Need a little encouragement?

Romans 15:13

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.  NIV

Wow!

As I read these words this morning, they were such an encouragement to me.  Paul was an encourager!  I love that.

I am blessed in my life to know several great encouragers.  They are the ones that I call when things are going poorly, and I absolutely LOVE it  when the phone rings and one of them is on the other end of the line.

Without fail, you feel better when you spend time with an encourager.  They always know just the right thing to say, and, I believe God uses them to say things to me that I need to hear.  They don’t always say good things … but, pretty much without fail, they are right on point.

Once, we were blessed to have one of my dear friends stay with us for almost a week.  It was not the easiest of times for me, and I poured out my heart to my friend.  She left while I was at work, and when I came home, there was a big sign propped in the window of my kitchen.  It’s a wooden sign, maybe 10 inches by 30 inches, beautifully painted.  Needless to say, I couldn’t miss it.  It still sits there today.  It says, “Write it on your heart that the ones you love are life’s most precious gifts.”  It was a perspective I was missing at the time.  It was a message I needed to hear.  I ponder it as I make coffee in the mornings, as I wash dishes … I think about it often, and I am thankful for the wisdom and the encouragement of my friend.

I wish I had another sign … one with these words of Paul on it.

May the God of hope … all my hope is in Him.

fill you with all joy … all joy, I love that … I love that it could mean “all kinds of joy,” or “all the joy in the world,” or “only joy.”

and peace as you trust in him … trust in Him is the only source of true peace.

so that you may overflow with hope … so that there will be so much hope in you that you cannot contain it … it will spill out of you like water and be completely evident to all around you.

by the power of the Holy Spirit … let’s keep this in perspective … this hope is NOT a feeling, it is a manifestation of the power of the One True God.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

That’s what I’ll think about today.