How are you doing in your walk with God? Is your faith pleasing God? There are times we stand the promises of God and they seem to be taking time to materialize. While waiting we sometimes struggle to stay focused on the promise. When you can’t see how the promise can be; when you can’t see yourself with the when you ‘cannot see yourself doing that’, then that is an indication that you are missing one of the most important ingredients required for the promise of God to be made manifest – hope. You mean faith will not work without hope? Yes, absolutely, yes. Faith requires hope to produce the promise. Hebrews chapter 11, the famous hall of fame of the Heroes of Faith, opens with the bold declaration: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”. You must have a hope that faith can give substance to. If faith gives substance (material, body, etc.) to your hope, that tells us that faith by itself is not enough to bring the promises of God to pass in your life. If faith needs hope to work, what then is hope?

Romans 4:18 (NIV) states “against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations”. This presents the truth to us that there are two types of hope - natural hope and spiritual or bible hope. Natural hope is always based on what you know, what you can see and what makes natural sense (i.e. the five physical senses). Natural hope will never go beyond what seems possible, your abilities, your education, what you can do without God. This means that natural hope will always limit what we can experience or have. However, there is another kind of hope – bible hope and this is the hope of Hebrews 11:1. This hope is not based on natural circumstances or anything in the natural; it is based on the blessing, God’s ability and solely on what God has promised us.

We know God’s promises from searching His Word. Anything that is part of your redemptive (included in the package of salvation) is yours and you can lay hold on a spiritual hope for it. includes wholeness, protection, provision, prosperity, health, soundness, etc. can also have spiritual hope in what God has spoken to you specifically. If God spoke and you think it is being delayed and you have been standing in faith, check your love gauge and check your hope gauge. You may not have developed your hope, or you may have let the promise go by not intentionally creating hope. If there is no hope, there is nothing for faith to give substance to.

Hope is that internal visualization that creates a picture of your victory and of the promise. Hope will give you an inner vision or picture of yourself with the promise. Because hope is born out of the promise of the Word of God, you must meditate on the Word of God, not memorize it, until the picture changes on the inside. This hope springs from the knowledge and meditation in the promise and must be founded on the knowledge of the – God. You have to know that God does not fail. If He has spoken it, He is behind and watching over His Word to perform it. Bible hope is also based on the knowledge of who you are in Christ Jesus – fully acquitted and forgiven. When God sees you, He sees His righteousness in Christ Jesus, He sees you through the veil of the blood of Christ.

This is important friend, because, no hope, nothing for faith to work with and so no manifestation. How will you know that you have hope? When you have a strong picture on your inside that is so real, it has taken hold of your thinking and it has taken hold of your speaking; when it becomes so real that the inner picture dominates you. Lay hold on hope and give your faith all it needs to work.

Yours in His service,

& the W2NM Team