Merit or Mercy

The blessing and favor of God cannot be merely a matter of merit; it must be a matter of mercy. Recently I began to mentally itemize the reasons that God should bless me. The Spirit quickly began His own itemized list of reasons as to why I should not be blessed. The Spirit's list was longer and more significant than my list. God was trying to remind me that His blessing and favor flows out of His mercy and not my merit. Trust!

Hope Is Rude

How dare hope ignore my decision to quit? Hope's assiduous insistence on my believing that my future is bright can get annoying. Hope refuses to listen to my calm, collected and evidence-based case proving my fatalistically determined fate of failure. Hope is rude! Instead of just accepting my demise, it is peskily insistent that I believe for greatness.

The other thing that can be annoying about Hope, when you have determined to quit, is its sneakiness. You think that you have convinced Hope that there is no hope, and you are content with being despondent, then out of no where you are blinded by the glimmer of possibility and all you can see for a moment is a bright future. But, then you have to calmly remind yourself that you are a loser. The only problem is, Hope does not give up so easily.

Hope always finds a way, like the woman with the issue of blood, to crawl and claw its way through the crowd of fear and unbelief and touch the hem of Jesus' garment. The Holy Spirit produces hope in the life of the believer. It is impossible to have the Holy Spirit and not have a hope that continues to resurface in your spirit. While the sinner may have to struggle to get a hold of hope, the believer has to fight to resist hope. Hope is a natural characteristic of the Spirit-filled life (like Grace, Hope is not a blue-eyed blond).