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.

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.

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. :)

Hope Is

Hope is scary
Hope is hard
Hope is painful

I am learning to hope in the Lord,  but I am also hoping for specific things.  Things I want, and am trying to determine if they are what the Lord wants for me. The hope for these things, events, people, could not come to fruition, and that makes is scary to hope, hard to hope, painful to hope. That's why the core of my hope is in my Savior, and what he has planned for me. Why I pray to see if my hopes are aligned with His plans. But even if they are, I can't control anymore than my own actions, and neither will God. He may plan something, and influence us, guide us. But he can't guide us if we aren't seeking Him. So I hope for something, but know that it may not happen. And that is just terrifying.

 But I know that God will catch me if everything falls through, that his works are not frustrated when people exercise their free agency. He just adapts. And I can trust in that, hope in that. That makes hope beautiful and safe.

Hope is beautiful
Hope is safe

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.

Defining

I am truly inspired by how much of a community One Word 2011 has become.  Honestly, I just like linking up for the connection it gives me to other bloggers, and hey, I get more hits on my blog. I realize, though, I read through my comments, that people are now looking to me for what I have to say about hope. It’s like having an accountability partner, and I like that. I like that I am being held to the commitment to embrace this theme of hope in my life. Beause living with hope sounds like a wonderful idea. Especially if my hope is anchored in my Savior.

So I decided to look up some definitions for the word hope. I went to dictionary.com and found this:

–noun

1.the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that eventswill turn out for the best: to give up hope.

2.a particular instance of this feeling: the hope of winning.

3.grounds for this feeling in a particular instance: There is littleor no hope of his recovery.

4.a person or thing in which expectations are centered: Themedicine was her last hope.

5.something that is hoped for: Her forgiveness is my constanthope.

–verb (used with object)

6.to look forward to with desire and reasonable confidence.

7.to believe, desire, or trust: I hope that my work will besatisfactory.

–verb (used without object)

8.to feel that something desired may happen: We hope for anearly spring.

9.Archaic . to place trust; rely (usually fol. by in ).

I really like 4, 6, and 9. These are definitions of a more solid hope, the kind of hope I want to have. Trust in God, with a more than reasonable confidence that I can rely on Him. I have always believed that I am strong in my faith and commitment to God, but feel that really learning to center my hope in Him this year, I will draw even closer to him than before. 

Something New

Something new in 2011. The challenge to share what kind of newness I have planned comes from one of my favorite inspirational blogs, (in)courage. Well, I'll be honest. I don't know what's in store for me.  I'm feeling kinda lost right now. 2010 was a rather hard year, what with the end of my marriage...well part of me still hopes my marriage is salvageable, but most of me knows it's not...Excuse the ramble. Suffice to say, I am really floundering, jobless, soon-to-be divorced, and a little purposeless.

But hey, I graduated from college last year, so that was good, a big achievement! I have a BS in Psychology, and I think one new thing I will do this year is to get certified as a psychiatric technician. That will open all sorts of new doors for me as I hunt for a job. Other new things: well I hope to have a car very soon, my first car. That will be new and exciting.

But no real focus yet. I am looking hard for focus, praying hard that God has something marvelous and new in store that I just can't see yet. I look forward to whatever newness 2011 will bring with my hope firmly centered in my Savior. Bring on the new!

Hope

A lot of bloggers are choosing one word for 2011. I have to say one word is easier and less intimidating than making several resolutions. With one word, you can apply it to all things without straining to define goals so exactly.

I have chosen the word HOPE. Hope for a better future. Hope in God's promises.  We hope all things...we hope to be able to endure all things (Article of Faith 13).  Being hopeful and looking to the future instead of being downcast about all that may have gone wrong last year.

To me, hope is not just a wishy-washy word: "Oh, I hope so" Hope is a strong word, like faith: I hope in God for a better life, a better year.

I picked this word before the New Year, I just hadn't taken the time to blog about it yet. And now as I reflect on some things that have happened in the short 7 days since the year began, it is a very apt word for me to have chosen. It fits oh so well.  Hope. Hope that things will work out for good.  Here's to a hope-filled 2011.