Prisoner Of Hope

"Return to your fortress, you prisoners of hope; even now I announce that I will restore twice as much to you." Zechariah 9:12...."We are to believe what the Word and Spirit tell us, regardless of the witness of the clouds." Chris Tiegreen

"Prisoner" is a word that strikes a negative chord in most everyone. We hate to think of our being a prisoner to anyone or anything. This is very strange considering our fleshly inclination to be a prisoner to most anything and everything. We become enchained by toxic relationships, a multitude of habits and addictions, attitudes, interests, professions and ministries. And these are just a few of the possibilities. We become imprisoned by them willingly, yet when offered the chance to become a "bondslave of Christ," we flee. We flee because we are sure that this will take away our "freedom." We're blind to our own slavery, which is exactly how the enemy loves for it to be.

The Apostle Paul called himself a bondslave of Christ. He wrote of how he was His captive. Yet it was this same Paul who, even while chained to Roman guards in a prison cell, was totally free in his heart and spirit. He was a prisoner of Christ, and so, he was also a prisoner of Christ's joy, peace, love......and hope.

I think hope is in short supply these days, even among the people of God. You can see this in their eyes. Instead of hope there is fear, cynicism, anger, hate. People are seeking to survive, while the Father calls us to thrive...even in this present darkness. Why is it so difficult to live in hope? Maybe it's because our focus for hope is on something or someone other than Him. Such hope will always disappoint. His Word says that hope in Him never will.

Tiegreen writes, "When clouds gather, we need to gather to Him. When clouds obscure Him, we must trust Him to obscure the clouds. We are habitual twisters. We make dark things our surest truth and God's light our most uncertain refuge." In the midst of this we need, we must, hear the words to the old hymn, "My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness." Our hope is not rooted in some vague, distant, unknown God, but in the One who so loved us that He sent His only Son to die for us. A God who is Almighty. A God who is Victory itself. A God who, in His Son, has already crushed the power of hell, and invites us into a relationship that shares and partakes of that victory. Such hope will not disappoint.

The attitude of our hearts and spiritual eyes must be that of always looking up. Looking up and seeing with those eyes the One who conquered death in all of its forms. The One who calls us to look unto Him, "the Author and Finisher of our faith." The God who split the Red Sea, stopped the sun in the sky, raised Lazarus from the dead, conquered sin on the cross, and death in His resurrection, calls us to simply trust in Him. If He is our true and living hope, we can do that. Is He your true and living hope? Can you trust and hope in Him?

Blessings,
Pastor O