We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. Hebrews 6:19 (NIV)

Struggle and Hope and Anchors – Part 2

Go to PART 1

When we would go fishing as kids, the anchor would slice through the murky water and connect our boat to the ground. It would sink through what we couldn’t see until it found the ocean floor. Our boat, that otherwise would have been tossed to and fro by the tide was kept in place by this piece of metal connecting us to the seas foundation.

I get a little ticked off sometimes when people talk about hope. They use it as a magic word. “You’ve just got to have HOPE.”

OK. Righto. Will it appear at its mention? In a cloud of glitter and magic star dust?

How do you get hope? How does it work? How can you go from having none, to some, to being full of it?

Emily Dickinson wrote,

“Hope is the thing with feathers that perch in the soul.” And many of us pray that way, I know I do. “Give me hope, renew my hope, increase it, Lord. Let it come to me like a bird and alight upon me in my moment of need…”

It’s a lot more complex than that. You can’t get hope. You can’t buy it, you can’t ‘magic wand’ it into being… hope is something that we grow and cultivate. It's a seed inbuilt into us that we have to nurture, water and tend.

Brené Brown says, “Hope is not an emotion, it’s a cognitive thinking approach. It’s how we think. And it is 100% teachable.”

Hope is something we can learn and grow.

She goes on to say, “Hope is a function of struggle. People with the highest hopefulness have the knowledge that they can move through adversity. When we take adversity from our children, we diminish their capacity for hope.”

And when we try and avoid and ignore the adversity in our own lives, we stunt the growth of the capacity of our hope.

The problem is, for so long we have treated hope like it's an emotion, a warm fuzzy feeling, a moment of inspiration. But hope is the gutsy metal deep in our bones that moves us through struggle, challenge, hardship, monotony and more, and into success, achievement, freedom, love, light…

Hope is a function of struggle.

And the more we ignore the darkness in our lives and worlds, the more hope deprived we become. In Dr Brené’s research, she discovered that the people who had the highest levels of hope had the most experiences of failure. When they failed at something, they were able to separate themselves from it and not brand themselves a failure. You may fail, but that doesn’t make you a failure. It gives you the opportunity to grow your tenacity and perseverance. And it's in this place of hard work, building and growing through struggle, that hope is cultivated.

It's the “I can, we can”. It's the “Let's give it another go, let's look at it another way…”

Hope is the anchor for our souls.

Though the wind and rain and waves may crash around us, hope grounds us, anchors us, and pulls us onward toward the light. It keeps us from flipping over and drowning. It uncovers our strength. And ties us onto the one who is strength itself.

For people of faith, people like us, hope not only helps us through the goals and functions of our physical lives, it helps us wrestle with the big questions, the unseen and unknown. It doesn’t disregard struggle, it doesn’t ache for ease and comfort… It jumps overboard and into the mess and muck of life and finds that rock and locks on tight. Anchored.

Go to Part 3 – Sarah and Her Dream Child

Get this design as an instant wallpaper download*:
(your support helps offset the costs of this ministry – thank you!)

*download includes images optismised for Smart Phones and Tablets – more info

[vcex_image_grid columns=”3″ pagination=”false” thumbnail_link=”custom_link” link_title_tag=”true” custom_links_target=”_blank” overlay_style=”title-category-visible” columns_gap=”5″ img_hover_style=”fade-out” image_ids=”20934,20935,20937″ custom_links=”https://itunes.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1239768002?pt=118656308&ct=blog%20footer&mt=8,https://www.pktfuel.com/dailyemail,https://www.pktfuel.com/support” img_height=”350″]