Abound in Hope

Romans 15:13 Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that ye may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost.

I love every line of this scripture. They all just carry such a punch!

First: Now may the God of hope. Our God is a God of hope. He has given us the Atonement that we may find hope, not be in despair. (A thought I borrowed from a dear friend who spoIke in church on Sunday). To quote a favorite hymn: I stand all amazed! (I Stand All Amazed)

Next: fill you will all joy and peace. God wants us to have joy! He wants us to have peace! I love the description of peace that says true peace is not when our outer circumstances are at peace, but when we find peace in spite of them, inside of us. God can fill us with that peace when we come unto him. I am so grateful for a loving, bountiful God

Then: that ye may abound in hope.  Abound! What a powerful word. Abound in hope. Hope for eternal salvation. Hope for a better future. Hope that surrounds us and lifts us up. I just revel in the word abound.

Lastly: through the power of the Holy Ghost.  Hope through the power of the Holy Ghost.  As we live worthy to have the companionship of the Holy Ghost, as we seek our Father in prayer, the Holy Ghost will fill us with hope. What a beautiful plan!

Have a wonderful Tuesday. Linking up with Jen.

Accepting the Challenge to be Positive

Just when I was ready to be negative for a while, God created a little miracle. Three, count them three!, of the blogs I read regularly had posts on being positive yesterday. The first from the inspiring Gitz: life. The second from adorable Amanda: The Pollyanna Project. And the third from my dear friend, Kristin: Happy, Table for 2.

All three focused on shifting perspective. Stop focusing on the negative, on what we don't have, and look at what  we do have, what God has blessed us with, and how He sees our lives. This was a much needed paradigm shift for me. I have accepted Amanda's Pollyanna challenge: to choose positivity, to choose love, to choose to smile. I  have taken to heart Gitz's advice to open my eye's to God's perspective- the eternal one that is so much grander than this small view we have now.  I have chosen, like Kristin, to see the happy coming up, to have faith.

I am so grateful for these dear girls and how they helped me look beyond whatever unhappiness or toughness may face me currently, and reach for the hope that God so graciously holds out for me. I choose to hope in my God, who will strengthen my heart (Psalms 31:24).

Who inspires you?

found @ weheartit

Strengthen Your Heart

Be of good courage, and he will strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord. (Psalm 31:24)

As my one word for the year, hope has been very real to me already this year. I have hoped for things that already have not panned out. But I know that my hope in God will always always be fulfilled.

As I have walked in the ways He has asked me to, God has been there with me every step of the way. He is filling me even now with new hope for a brighter future. My heart has indeed been strengthened and renewed. I can look forward now and really see the brightness the future has in store. I wake up happy, and have fallen asleep happy. Some nights, I still fight the tears, and sometimes, it feels a little odd to be happy...but I think God understands that too.

Found @ We Heart It

My hope is ever in the Lord because He is ever faithful, ever the same. It is a beautiful thing to know that even if everything else were to fall apart, I would still have a safe place to fall. He is showing me that safe place now, filling me with a new hope for a new future. Blessed be His Name.

Josh Wilson - Before The Morning

This song is so beautiful and touches the broken pieces of my heart. I love remembering that the pain is nothing compared to the joy He's working in my future.

This song also reminds me that as long as my hope is in God, this pain I am feeling cannot swallow me; God is my strength and my salvation (Isaiah 12:2). 

Live In It

"The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance, but live right in it, under its roof." -Barbara Kingsolver, found via finestquotes.com

I love that. Live right in it! That's exactly what I feel the whole One Word movement is all about, living right in the word we have chosen. My word just happens to be hope, and fits right in the quote above.

 I know that I hope in my Savior, and that I truly want to live in that hope. I want everything I do to find its beginnings in the hope I place in my Savior. I don't want to act out of fear or desperation or anything else but hope: trust and faith in God that he will direct me for good (Alma 37:37). I want to live under hope's roof, to make it my anchor  (Heb. 6:19, Ether 12:4), letting it make me sure and steadfast.  Hope is powerful, my friends.

Linking up with Jen at Finding Heaven. :)

Shattered Heart, Meet Your Healer

Healing is a process, and it doesn't help the process when the door is not completely shut or open. This separation with the intent to divorce feels like a revolving door sometimes, where for a stretch of time,  I will be healing and recovering just fine, and then one little thing will send me shooting back to down to the depths of rejection and hurt. My favorite little moment, to add on to quite a few lately, is my estranged husband using the lame lame line that maybe some people just make better friends than lovers. Twist that knife, sweetheart.

What keeps me going, even when I am in searing pain, is my faith. I know that my God can heal this, will heal this. That when all is said and done, I will be whole because God gave me a Savior. My job is to turn all this hurt over to Him (Matt 11:28-30), to hope in Him (1 Pet 1:18-21). As long as I keep my focus on my Savior, nothing can go permanently wrong (Howard W Hunter, BYU Devotional, 3/14/89, paragraph 9). Pray with me that I can follow my Savior completely and wholly, holding nothing back, that I will listen and obey even if it seems hard or inconvenient.

Hope Maketh Not Ashamed

I have been chasing after hope, as Alece phrased it in one of my comments. I seek it constantly and focus my scripture study around it, and get excited when I see a post about hope on other websites. The scripture I'm posting about tonight I found via Fresh Brew, the blog for a neat website, Ungrind. Their topic for the month is hope. :) I love finding extra inspiration like that.

The scripture my title comes from is Romans 15:5 (Fresh Brew actually references 15:15, but I found more personal meaning in verse 5).  And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is spread abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. The hope here is the result of experience, which is the result of patience, which is the result of tribulation. Through tribulation, we can find hope. Hope in God, and when our hope is in God we are not ashamed, but filled with love. What a wonderful way to live. Much better than letting the tribulations squash us, as maybe I'm tempted to let happen sometimes. But I realized tonight that I am feeling more hopeful lately, I am looking to the future with my hope securely attached to God and His plan for my life. Yeah, my life isn't perfect, or what I expected, wanted, but God is there, and as long as I hope in Him, my future is exceedingly bright.

How does hope make your life better?

Struggling to Find My Way to Coherent

I have been trying for a couple of days now to write a coherent post to share all that is going through my mind. I wanted to write a post to introduce myself a little more. I wanted to explain why I chose hope. I wanted to share the way my divorce pulls my heart into a thousand pieces time and time and time again. Yet I cannot string together a decent post no matter how hard I try. And I usually am pretty good at writing.

To introduce myself, I will say that I like to be honest about my struggles, about my life. My name is Rachel, I am almost 23 years old. I am the oldest of 7, counting my 3 biological siblings and my 3 step-siblings and me. I have three great parents, my mom, my dad, and my step-mom. My parents divorced when I was about 15, and now a little less than 10 years later, I am going through my own divorce. If I had the chance to write a letter to me at 13, I wouldn't. At least not until I have some more positive stuff to say. Oh hey, hon, your parents are about to divorce, and in 10 years, you'll be going through your own. Oh, and you did graduate from college. Yeah, that is not a big enough achievement to overshadow all the negative, not to a 13-year-old at least, who can barely breathe through all the new hormones in her system.

So, that's why I chose hope, because I have to have hope that my life will get better, or I might just go crazy. I do have a wonderful family, and I do love my dad's new family, I am basically recovered from my parents divorce; I have Christ in my life through my membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; I am a college grad. I have a lot going for me, and I don't forget that. But the pain of a divorce is monumental, and overwhelming some days.  But I do truly have hope that my afflictions shall be but a small moment (Doctrine and Covenants 121:7)

Was this maybe too honest, too raw? You tell me. Tomorrow, I'll post 5 fun facts about me to lighten the mood.