"Substance of Hope"

"I will wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope." (Psalms 130:5)

  No matter what you might think of my foolish thoughts and the way I express things, "I might not know very much, but I am passionate about the little I do know". That was a quote I heard this morning on Fox and Friends, and I just needed to share it. But, you really should consider what that means, because none of us are experts in the things of God; we can only gleam little bits and pieces of what we read, and then we add to that what we think; but God's word is the bottom line of what the truth is, no matter what we might think. When it comes to the hope for redemption, the very act of redeeming us is 100% God! I know that there is the part where we must ask, but asking is not the redemption; asking for forgiveness is our acknowledgement of the need to be redeemed, which, by the way, He puts 'that' in us too, that we can see our need! Thinking back to that day when I accepted Jesus Christ into my heart, I really didn't need to be asked if I wanted to raise my hand, because I was waiting for some kind of opportunity to do something, whether that be kneeling down, jumping up, or anything else to express the need I had to be redeemed from the body of sin I felt trapped in. When that pastor said, "Raise your hand," I raised both hands as high as I could; and I didn't even wait to hear the rest of what he was trying to say, I was just ready to meet Jesus! I know that I have shared this before, but it is important that I share it again. Prior to that morning, I had spent the last several months reading a little pocket New Testament Bible, over and over again. I would read it when I woke, while I stood in lines, in the yard, when I was going to bed; everywhere and anywhere I was, I had it on me and was reading it any chance I could get; I even slept with it under my pillow at night. Whether you can believe it or not, what that act of dedication was all about, was me putting my hope in the word of God. What I was expecting to get from that, I really had no idea; except for the fact that I was thinking that I would have to serve weekends only, but ended up showing up to jail on a Friday afternoon and staying for six months. Best six months ever! No, seriously; if not for being there, I don't know if it ever would have happened. Unlike some, I believe that the 100% of redemption is all God, but we must still make the choice to grab onto it...

"Now when people take an oath, they call on someone greater than themselves to hold them to it. And without any question that oath is binding. God also bound himself with an oath, so that those who received the promise could be perfectly sure that he would never change his mind. So God has given both his promise and his oath. These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It leads us through the curtain into God's inner sanctuary. Jesus has already gone in there for us. He has become our eternal High Priest in the order of Melchizedek." (Hebrews 6:16-20) NLT