May 28, 2025

“Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you believe so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” – Romans 15:13

Hope is what makes life worth living. When someone loses their will to live, what they have really lost is hope. Without hope, life is not truly life. So, determining where our hope lies is one of the most important things to discern in order to experience the kind of abundant life we all desire. Where does your hope lie? That’s a fairly easy question to answer; What occupies your mind most of the time? What do you wake up for each day? What are you most worried about losing? This is the thing (or things) that you rely on to bring you joy and peace every day. This is what it is that you depend on to bring you hope for tomorrow, and what gives you a reason to live.

Paul uses a very interesting phrase in his prayer at the end of the book of Romans; he says, “The God of hope.” Paul is saying that, not only can hope be found in God, but God is the very source of all true hope. Why? Because God is the only one that can bring powerful, faithful, consistent, and unhindered joy and peace to every life. If you look to anything else for your joy and your peace (i.e. if your hope is in anything else) those things will always fall short at some point. Your joy and peace will rise and fall depending on the situation. And during those low times, your hope will be lost. The prayer here is that your hope would be in God so that you would have hope in abundance (“overflowing”). This is exactly how the Christian can be, not only full of hope but, can bring hope into all the lives around them. Because God is the source of our joy and peace, we have plenty of hope to go around!

God of hope, fill us with all joy and peace as we believe so that we may overflow with hope by the power of Your Holy Spirit. Amen.

In Christ’s Service,

Pastor Shane Cannon