Acts of Hope

Have you ever heard someone say that when you are depressed, you should help someone else? Have you ever heard someone say that you should praise God even when you don't feel like it?

I've been told these things more times than I can count. And it was always a struggle for me to wrap my heart around.

Because there were many times that I had been depressed in the past and helped others, and in the process I was believing things that weren't true - that my feelings didn't matter, that I didn't matter, that I had to fix them in order to be okay. But those didn't come from God - they came from the enemy of my soul who wants to keep me as far from God's love as possible.

And there were times that I didn't feel like praising God and it seemed like I would be fake or a hypocrite if I praised Him anyway.

Can you relate to either of these?

Well, this morning, my heart began to grasp this in a greater way. I will explain with a story...

Imagine yourself on the bus, 5 minutes away from home. You are holding an apple, and you are about to start eating it (discreetly, of course, so that the bus driver doesn't notice...) when a desperate-looking man asks if he can have your apple.

Now, you happen to know for a fact that there is a big bowl of fruit sitting on your kitchen table. So, you hand him your apple without a second thought.

You can hand him the apple because you have the hope of eating an apple in just a few minutes. And if you want, maybe you will also eat an orange and a kiwi.

Well, the application of this is a lot more difficult, but it is the same principle. I know (whether I feel it or not) that God loves me, that my feelings DO matter to Him, and that I can trust Him to fix whoever or whatever needs to be fixed.

So I can reach out and encourage someone, even when my heart feels hopeless, because I have hope in a God who has a whole bowl full of love and encouragement waiting for me! Even if I can't see it.

And, I can praise God, not pretending to be happy, but choosing to focus on the things that are true even when I don't feel them.

The truth is, if you have confessed with your mouth Jesus is truly in charge of the whole planet and your life and believed in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, then you have a real and factual hope.

So even if you don't feel hopeful, you can still act on the hope that you have.

And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love. (Romans 5:5)