Love the LORD, all his saints! The LORD preserves the faithful, but the proud he pays back in full. Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the LORD.** Psalms 31:23-24 (NIV)**
Believers do not hope in hope rather in Him. As the great old hymn states: “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’ Name.” Christ is the solid rock upon Whom believers place their hopes and stand. And He is faithful and able to cause us to stand. He can be fully trusted with our lives – and of all those we hold near and dear – as through prayer and the relinquishment of our wills we place them in His all powerful and loving Hands.
All throughout Scripture we are told not to fear rather to take heart and be strong in the Lord. Our hope is to be in Him – not in the arms of flesh or in gold or silver or in anything else that perhaps we have wrongly placed values upon. What can mere man do? What can the mere dross of the earth accomplish eternally or even temporally in quieting and giving peace to a sinful soul? Indeed, God desires for us to go from “strength to strength” in our pilgrimages through this dusty earth with our eyes fixed upon Him. The believer’s progress is done through Jesus’ strength by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit and we grow stronger and stronger as we continually obtain fresh supplies of His grace and mercy which is an ever flowing steam that never runs dry. Indeed, if He was faithful in the past, He will be faithful in the present as well. We need not fear as His perfect love for us drives out all our earthly fears. Spurgeon writes: “You shall never find a bundle of afflictions which has not bound up in the middle of it sufficient grace.”
We are told in 1 John 4:18 (NIV): “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” Also, Proverbs 13:12 tells us: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” Be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. Remember He is always working in the wait and there is purpose in all He allows – a purpose we may never know this side of heaven. His timing is always perfect. Always. All that we can hope for is found in His divine portion as only He can totally satisfy the human heart keeping us from wanting. Let Him be your river of pleasure as His boundary lines fall in pleasant places. Surely we have a delightful inheritance.
To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 (NIV)