Don’t Lose Hope

“O Israel, hope in the LORD

from this time forth and forever.”

Psalm 131:3

Jesus is our hope.

No matter how bad things get we can put our hope in Him.

But the devil wants to kill the hope we have.

He doesn’t want us to walk around with hope in our hearts. He wants us to be distraught, fear, hopeless and anxious.

But we must not lose hope.

There is a story from the Word that comes to mind that encourages me so much.

Israel was about to be destroyed by the Babylonians and about to be taken into captivity when God told Jeremiah

something quite confusing:

“Then, just as the Lord had said he would, my cousin Hanamel came and visited me in the prison. He said, “Please buy

my field at Anathoth in the land of Benjamin. By law you have the right to buy it before it is offered to anyone else,

so buy it for yourself.” Then I knew that the message I had heard was from the Lord.”

Jeremiah 32:8

In the midst of such hopeless circumstances, God told Jeremiah to buy land!

It seemed like it was over for the Israelites. The enemy had won. They were by the gate literally.

But it was there that God gave them hope. There was a reason he told Jeremiah to buy land.

 “Then I said to Baruch as they all listened, “This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says: ‘

Take both this sealed deed and the unsealed copy, and put them into a pottery jar to preserve them for a long time.’ 

For this is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says: ‘Someday people will again own property here in

this land and will buy and sell houses and vineyards and fields.’”

Jeremiah 32:13-15

God gave his people hope when it seemed like it was over for them. Jeremiah struggled to understand what God was doing

(Jeremiah 32:24) but God knew what He was doing.

We always have hope with God. Don’t give up trusting in Him even if things are dead and hopeless.

He is Hope!

If you are in a hopeless situation right now and it seems like there is no way, look to God. Don’t give up hoping.

And that’s my encouragement to you today.

Hope in the Lord!

Rolain.

Keep On Believing

When faced with impossible odds and difficult situations we need to keep on praying.

We need to keep trusting and believing that God will come through for us even when our circumstances are

far from ideal. Even when things are going the opposite of what God has promised.

I was so encouraged as I read Luke chapter one. And it’s the story of John’s parents.

“But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will

bear a son, and you shall call his name John.”

Luke 1:13

We know Zechariah has been praying for a child because the angel was there because of his prayer;

“Do not be afraid Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard”

He kept praying and trusting God for a child in spite of the impossible circumstances he and Elizabeth were in;

“And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord.

But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.”

Luke 1:6, 7

They were advanced in age and Elizabeth was barren but that didn’t stop them from trusting God for a child. That didn’t

stop Zechariah from praying. No matter how impossible it seemed, he kept praying, he kept trusting God.

As the years went by they didn’t stop believing. They did not give up.

And because they didn’t give up they received an answer to their prayers!

And that’s what I want to encourage you with.

No matter how impossible your situation seems, keep praying, keep trusting in the Lord. Don’t give up hope.

God will fulfill what He promised you.

Even though things are going wrong in your life and prayer doesn’t seem to be getting answered don’t stop.

Keep on believing that God will come through for you because He will.

And with that I have come to the end of the post.

Thank you for reading it and I would love to hear what your thoughts are on the topic.

And remember, no matter how impossible the odds seem, don’t give up praying, don’t give up trusting God.

Bless you friends

Rolain

The Plan Is On

Hey friends.

I can’t believe a month has already passed us by!

I had decided to take a break in January and I am glad I did that.

But I am really pumped to be back.

So I know this is late but Happy New Year to you all!

I wanted to focus on Jeremiah 29:11 today. It’s a very popular passage of scripture and it’s one of my favorites for sure!

But I want to look at in context because I think it’s even more powerful when you look at the full picture.

“These are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders of the exiles, and to

the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.”

Jeremiah 29:1

God’s people were forcefully taken away from their home. It had been destroyed and burned by the Babylonians.

So there they were in a foreign land with no hope for the future. They were discouraged, hopeless and lost in Babylon.

But in the midst of those grim circumstances God had a word for His people,

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

Jeremiah 29:11

In that hopeless situation, God’s plan for His people was very much alive. Even though it was hard to see at the moment, God

would free them from their captives. He had an amazing plan for them!

You may be in a place today and you are hopeless and see no future for yourself but I want to encourage you to keep hoping.

Hold on to your faith in God because He has a plan for your life, an amazing life. In spite of the grim circumstances, God’s plan

for your life is very much alive. Don’t lose hope.

Bless you friends

Rolain

You Are Not Alone at Christmas!

Christmas is a few days away and there are a lot of people who are excited. And how can they not be?

The Christmas tree is decorated

The gifts are ready

The family is coming over

The food is sorted

Friends will be there

and so on and so on…

But there is another reality to Christmas. The reality that there are a lot of people facing depression, people who are contemplating

suicide, people who are facing mental health issues and so many other negative things.

But there is an answer to all the pain and difficult things we go through not just at Christmas but throughout the year.

“He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, and as one from whom

men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”

Isaiah 53:3 ASV

I love this scripture because it’s talking about JESUS. He was despised and rejected by men. He was acquainted with grief.

He was a man of sorrows! What a title.

If there is anyone who knows the pain you are going through it’s JESUS. He knows exactly what you are going through?

He knows the darkness you are in and the chains that are suffocating you.

He knows the hopelessness you are feeling at the moment and that is why you should call on Him immediately.

Whatever you are going through at the moment I want you to know that you are not alone. He is with you. He wants

to help you and bring you out of the darkness. He wants to break the chains that are suffocating you right now.

Whatever pain and heartache you are going through remember that Jesus went through it. He was the man of sorrows.

“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.”

Isaiah 53:4 ASV

Give Him your grief. He will carry your sorrow.

So cry out to Him for help. He loves you and wants to be there for you.

He knows your every pain that you are going through right now.

There is hope for you this Christmas friend. And His name is JESUS!

Rolain

 

Why the Delay God?

“Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days, and then he said to his disciples, let us go back to Judea.”

John 11:5-7 ESV

As I read this scripture I couldn’t help but think why Jesus stayed two days longer where He was instead of going to Lazarus immediately? After all the Word tells us that He LOVED Martha, Mary and Lazarus.

Why did He delay?

Because He was about to something amazing. He knew Lazarus would die but He wanted to show everyone His glory. But He was the only One who knew what was about to happen. Mary and Martha on the other hand didn’t. And that must have been hard for them. They knew Jesus loved them so they expected Him to respond immediately but that’s not what happened.

“So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”

One thing we can be sure of is that Jesus did not delay because He was trying to be mean or because He enjoyed seeing people suffer. He loved this family.

As you wait on the Lord you need to remember that the Lord makes you wait because He loves you. Even in the midst of delays He loves you and Has a plan. Behind the delays there is love and I know that’s a difficult statement because delays are not an easy thing to deal with. It’s easy to think God has abandoned us or He doesn’t care about us when delays happen. But He does care and He loves you deeply. He knows exactly what you are feeling, the fears, the confusion, the anxiety, the frustration…

He knows it all. In John 11:35 we read a very popular verse,

“Jesus wept.”

He wept because He knew what the sisters were going through. He could identify with the pain they were feeling.

As you wait and as you face delays know that God loves you so much. He understands everything you are feeling and going through. Trust Him in the wait. Trust Him when the delays come.

The Lord has a plan in the wait and in the delays. Don’t lose hope. You are not alone in the wait. He is right by your side. His purposes for your life will be accomplished as you wait on Him in faith! And always remember that He loves you so much.

God bless you friends

Rolain

Before The Time Of Fulfillment

“So now wrap your heart tightly around the hope that lives within us,

Knowing that God always keeps his promises!

Hebrews 10:23 TPT

We serve a God who fulfills promises. What He has promised you, He will bring to pass. But we all know that there is a middle between when the promise is made and when it is fulfilled and that middle is filled with trials, tests, and difficult challenges. I like to use another name for the middle stuff – crucible.

What’s your attitude like as you are in the crucible?

Have you got an attitude of faith and fully expectant that God is with you in the fire or have you lost hope? Have you given up on God because of the intensity of the fire?

I want to encourage you to not lose heart and to keep holding on to the Lord in the midst of the fire.

He will bring to pass what He has promised you. He is with you in the fire because He loves you and because he has a promise to fulfill. He will never abandon you because He is faithful.

I think of Joseph who was given an amazing promise. But instead of everything going smoothly until the promise was fulfilled, he was shipped off to a foreign land as a slave. In fact, he nearly lost his life. Things went terribly wrong for him but in the midst of the fire we see something amazing,

“Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt. Potiphar, an Egyptian who was one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had taken him there. The Lord was with Joseph so that he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master.”

Genesis 39:1, 2 NIV

“But while Joseph was there in the prison, the Lord was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden.”

Genesis 39:20 NIV

God was with him in the crucible, in the fire. He never left him. And it’s the same with you and me. God is with you in the fire. He has not abandoned you no matter how intense the fire is. The trials and the tests and the difficult challenges have a purpose.

“Count it all joy, my brothers when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

James 1:2 NLT

The trials and the tests strengthen your faith. Through each trial and test your faith is getting stronger and stronger. The Word actually tells us to be joyful when trials come our way.

So as you go through the fire know that God is with you and there is a very important work happening in you – the strengthening of your faith in God.

Like I said earlier, God will fulfill what he has promised you. It’s just a matter of time. So as you approach the time of promise and you are in the fire know that God is with you. He will not leave you alone. Let me share one last scripture before I sign off.

“And the Lord gave them rest on every side, just as he had solemnly promised their ancestors. None of their enemies could stand against them, for the Lord helped them conquer all their enemies. Not a single one of all the good promises the Lord had given to the family of Israel was left unfulfilled; everything he had spoken came true.”

Joshua 21:44, 45 NLT

Bless you friends

Rolain 

What God Does With Our Rough Starts

No matter how bad a start you have had in life know that God is stronger and greater than your past. No matter how dark your past has been, how painful and hopeless it was, know that God will turn it around. You can look forward in hope because He has better things in store for you. Don’t let the negative things you experienced in the past make you think that things will not change. They will change because God is in full control of your life and He has an amazing future in store for you.

I think of Mary Magdalene.

She had a rough start. She had been demon possessed and was a prostitute but her life was turned around when she met Jesus. He cast out the seven demons that had possessed her (Luke 8:1, 2). Her life was never the same after she met Jesus.

She was the first person to see Jesus after He got resurrected (John 20:14-17)

We don’t know much about her life after Jesus ascended to heaven but I would like to guess she was used mightily by God. Her life was never the same again because Jesus turned her darkness and rough start into something beautiful.

As I come to the end of the post I want to encourage you to be expectant for what God has in store for you. No matter how rough your start has been know that God has something better for you.

Don’t allow the enemy to lie to you that things will never change because it’s a lie. You can be expectant for things to change because God is the One who is orchestrating things in your life. Put all of your hope in Him. Trust Him with your life!

Bless you friends

Rolain

God loves To Come Through For Us

“But she said, “I swear by the Lord your God that I don’t have a single piece of bread in the house.

And I have only a handful of flour left in the jar and a little cooking oil in the bottom of the jug.

I was just gathering a few sticks to cook this last meal, and then my son and I will die.”

1 Kings 17: 12

The widow at Zarephath was in a crisis. The little food she had left was about to run out.

She had gone to gather a few sticks she could use to cook the last meal for her and her son then die.

Like I said, crisis.

But God came through for her. He sent Elijah and when she obeyed him by making him a meal

first the Lord provided for her in an amazing way.

“So she did as Elijah said, and she and Elijah and her family continued to eat for many days.  

There was always enough flour and olive oil left in the containers, just as the Lord had promised

through Elijah.”

1 Kings 17:15, 16

I share this scripture because it teaches us a truth about our God – He loves to come through for us.

No matter how bad things get God has got your back.

No matter how deep you are in trouble, God will help you out.

When there seems to be no way out of the trouble you face, He will ALWAYS come through for you.

Throughout scripture we see this truth play out over and over and over.

With Daniel when he was thrown in the lions den

With David, when King Saul was hunting him down

When Hannah was being ridiculed for being barren

When the Israelites were trapped by the Red Sea as the Egyptians chased them

I could go on and on but I think you get the picture.

God loves to come through for you.

So in whatever trouble you find yourself no matter how bad it is, remember that

God is for you. He wants to help you.

Ask for His help always!

Bless you friends

Rolain

What Truth Are You Living By?

Some years back I took a course on Cognitive Psychology. It was a God-send for me because

prior to taking the course my mind was a mess. My thoughts were destructive, I had no self-esteem,

I didn’t think I could amount to anything and so many other destructive mental issues.

The core principle of the course is,

“We behave and act, not in accordance with the truth as the truth might be.

We behave and act in accordance with the truth as we believe it or perceive it to be.”

There were a lot of “truths” I had to unlearn that I had picked up growing up. And the course

helped me change those “truths”. Being a Christian doing the course was a huge benefit to

me because I had met the TRUTH so I was replacing the old “truths” with His Truth.

I share this because there are so many “truths” out there and not all truth is truth.

Where did you get the “truths” you are currently holding on to?

Are they based on the Word of God or are they based on something you read on the news,

on social media or something you watched on TV and the many other sources out there?

We need to be careful where we get our “truths”

Looking at the Word I think of Gideon.

His truth was,

“So he said to Him, “O my Lord, how can I save Israel?

Indeed my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my Father’s house.”

Judges 6:15

He grew up being told his clan was the weakest and was probably reminded that he was

the least. That’s the “truth” he adopted but it wasn’t true. God had another truth for

Gideon. And not just any truth but THE truth.

God’s truth for Gideon was that he was a mighty man of valor.

Man’s truth for Gideon was not God’s truth for him and that’s important to note.

God has a TRUTH for you that’s totally different to the truths out there. You don’t have to

live by the “truths” you have been given by people that tear you down, that tell you can’t

make it, that you will amount to nothing, that you have no future to look forward to and so

many other negative things. God has a better and greater truth for you.

It was a similar story for the woman with the issue of blood. (Luke 8: 43-48)

For twelve years she tried to find a cure to her ailment. But the answer was the same for

every doctor she went to. There was no cure for her no matter how much money she spent.

That was the “truth” she was given.

But one day she heard about Jesus and in faith decided to lay aside the “truth” she was

told for twelve years and got a hold of the real TRUTH. And once she did that she received

her healing.

The “truth” she had been told for twelve years was no match for Jesus. I don’t know how many

seconds it took to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment but that was enough to nullify the “truth”

she previously held. And that’s why it’s important to go the right source for truth.

The truth we find in Jesus is more powerful than every other “truth” out there.

His truth liberates and frees.

The wrong “truth” binds, instills fear, and limits God’s power in our lives.

So as I close I want to encourage you to take a look at the truths you are holding onto.

If it’s not helping you then it needs to go.

Look to Jesus who is TRUTH.

In Him we find real truth for every area of our lives.

Bless you

Rolain

What Hard Times Teach Us About God

We don’t face difficult times for the fun of it. The world is broken and there is nothing

we can do to escape the tragedies that come our way but there is a hope for us in the

midst of the darkness. As we walk through the valley of the shadow of death we can

be guaranteed that the Lord is with us. He won’t let us be consumed by the enemy.

Look at what happened to Daniel. (Daniel 6)

The king had intended to promote him but the governors around him were jealous

so they tricked the king into making a law that banned anyone from making any

requests to any god besides the king. But as was his custom Daniel opened his window

and prayed to God.

The jealous people saw this and took him to the king for punishment.

The penalty for disobeying the king’s command was a trip into the lion’s death.

Daniel was in serious trouble.

But in one of his darkest times the Lord never left him. He protected him in the lion’s den.

The lion’s den was the enemy’s way of destroying Daniel but instead of death, Daniel

experienced the faithfulness of God.

I also think of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego and how they were in trouble when they

refused to bow down to the king’s idol. The penalty for disobeying the king’s command

was death by fire but once again, instead of dying in the fire, they saw the Son of God!

In their dark time the Lord showed up for them and delivered them in a powerful way.

I want to remind you that in your difficult times, the Lord is with you like He was with

Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego.

In the fire, and in the lion’s den the Lord is with you.

Trust in the Lord like they did.

As I conclude I want to share Isaiah 54:17 with you

“No weapon that is fashioned against you shall succeed,”

Bless you friends

Rolain