The Spirit Living in Our Heart

One of my favorite hobbies is reading. I often joke that when I retire, I will spend my free time at the library, just helping everyone pick books as they come in. Because I have so many books in my collection, I often lend books to friends for weeks or months at a time.

I remember reading a book on building habits that I talked about to everyone I knew. I decided to loan it to a friend. The book was stained with ripped pages when they returned it to me. The book lover in me wanted to cry. I loaned it with the expectation that they would care for the book and return it to me in the same condition in which I loaned it. I trusted them to treat my book with care.

Sometimes, I can be the same way with the monetary resources God has given me. David marveled over how God has provided for us and how God’s provision blesses us.

All we have is because of God, and He expects us to handle our blessings with this understanding as our foundation. We should treat all He gives us with care and diligence because all we have belongs to Him. While God is generous, He also expects us to be wise and thoughtful when He blesses us. When we treat these gifts carelessly, we demonstrate that we aren’t prepared to handle His blessings.

Think about your favorite pair of shoes or even your car. If you loaned those items to someone and they destroyed your shoes or crashed your car, you likely wouldn’t lend to them again.

Demonstrate that you can manage your resources well. Show others that you are a good steward of God’s many provisions.

The Evans family lived with hope despite living in what appeared to be hopeless circumstances.

Good Times was a 1970s sitcom about a dad, mom, and three children who lived on Chicago’s bad side. Every trip carried the risk of being mugged or raped. They lived in a rickety apartment building owned by a man who cared little for his tenants. Mom stayed home, cared for the children, cleaned the house, and cooked while Dad worked—at least, most of the time. Job layoffs came regularly. But somehow, they always managed to scrape by—and with a smile on their faces. Their secret for happiness, despite their unwelcome circumstances, came through something the mom instilled in the family: hope. A hope built on a deep trust in God.

Paul reminded his readers that they once lived without hope. They had it presently only because they accepted the Jesus he preached.

Hopelessness is a terrible state of existence. Believing that nothing will ever improve or seeing a future that will never be any better than the present. Looking at the past and seeing that it wasn’t any better than the present. However, anyone can choose to live with hope instead of succumbing to hopelessness.

As Florida Evans discovered, hope is not built on circumstances. If that were the case, millions would have none on any given day. Regardless of our financial state, living consistently without anything going wrong isn’t the norm. Hope built on circumstances quickly materializes into hopelessness.

We have hope because we trust the one who controls the circumstances and believe he can take what appears, or is, evil and form good from it. Believing he is the creator and controller of all things instills confidence.

Living with hope is an inner attitude that leads to outward change. Florida Evans was able to transfer her hope to her family, even her unbelieving husband. Hope is transferable. If we live with hope, we can give it to those God puts in our paths. Our attitude will influence theirs.

Florida Evans’ hope was built on her belief in God. Ours must be, too. Nothing else will give us true, consistent hope. All other foundations will flounder.

Choose to live with hope, not merely survive with hopelessness.

Ten months passed after the vibrating twitch in his finger announced itself and quietly took a backseat in our lives. We were oblivious to the destruction this hitchhiker held as we crossed the plains of Wyoming—laughing and cutting up on a ten-day road trip.

April 2018 blew our life down. It came in with hurricane strength, scattering our dreams across life’s terrain. My husband was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. We had a million questions dumped into our laps. But one thing was awfully obvious: his disease was aggressive, and he was young. Within six months, tremors started in his right hand. As the months passed, he loaded up on medications. His right hand, arm, and shoulder flapped wildly like a bronc rider’s on an angry bull.

Our lives changed. We sold my husband’s motorcycle. Bitter tears welled up inside me as his BMW glided down the road without him. Standing in our driveway, I sucked in air to hold back hot, torturous tears. I couldn't take the pain of his dreams deflating. I hurt for him. We were life partners, and I had decided I would go down with him on this ship. I sold my motorcycle a few weeks later. But I was focusing on my losses, his losses, the whole neurological nightmare, not the daily portion of strength God had for me and the prayer required to access it.

I can't confront life all at once on my own. That's why this verse is crucial: My flesh and my heart may fail, But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. My daily portion strengthens my heart just like one meal at a time does my body. I certainly can’t eat all life’s meals in one day, hoping to nourish my body forever.

God wants me to know one prayer at a time is the focus of my strength. My daily prayers are equivalent to my daily meals. If I forget to eat, I am weak and ineffectual with myself and others. The same is true if I fail to pray.

Don’t let it take a crisis to lead you to pray and see God’s power. Make prayer a daily habit. 

I closed my eyes, prayed, and opened my Bible to this Scripture: Again, Job answered and said:“Though I know my complaint is bitter, his hand is heavy upon me in my groanings. Oh, that today I might find him, that I might come to his judgment seat!” 

It reminded me of when I was deeply depressed. I almost died from COVID-19 pneumonia, wore oxygen for six months, and then, four weeks after ridding the oxygen, was diagnosed with breast cancer.

I was so angry. Every day, I deal with fibromyalgia pain and arthritis. I had fought so hard to live, and now the word cancer dripped from my doctor’s lips. I did not understand why I was even on earth. My groanings were bitter, and the anger consumed me. Why couldn’t I die and go to heaven where there is no pain? Why couldn’t God heal me? I thought I’d suffered enough and was ready for judgment day.

Simply going through the motions, I completed two lumpectomies and fifteen radiation sessions, then rang the bell. But I did not celebrate because I did not feel healed. I really did not feel anything. A year passed. Every day I thought about how the cancer could return.

Then a friend with stage-four breast cancer made a comment that changed my outlook: “My daughter and I were talking, and I said something about when my time comes…”

That stopped my heart for a moment. I finally said a healing prayer, and I could see heaven in my mind. I had no reason to be depressed. I wanted to go to heaven where there is no pain, heartache, or death, but God determines when I go. God has given us a beautiful promise: to look forward to heaven.

Things became clear. God was preparing me for heaven, and praying for my family members to join me in heaven became my most important task.

Why not say this simple daily prayer: Dear God, please help me prepare myself and my family for heaven. Then listen. God will heal your heart and lead you to actions that will guide you and your family to your eternal destination.

Most people can appreciate a sunny day. Severe storms? Not so much. Yet the storm of the century in Death Valley National Park precipitated an incredible transformation. A deluge of rain fell unexpectedly, depositing more than a year’s rainfall in a single day. Roads flooded, trails became impassable, and the park closed for weeks.

Two months later, the hottest place on earth was still wet. Wildflowers bloomed out of season. The typically dry Badwater Basin became home to a shallow lake. The change in the landscape was so profound that park rangers reported they hadn’t seen anything like it in over eighteen years.

As uncomfortable as our “death valleys” are, they can also birth new things. Yet instead of changing the landscape around us, God uses the low points in our lives to change us. We may feel we are dying, but what we feel and what is true are not necessarily the same.

God brings beauty out of barren places. A job loss is devastating until it opens the door to a new, rewarding career. Classes are overwhelming until we graduate. Childbirth is brutal until the baby arrives, and the labor pains become a vague memory.

Life forces us to experience things, but we do not have to fear them. With Jesus as our Counselor, Comforter, and Advocate, our dry places can eventually suit God’s purpose.

Even when we bring hot situations upon ourselves, God is merciful. Moses was a murderer, but God chose him to liberate the Israelites from Egypt. Abraham took Sara’s maid, trying to fulfill God’s plan hastily, yet he received the promised son from his once barren wife.

Like these unlikely heroes, our mistakes don’t define us either. The fear of failure should never hold us hostage. We can live with confidence when we focus on our faith and embrace the new things our Father does in and through us.

God brings dead things to life. Think of some dead areas you need to turn over to God. Then watch what He will do.