Hope

Hey everyone, so I decided to talk about hope this week because everyone could use some hope in their lives especially with everything going on in this world.  For me personally, these past few weeks have been pretty stressful off and on with different stuff happening both at work and home with different situations to where there have been times that I’ve either said that I need some space or have broken into tears or both sometimes. Maybe your life is crazy in different ways well, I’m here to tell you that there is hope in life even if it involves shedding a few tears to realize that. Romans 12:12 (NIV) says;” Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.”  Did you catch that? Be joyful in hope and patient in affliction. I know life can be pretty stressful and it can be hard to be patient and joyful especially when life is plain stressful because let’s just face it, when life is stressful there are times that it can be easy to just throw in the towel and call it quits. But that’s not what life is about. Life is about finding the joy even when it’s hard and that’s exactly what this verse is talking about being joyful in hope, patient in affliction and faithful in prayer which all 3 of those I struggle with at times because something that I’ve learned is that while life is crazy it can also be a lot of fun so as you read this I want you to think of at least 3 things that you can do to lift someone’s spirits that they’ve just been going through a lot. Psalm 31:24 (NIV) says;” Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord.” Did you catch that? Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord! Part of being hopeful is patience and being strong can help with that and I don’t mean physically strong because sometimes that can do more harm than good. I mean mentally strong which basically means having the courage to say no sometimes but also knowing when to say yes but also knowing when to take risks. Which I admit there times that I have trouble knowing when to take risks and when to stay in the shadow. That’s something that I deal with every day most of the time. Because while I’m very vocal on here in real life there are times that I can be pretty quiet either because I don’t know what to say, am scared, have a lot on my mind or want to say something but not sure either if I should say it or people are talking and don’t want to interrupt them. My point is having hope that something will happen takes courage and honestly life in general takes courage. I cannot stress this enough if you do feel like there’s nothing to live for, I want to encourage you that there’s ALWAYS hope and something to live for because while I’ve never actually seen someone die, I have seen people give up just because something bad happen there where even 2 people that 1 I heard about and another 1 I knew that committed suicide because people can mean. When I was a kid and teenager there where people that bullied me and if you are being bullied do something about it don’t just stand in the corner and say to yourself there’s nothing, I can do about how this person is treating me and if means not having that person in your life anymore then do it. But before you do that try to work things out with that person. For those of you that are thinking about ending your life because either someone is bullying you or something really bad happened, I want to encourage you to reach out to someone that you trust and tell that person what’s been going on and get there input on what you should do but also remember that God is always there for you whenever you need to talk and feel free to reach out to whether it’s through e-mail or Facebook message. Just don’t go thinking that ending your life is the answer because suicide is never the answer, but God always is. As I close, I just want to challenge you to always have hope and to trust in God because like I said earlier, he really does care about you. As always, if you want to talk, have any prayer requests and or have any questions feel free to message me on Facebook, comment below or e-mail me at Homeschoolgradblog@gmail.com. Thanks for reading!