Hope by Dawn Sandquist CHAPTER 2

That Wonderful Free Will
“But if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, then choose today whom you will serve.”
Joshua 24:15

God gives us a choice. We can choose to live in the prison of Hope or the dry lifeless prison of the enemy. Some of us spend much of our lives in dark waterless dungeons, deceiving ourselves into thinking that it’s not as bad as it looks, or that it’s actually someone else’s fault that we are there and we’re stuck. Why would we choose that?

I volunteer in a prison one day a week and some prisoners are scared when they’re finally released and for a variety of reasons. For some, prison life is predictable. When they get out into the world there are a lot of unknowns. For others, prison is actually safe and comfortable and what awaits them is a lot of starting over and having to be strong against temptations they will be facing once again. Prison is easier for now.

This happens with us in God’s economy. He has set the captives free, He has opened the prison doors, given us His liberty, and proclaimed His jubilee. However, people are often content to sit where it is lifeless and dry because at least – it’s familiar. Following God’s Spirit is a sure guarantee that you’ll travel into unfamiliar territory! Being timid and not embracing hope is sort of safe because you don’t have to face disappointment or rejection. Nothing ventured, nothing lost, and nothing gained! However, others do leave that hole and live in hope, or love, or faith for a while until life gets hard and then it’s back to the prison of seeming safety with the comfort of resentment, isolation, pity, or whatever the responses might be.

We were made to live in the Hope that only God is capable of being and doing Good in the best of times as well as in the worst of times. It’s easy to be a prisoner of hope when things are going well because we have hope that things will just keep getting better and better. Optimism begets more optimism. However, when times are hard and everything appears to be spiraling downward, the reverse often happens: negativity begets more negativity. Our troubles become all consuming and we move out of the prison of Hope back into that waterless, lifeless dungeon of despair. It's exhausting to move back and forth from hope and mercy to negativity and despair but we’ve all done it!

As humans we are more affected by our circumstances, our situations, and our feelings than we are by the reality that God is Good, or that He is Love. We let the hardness of life eat away at our hope continually. Sometimes this eating away is like a big bite – very dramatic - while other times it’s a slow erosion that you’re hardly aware of until you wake up one day and realize Hope is gone and you are imprisoned in despair.

God is asking us to live in hope; to live with an orientation to life that says “In God there are so many possibilities!” God wants us to echo “Anything is possible to those who believe!” He CAN do the impossible. He is not limited – we are! He can restore, rebuild, renew, buy back, create, deliver, save – whatever life has taken from us. He invites us to live in His world of possibilities and not our world of limitations! That’s Hope. Our God can do anything! This is what it means to live in the prison of Hope! Is this being a cock-eyed optimist, or a Pollyanna playing the “glad game?” Maybe, but a true prisoner of Hope feels and knows pain, they just refuse to be ruled by it. Believing that they will see the goodness of God in the land of the living is their conclusion.
Take a difficult situation you are facing now and declare:
I will live in God’s world of possibilities; NOT in my world of limitations. Lord God, I release You to

Restore _______________________________________________________________

Rebuild _______________________________________________________________

Buy back ______________________________________________________________

Create new ____________________________________________________________

Deliver ________________________________________________________________

Save __________________________________________________________________

May All of these be done according to your unfailing love and tender mercies. Amen