Doubt

I’m joining with the #Five Minute Friday community of writers today, to write on the one word prompt; which today is: DOUBT.

Doubt.

Friend or foe?

Doubt hangs about me as if he was my friend; he is always there when I am reflecting and thinking things through. He is always there when I have questions on my mind and even in the wee small hours of the night he seems to be there.

So is he my friend? Does he actually help me? Is he a positive influence on my life?

No, he is not!

So why do I still court him?

Why do I still allow him access to my inner most thoughts?

We are always told nowadays to get rid of those ‘toxic friendships’ which are harmful to us.

So I need to get rid of this Mr Doubt fellow! I need to cut him off from my life.

I guess the fear is if I don’t have him to cling to then who or what do I cling to; who will be my new friend?

The song comes to mind, ‘What a friend we have in Jesus’

What a friend we have in Jesus,
all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry
everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit,
O what needless pain we bear,
all because we do not carry
everything to God in prayer!

2 Have we trials and temptations?
Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged;
take it to the Lord in prayer!
Can we find a friend so faithful
who will all our sorrows share?
Jesus knows our every weakness;
take it to the Lord in prayer!

3 Are we weak and heavy laden,
cumbered with a load of care?
Precious Savior, still our refuge–
take it to the Lord in prayer!
Do your friends despise, forsake you?
Take it to the Lord in prayer!
In his arms he’ll take and shield you;
you will find a solace there.

So I need to court Jesus as my friend! I need to seek Him out.

Jesus is a good friend; His friendship is healing; His friendship is wholesome; His friendship is peaceful; His friendship is freeing.

I need to go to Him for advice when reflecting and questioning and it is Him I need to find in the wee small hours of the night and Him I need to go to for my solace.

So today I say goodbye to Doubt and welcome my friend Jesus.

Receive

Delighted to be joining #FiveMinuteFriday group for the first word of the new year! And the word prompt we are writing on today is: Receive.

So after a short ponder to see where my thoughts would take me on this word and concept of receiving I thought of this verse from John where Jesus is talking to a Samaritan woman at a well and he says this to her:

Jesus replied, “If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to,

you would ask me, and I would give you living water.”

John 4:10

If you knew.

If you knew the gift God has for you.

And who you are speaking to.

Your would ask me

And I would give you ..

So is our asking too small, are our prayers to small, is our God too small?

If we really knew God to be the Majestic, powerful God, creator of the universe that He is, then we would not be limited in what we ask Him for!

Do we really believe that He is able to do ALL things, that nothing is impossible to Him?

Then we would ask and we would receive.

Much to ponder about this today!

HOPE

Every New Year, I have a word and a text which I carry into the year with me, I rarely know the significance of that word at the start of the year, but as the year and the word unravel I find that they greet and meet one another as faith and circumstances converge.

The word this year has been with me throughout this past Advent Season, it is the word: Hope. With every carol we have sung there has been a longing; an anticipation, even an expectation and you can’t have those things without hope.

The dictionary meaning of hope = A feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen.

So what do we hope for from life, from 2023? Peace; happiness, health; prosperity; good times? And yet do we have assurance that these things will be given? No, we have no such assurance, our hope is unsubstantiated, why? Because no-one has promised us these things, no-one has given us any assurance that these things will be ours.

So what is hope then, what can we be assured off, what have we been promised and by whom?

For that my dear friend, we have to turn to God, because He alone is the promise-maker, the promise-keeper and the one alone who is able to fulfill and carry out these promises in a way that we can place our confident hope in Him.

John Piper defines Biblical hope as: “not just a desire for something good in the future, but rather, a confident expectation for something good in the future. it expects it to happen. And it not only expects it to happen — it is confident that it will happen.”

So what are some of the things we hope for and have assurance of ?

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people,

Ephesians 1:18

Hope is faith in the future tense.

Hope is looking forward to that day of Christ’s return when all the wrongs will be made right, where justice will win, when wars will cease, where sin and sickness are no more and where there are no more sorrows or partings or death. Hope holds on to that glorious day!

Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. and hope does not disappoint, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

Romans 5:3-5

So even though life may be tough, even though we have trials and tribulations, the hope that tribulation builds in us is not a hope that will be disappointed.

How?

We have assurance because God has proved His intention to complete His work in us and that proof was in sending His own Son to die on our behalf so that we may have reconciliation with God, so that we might be called His children

God is faithful to all His promises, so we can have hope.

In this ‘in-between’ time of Jesus coming as a man to die for our sins and Him coming again to bring justice and to reign forevermore, we have hope. We have confident expectation that what He has said will come to pass.

Whatever promises of His we are holding onto today or for the coming year, we can have hope, we can have confident expectation that He will fulfill His promises.

So as we enter 2023, we can have confident expectation that God will fulfill all His promises He has made to us.

So we long, we wait, we have assurance, we trust, we persevere and we HOPE.

Hope in God anchors us.

Hope in God does not disappoint us.

Hope in God brings peace.

So as we go forward into the New Year may we place our hope on the Promise Keeper and look to Him with confident expectation that He will fulfill His promises to us because He is able to do it..