot of weed on it, the anchor will just slide along the top of it allowing our boat to drift. It is only as we put out more rope and pull back on it making sure that there is a good grip on the bottom, going through the weeds into the mud beneath, that we can rest in staying in one place. The rope is like the rope of faith in our life… the longer it is, the better the grip. The more we trust God in our difficulties, the stronger our faith becomes, and the firmer grip we have in the storms of life.

Without hope in our life, everything seems pointless, and we tend to get depressed. So it is that without the hope of God’s salvation, we have nothing to look forwards to. God doesn’t intend His people to be swayed around in the storms, but we must do our part by digging deep into His Word for ourselves.

 

Morning Musings

Anchor of Hope.

      Anchor  We had gone into a quiet bay for some rest and relaxation after a day of sailing, and dropped the anchor. But after a while we could see that we weren’t in quite the same place as we had been when the anchor went down. Somehow we had drifted, and were much further out in the bay. So we lifted the anchor, went forwards again, and put out more rope this time, pulling back on it to make sure that it had a good grip in the mud on the bottom.

It’s a lot like that in life at times. There will be times when we think we have a good hold on things and then we find that the winds of life have picked us up and carried us where we don’t want to be. It is in times like this that as we stop and take stock of what is happening around us; we are to go forwards once more and drop our anchor into the hope that God gives us in His Word, the Bible.

It is no use merely dropping the anchor; it is not the anchor that does the holding, it is what the anchor is sitting on. If the bottom has a lot of weed on it, the anchor will just slide along the top of it allowing our boat to drift. It is only as we put out more rope and pull back on it making sure that there is a good grip on the bottom, going through the weeds into the mud beneath, that we can rest in staying in one place. The rope is like the rope of faith in our life… the longer it is, the better the grip. The more we trust God in our difficulties, the stronger our faith becomes, and the firmer grip we have in the storms of life.

Without hope in our life, everything seems pointless, and we tend to get depressed. So it is that without the hope of God’s salvation, we have nothing to look forwards to. God doesn’t intend His people to be swayed around in the storms, but we must do our part by digging deep into His Word for ourselves

Random Devotional Thoughts

Helmet of Hope

Helmet

David, the Psalmist in the Bible, could say… “For You are my hope, O Lord GOD: You are my trust from my youth” (Psalm 71:5).

I was listening to a preacher the other day who was talking about hope. Not hope with the thought of it may or may not happen, but hope as a confidence and certainty. There is another verse in the Bible where it says to put on the helmet of the hope of salvation (1 Thessalonians 5:8). Once we have this helmet firmly on our head, no matter how many darts of doubt and fear Satan fires at us, we can overcome them.

The law in New Zealand says that it is compulsory for every cyclist to wear a helmet while riding their bike on the road. It is no use carrying it on the handlebars of the bike, because that won’t keep us safe if we have an accident. We have to have it on our head  to be safe. Every time we have an impact, we have to adjust it and wear it properly again.

So it is when troubles hit us on our ride through life, we have to adjust our helmet of hope and get on our bike and go on again. Every negative thought that Satan gives us, we have to counteract with our helmet of hope, and count our many blessings.

It is no use counting our blessings on our fingers and our troubles on the calculator, we are to do it the other way around. Every new morning we are to put on our helmet of hope and count our blessings; we are to firmly fasten it with thanksgiving to God, and to resist negative thoughts which come from the Evil One. We will then be able to face the new day with a positive and confident “hope” as we go to work.