Written By Sharon Blake
I am in need this morning of my Saviors voice to stream into my room with a bountiful ray of hope. I know that only he can supply my needs and only he will fulfill all that is hopeless and faithless in me. However, hope deferred kills the very fiber of your being, yet patience is required to deliver a thing. So do we separate hope and faith or do we change our views? Can we say then that it is not hope deferred any more but it is patience working its course?
See, how we view life is critical to what we get out of this life we live. I believe that our minds thought process must align with faith and not just hope. The bible declares in (Hebrew 11:1), "that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the EVIDENCE of things not seen." This is how we know that faith and hope are both needed for our success in this life.
So how does hope and faith differ? Faith and hope are defined in the dictionary as follows; Faith is confidence or trust in a person or thing or a belief not based on proof and Hope is an optimistic attitude of mind based on an expectation or desire. Faith says it is so now, and hope says in the future it could happen. We need hope and faith, we can look at hope like a stepping stone in elementary school and pure faith as graduate school tests passed. When an individual has no thoughts of faith whatsoever then we must begin depositing hope seeds into their lives. Hope seeds planted in one's life can be the catalyst for the roots and the foundations of one's faith walk. Often times we have to introduce hope way before we can even begin to think about serving 12 ounces of faith. At some point in our spiritual growth walk we must come to the graduation ceremony of hope for a particular thing.
Faith being the substance of things hoped for means that we must have a base mindset of faith in order to receive what we need from God. We have to truly know and believe that what we set our minds to believe and focus on is what will come to pass. Hope speaks of the future and faith speaks for the now in life. So once we graduate from hope to faith we will then begin to see the greater fruit of the seeds of our thought process now. We plant seeds everyday even if we think we do not. Our thoughts are our seeds of this life so what are we planting?
Let's forget about the past failures and begin to live by faith alone. Let's begin to allow faith to grow strong through hope and live in our minds. It sounds like a tall order for those who have only lived by hope but let's challenge ourselves to live by faith today. Faith and hope truly work together for our good.
Sharon Blake is a mother of three children and "nana" to four grandchildren. Sharon herself has overcome some major barriers in her life, she has been homeless and is an ex- addict, ex-prostitute and a domestic violence survivor. The person she became originated from her childhood and would require a major overhaul of her thoughts, will, and her emotions. Her desire is to promote hope and healing to those who need hope and healing. Sharon has created some support programs called, " Friday Night Talks" at local area shelter to foster hope and healing through communication and writing.
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