Exhausted Hope

(Unedited Version. Please excuse grammatical mistakes and just read the Word given.)

There is something I have learned along the way in my walk of Faith. I was thinking about all this before Church today. When you truly seek to be in the will of God and truly begin to position yourself to do great things for the Lord there is a season you will cross and go through. This season is a season that will also come and go. It is a season that gets you focused on the truths of God. As new Christians and in a passionate pursuit for God we get all kinds of feelings and even inspiration from God about our future that brings such a intense hope. But here is the deal, God gives you a vision and sometimes you have more hope in that vision than you do trusting in God. 

I have found that the Lord will allow us to be hope-exhausted at certain times. If you never have your faith and hope tested then I am going to tell you right now you need to reevaluate your faith and makes sure that it really is faith or that you really are passionately pursuing Jesus. It is 110% biblical that your faith will be tested. It is one of the processes of growing in God; maturing in Christ. You see without this season you won't last long on the front line of His army. That is what we are here for. We are here for battle. When someone is enlisted in the military they are continually stretched to their limits and pushed to the depths of exhaustion in order to produce a strength that will make sure they can stand and not fall in battle. This strength is called endurance. It is the power to not give up. The ability to press in further and further until you see the task at hand accomplished: the mission not failed but successful. Without this quality you are not trusted to go into battle. You may be put in small scrimmages to help with the process but when it comes down to the real deal, those with Endurance are the ones that God will entrust to do great things. 

So when I say hope-exhaustion, that is exactly what I am talking about. All of it exhausted so that you will learn to rely completed on Jesus who is your strength and power for victory instead of trusting in yourself and your vision and your own passion. This is a strength building exercise for faith that the Lord allows us to engage in. In my life I have literally and I am not exaggerating, but I have literally had my hope completely exhausted. Everything I believed in, everything I lived for, all my vision and goals and desires completely exhausted in my life with no more hope. The only one I could trust in was Jesus: not myself, not my friends, not my pastor, not my parents, not my vision, or my desires, but learned to trust that everything that has been brought to death in my life, God is more than able to resurrect by the same power that raised our Savior from the Grave. I am now strengthened but I will admit, just when you think it is over, just when you think you have gleaned so much from the fields in the Kingdom of God, brace yourself because when you pass this test God will then train you for special forces. He will impart to you His wisdom but at the same time you may feel powerless and weakened to the point again that you need Jesus to lift you up. It is there that you learn that everything you need to get the task done is in the the person of Jesus Christ. His Grace is no longer a wash cloth for your sin but it is now become everything you rely on. If you died it would be Grace that raised you back up from the grave. 

In this dead state of life, cross bearing season of agony is where you learn that nothing in your power has the ability to get Kingdom work done. It is the Grace of God that empowers you to truly do His Works and to speak His Words. When you do it, there is pride, but when brought to the threshing floors of humility more Grace is given. If you do the works you have a right to brag of your own accomplishments and the works are no longer the works of Christ but instead yours. MORE MORE MORE MORE Grace is needed to get the job done. Paul went through this season I believe because at the end of His ministry He declared that He did more W O R K than all the other apostles but then he proclaimed that it truly wasn't even him but it was the Grace of God that was on Him. You see we all know we don't deserve His love and the salvation that can't be earned, but somehow in our thinking we begin to think that we can earn everything else. WE can't earn a seat in heaven and you can't earn a powerful ministry. You can't earn your strength. You can't earn a metal like you can in a natural army. This army is supernatural and is fueled by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is His works you are doing and not yours. You are just obeying to be the vessel or the temple in which He delivers them. There is no place for pride in this season, it is where the mirror of God is placed before you and you see yourself for who you are. You are nothing good without Jesus. It is a place that sends a reflecting power onto your very being and begins to form the person of Christ within you. People learn to imitate the characteristics of the fruits of the Spirit but this is the process in which you are truly pruned and trimmed painfully in order to bear true fruit and eventually in abundance. Like I said before if you believe you have faith and it has never been tested and you think you are bearing the fruit of God, you better take a few steps back and reevaluate again, because fruit doesn't grow on trees without a process. The tree has to receive from the earth and the rain and the sun in order to grow. So there is a receiving season that gives the tree strength to produce fruit. The tree doesn't grow overnight, it grows in seasons. Every year it is strengthen and enlarged and capable of producing more and more fruit. Gardeners prune it to grow faster and stronger. God is your husbandman and He is the one that does this process in your life. So if you are in this season, and you have lost all forms of hope, then go back to your first love. Forget about the former things you trusted in, the things you thought you were going to accomplish and just simply trust in God. You could be wrong about everything but you still have Jesus. I promise you when this season is over there will be an abundance of anointing oils flowing throughout your branches and producing all types of fruit in your life. The works of God will begin, you will have the strength to endure till the end. 

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