Hope of things to come

"Oh! May the God of green hope fill you up with joy, fill you up with peace, so that your believing lives, filled with the life-giving energy of the Holy Spirit will brim over with hope" Rom 15:13 The Message

I read this passage a few days ago in our daily Bible-reading plan (which I am not always caught up with, but I'm getting better at that), and the freshness of the Message version struck me.

We as christians are given the Holy Spirit to guide us and to contend for us when we don't know what to contend for, among other things. The Holy Spirit fills us with life and energy, yet so often we live defeated lives, struck down by the mundane of everyday life, by complacency and lack of motivation.

Yet, really, we are given the Holy Spirit is there offering is hope, vibrant life, and abundant energy. It's like we see the gift sitting there on the table, yet never open it. How dumb is that?

In my own life, I feel like I am in an "upswing" spiritually. I had kinda fallen a bit to a place where I wasn't super close to God, just sorta barely maintaining, but God kicked my butt outta that place, and I'm moving back closer to Him again.

Really, our journeys are often made up of times where we sorta feel like we're moving backwards, when really, it's kinda like parts of the journey just overlap each other. It may be that there are lessons that we are just not learning that God wants to teach us, or weaknesses that take us back a few steps, but I find that in the end, I am always closer to God, always learning more about His character and holiness.

We are humans, and we will fail and fall, but by the grace of God, each time we get up, we find ourselves closer to Him. And that is why (well, one of the reasons why) our God is so awesome.