While I Breathe I Hope

“While I Breathe I Hope.”  I noticed this lovely phrase is on my car’s SC license plate. I never really paid attention to it before G42 but I was so struck by it one day recently, that my own car was speaking life over me before I even realized it. I just love how Jesus works and the power of life and death that is in words, even ones written by someone else on your state-issued license plate. The Lord works in mysterious ways 🙂 

The Lord’s been teaching me about hope a lot in the past few months. You see, I’m in a season of waiting currently. I know you are, too. We all are waiting for something in every season. That’s just the nature of faith. And, who needs hope when you already have everything you desire?  

So, I’m transitioning back into American life and I’m knee-deep in the job search. Trying to enjoy my free time and freedom in this season but also stressing about how I still don’t have a job and when will I acquire one and what if I don’t?  Finding a job in medicine is a long grueling process that feels like forever sometimes and requires a lot of you, but I’m definitely grateful to be in this field. I’m constantly caught between trusting that God will provide an amazing job I’m excited to go to everyday that will provide for me financially and wondering if He’s forgotten about me and if I should just get a job in whatever I can find, even if it’s not in my chosen profession. I’ve seen Him show up countless times just in the past 2 months, but yet, still I doubt sometimes.  

Today, I chose to sit with the Father and renew my mind and just be. And, it was so fruitful and encouraging. I want to share what Holy Spirit had me write out today. 

**In order to have hope and give it away, I must BECOME HOPE, for my hope rests in the Lord and He is IN me, therefore, I can not only have hope in all situations, I can BE hope in all situations. Nothing is hopeLESS if the God of Hope is in me. So, everything, I repeat, everything is HOPEFULL.

**HOPE = trusting in things that are not yet as if they are already and thanking God for them when you haven’t taken ahold of it yet in the physical and this helps manifest it because you’re taking ahold of it already in the spiritual and partnering with God to Let It Be So on earth as it already is in Heaven. 

What are you hoping for, today? 

A job? A spouse? A child? A friend? A promotion? A passing grade? A way out? A prodigal to return home? A breakthrough? A healed marriage? A cure? Reconciliation? Acceptance?

Whatever it is, I challenge you to examine WHO or WHAT you are placing your hopes in and what you’re focusing on. David talks to his soul in Psalms 43, “Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”   

We have a choice. Where will we place our hope?  And will we choose to put on Hope and Be Hope everyday?  Or will we set it aside and choose fear or frustration or distrust of God?  

Friends, we have every reason to be Full of Hope, always. Our God is GOOD and every promise in Him is YES and AMEN! 

So, no matter our circumstances, we clothe ourselves in Hope everyday and trust that God is working all things in His timing for the fulfillment of our desires when our hearts are fully His. And, we take heart, and we rejoice in the waiting. For, it’s all we ever have: the NOW. 

Amidst the unknown, we put our trust in the God we know and who intimately knows us and we say, “Yes.” To His timing and His way. And we take ownership of ourselves and choose in to what He’s doing TODAY, bright-eyed and expectant for what He will do.  

Love y’all!  

Some Maya Angelou wisdom for you:

“Hope and fear cannot occupy space at the same time. Invite one to stay.” 

“The nice thing about hope is that you can give it to someone else who needs it even more than you do and and you will find that you have not given yours away at all.”

“God puts rainbows in the clouds so that each of us in the dreariest and most dreaded moments – can see a possibility of hope.” 

Maya Angelou