Hope, Patience, Prayer

Romans 12:12 (Contemporary English Version)


12Let your hope make you glad. Be patient in time of trouble and never stop praying.

I once listened to a motivational tape by Zig Ziglar. One of the comments that he made was ,”if you have hope in the future then you have power in the present”. This is a truth that is often overlooked by the church and feared by a sinful world. For you see, hope allows us to see that our current situation is temporary. We can be patient in time of trouble because we have hope in a future hapiness.
In Christ, we are given hope through a bloody cross and an empty tomb. Our God ended our fear of death, and for the world, that is the only fear it can truly hold over us. Hope is what let us see the end of death and the beginning of true life. Hope is what allows us to continue on, even in the face of the impossible.

But hope cannot do it all alone, it also takes something else. Communication with the giver of hope is essential in feeling hope in our lives. Prayer is that communication with God that strengthens us and assures us that we can make it through troubling times. Jesus taught us to pray, and showed us that talking with the Father is absolutely essential in our walk of faith. If we do not talk with God, then we tend to listen to the world and its message of death.

Prayer is the key to life, because through prayer, we know hope, and with hope is the power to be patient in times of trouble. What this country needs, and what we need is deliberate, focused, purposeful time with the Master, in essence prayer.

Amen