5/11/2022 Over the years God has used many different groups of people to encourage hope in my life. The times when I struggled the most was when I did not have a group of men I could share and care with. The source of all hope is God but others can also help us discover the hope which is already there.

This is an entry from my Hope Journal which helps me hope, beyond hope.

God is the not just the founder of grace but is grace. God’s plan is for the grace we receive to be shared with and to others so grace will be revealed even to those who do not know God.

From my Grace Journal to remind me of our need not for agreement but grace in our relationships.

Receive hope then share hope

Receive grace then share grace

Do this for the glory of God

Do this out of love for God

5/10/2022 Have you ever had a song you could not get out of your mind? All of a sudden you would be singing it and even worse at times you sing it out loud. With others around. Yesterday it was a Christmas song and I wondered why a Christmas song in May? That brought hope and grace to mind.

With Christmas (Christ in the flesh) we see the promise to Adam and Eve fulfilled with the birth of Jesus and the hope of so many billions of people came true. Hope was made sight in the baby Jesus who came into our cold dark world to be our Light! And now we have the hope Jesus will return and set everything right!!!

This is an entry from my Hope Journal which helps me hope, beyond hope.

With Christmas the seed of Easter is planted and through grace the hope becomes that God’s grace will purchase us from sin so we can be part of God setting everything right!!!

From my Grace Journal to remind me of our need not for agreement but grace in our relationships.

 

5/9/2022

Orchestra

Music rises high and low

Seeds of life it does sow

Learn things need to know

As into life you do go

In harmony may life grow

Passing on all you know

Seeds of life you must sow

In life’s concert you will flow

 

5/8/2022 Sunday is a day of hope. God’s children gather to celebrate their hope because “Jesus died for us while we were yet sinners.”

This is an entry from my Hope Journal which helps me hope, beyond hope.

“Jesus died for us while we were yet sinners” defines grace as we can have life because Jesus died in our place for our sin! Grace really is amazing.

From my Grace Journal to remind me of our need not for agreement but grace in our relationships.

Today is Mother’s Day and it is a time to remember those who made such a difference in our lives. But always remember for some their mothers and fathers made a terrible difference in their lives and were the source of so much pain, humiliation and suffering. I wonder if that is why God commands us to “honor” our parents rather than to love them?

5/7/2022

Why

Why is a question we ask

It keeps us from our task

In pity we do like to bask

So a question we do ask

God’s fault we do ask

Our fault we don’t ask

Does God care we ask

Why care we don’t ask

No longer in pity do bask

No more questions ask

Where should I go can ask

To get you to appointed task

 

5/6/2022 Have you ever wondered if you have been so bad God can no longer forgive you? My Father-in-law would respond “if you can ask if you have lost your salvation you have not lost your relationship with God. Only when you no longer ask or care can you know you desire the world more than God.” Ask. Please ask.

This is a combination of my Hope and Grace Journals.

 

5/5/2022 I will try to remember this correctly. “There are many do’s and don’ts in the Bible. We try to not do the don’ts but we still do them. So maybe we should spend our time doing the do’s and then we will have less time to do the don’ts.”

Or as I remember in a song “accentuate the positive”.

I can almost hear people saying this is too simple and that is why I often miss the Gospel. I try to make everything harder when it is God desires who redeems us and makes us worthy to enter into God’s presence with praise and then to do the do’s to bring glory to God.

In my life I failed at the simplicity and lost the Gospel in trying to be rather than receive and giving too much room to the negative – the evil. Please do not make the same mistake I did and receive what you do not deserve from the God who still cries “Where are you?”

This is a combination of my Hope and Grace Journals.