Get Your Hopes Up!: Expect Something Good to Happen to You Every Day (11 page)

I remember receiving some devastating news right before I had to begin a three-day conference. It was difficult to keep moving, but I knew that I had to. I sensed the Holy Spirit saying “Just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Keep moving!”

Continuing to move didn’t take away all the pain and disappointment I felt, but it did keep me from sinking into a pit of despair, and within a few weeks, the situation was resolved. One of the symptoms of spiritual maturity is having the discipline to keep your commitments, even while you’re going through very difficult times. I was hurting, but I needed to continue ministering to others who were hurting, and as I did, God healed me and solved my problem.

As difficult as it is to remember when we are hurting, things do pass and come to an end. Spring always comes after winter. The sun shines again after the storm. Yesterday it was cloudy all day, and eventually we had thunderstorms and heavy rain, but today the sky is blue and the sun is shining. I think we can see, even in the natural weather patterns and seasonal changes, how bad things always give way to good things. If it is cloudy and storming in your life
today, look forward to the sun that will probably be shining tomorrow, or the next day or the one after that. It won’t storm forever!

The Bible gives us an example of a sick woman (the woman with the issue of blood) who had to
press through
the crowd to get to Jesus (see Mark 5:25–34; Luke 8:43–48). Even though this woman had been sick 12 years and spent all she had on doctors who were unable to help her, she refused to sit back, passively waiting for her pain to go away. She chose to let hope inspire her to press through every adversity. Nothing was going to keep her from Jesus—not the crowd, not the sickness, not how long she had waited, not her doubts, not her pain. She kept saying to herself
If I could only touch the hem of His garment, I know I shall be made whole
(see Matthew 9:21). With hope and faith in her heart, she just kept moving.

You may have your own crowd to press through today. It may be a crowd of negative thoughts. It may be a crowd of pain and hurt from the past. It may be a crowd of unsupportive people around you. It may be a crowd of financial pressure. It may be a crowd of pain in your body. But if you press past all of those things and refuse to let the disappointments of life keep you stuck in discouragement and misery, your breakthrough will come.

Philippians 3:13–14 says:

I love this passage of Scripture. Paul said that he was going to forget what was behind—the mistakes and pain of his past—and
he was going to press forward toward his destiny. You can do the same thing. You can press past all those things that would try to hold you back. Today you can refuse to have a defeated attitude. Today you can refuse to “play possum.” You can choose to keep moving—you can choose to press on.

You may be reading this and thinking
Joyce, I don’t know if I can keep moving. I’m going through something really difficult, and I don’t feel like I can take another step
. If this is you today, I urge you not to give in to those feelings. If we are going to follow God, we will need to keep moving in faith. As I study the Word of God, I can’t help but notice that God is always moving. Not only that, He is always calling His people to move… even in the toughest circumstances.

In all of these situations, the people were tempted to “play possum.” The difficulties they were facing made them want to hide and wait rather than get up and get moving. But in each instance, God
instructed them to move forward and trust that He would lead them out of trouble and into victory. Had they sat frozen in fear and uncertainty, they never would have experienced the abundance God had for them. Even though it was difficult at the time, they chose to get up and get going. And in the end, it was more than worth it.

The biblical examples aren’t just in the Old Testament. As you read the Gospel accounts of the life of Jesus, you see that He was always on the move. He didn’t freeze and play spiritual possum every time He faced adversity. He kept moving from one city to another, from one person to another, determined to do what He was on this Earth to do. Even when people didn’t accept Him, even when the Pharisees tried to trap Him, even when the crowds turned against Him, Jesus kept moving.

I believe one of the reasons God always kept His children moving—against opposing armies, across rivers, into the Promised Land—is because there is hope in movement. If you’re not walking, you have no hope of arriving somewhere new.

Without forward motion, there is no hope of change!

One of the ways you can keep moving is just by being obedient to God—you can simply do what He leads you to do. The steps He asks you to take may be small or big, they may even be unexpected, but following God is the only way we will ever end up at the right destination.

I keep thinking of the Israelites and how the cloud of God’s presence led them through the wilderness. The cloud covered the tabernacle, and the Bible says that when the cloud moved, the Israelites journeyed, and when it remained, they remained. They never knew when it was going to move, but they had to be ready to move when God moved (Numbers 9:16–23). Are you ready for that? I am sure that sometimes they didn’t feel like moving when God urged
them to, but if they wanted to make it through the wilderness, they had to trust God’s guidance.

We need to live in a state of readiness, like soldiers who have been put on alert. When that happens, soldiers know that they could be called to active duty at any moment. When doctors are on call, they must be ready at any moment to go and tend to a sick person. It doesn’t matter what their plans are or what they are doing. When the call comes, they go.

At one of my conferences, I was looking through my Bible during worship, and all of a sudden it just came in my heart that I should give my Bible to a particular woman who had shared her testimony a few minutes earlier. I felt strongly that I should give it to her when I was done preaching that night. Now, I have to tell you: I wasn’t expecting that at all, and I really liked that Bible; I had lots of notes in it. In fact, that Bible had notes on the seven greatest lessons I had learned in life written in it. But I strongly sensed the Lord was instructing me to give it to her. Now, I didn’t know why God was asking me to move in that direction. Maybe it was really going to encourage that woman, or maybe the Lord was just seeing if I would be obedient. But whatever the reason, I had a choice to make: move in obedience or be disobedient. I did make the right decision that time, but there have been other times when I didn’t, and I have always ended up regretting it.

The only way we can live without regret is to do the right thing now!

What is it that God has laid upon your heart to do? Has He asked you to forgive someone who hurt you? Bless someone who is struggling? Change a destructive habit? Let go of a dysfunctional relationship? Encourage a friend? Confront an issue? Whatever it is the Lord is asking you to do, don’t hesitate another moment. Move in obedience and watch how God will bless each step you take. I truly believe that hopelessness comes with inactivity, but our hope flourishes when we are moving in step with God.

I recently heard that physically speaking, the more you move, the
more you are able to move, and the less you move, the less you are able to move. If people retire and sit around and do nothing, their health often begins to fail, and they are able to do less and less. However, age doesn’t seem to matter with those individuals who remain active and refuse to give up on life. Likewise, I believe that the more we promptly move with God, the easier it is to do. If you have been frozen in fear for a long time, it may take some extra effort to get going again, but it will be worth it.

If you feel that you need to move in some direction, but you’re not sure what God is asking you to do and you feel stuck, let me ask you these two questions: (1) What was the last thing you felt God was telling you to do? (2) Did you do it? Sometimes God is waiting for us to obey His last instruction before He gives us a new one. With God, you can’t skip steps—it’s always one step at a time.

Maybe the Lord put it on your heart to…

We cannot skip steps just because we don’t like the current one God is asking us to take. What would happen to a cake if we put in
all the ingredients except the milk? We only left out one step, but it would be enough to ruin the entire cake. All of our other efforts and ingredients would be wasted simply because we decided to skip a step in the cake-baking process.

For many years God was asking me to have a more submissive attitude toward my husband, but I wasn’t ready to take that step. I kept telling myself that I just couldn’t do it, because I had been abused by men who tried to control me in my past. But, truthfully, it was just an excuse for disobedience. I was stuck and nothing was happening in my life or ministry because I was leaving out a step. When I finally took the step and followed the cloud of God’s presence, good things started happening again.

In 1987,
The Los Angeles Times
published a story about a 53-year-old downhill snow-skier named Ed Kenan. Kenan was a businessman who loved to ski and was training to compete in the giant slalom event during the upcoming Winter Olympics. But there was something unusual about Ed Kenan: He was blind.

Seven years earlier, Kenan lost his vision, one eye at a time. Two operations couldn’t stop detached retinas related to a diabetic condition from taking his eyesight. Dealing with an unspeakable hardship, Kenan had a choice to make: He could sit in darkness, feeling sorry for himself, mad that life had dealt him a bad hand, or he could keep moving. Kenan made his decision—six months after going blind, he was snow skiing down a slope in Vail, Colorado. “I forced myself to recover,” he said. “I figured if I could ski down a mountain, I could do everything I put my mind to.”

In 1983, Kenan won a gold medal in the giant slalom at the U.S. Association of Blind Athletes Alpine Competition held in Alta, Utah. Over the next few years, he would add to that medal count, winning several gold and silver medals in various competitions.
Not even blindness could keep Ed Kenan from living his life to the fullest.

When asked how it was possible to ski down mountain slopes and maneuver the various gates in the giant slalom, Ed explained that he had a sighted guide who would ski just ahead of him down the mountain. In a booming voice, his guide would shout “Go, go, go” when more speed was needed, and he would call out an exaggerated “Riiight turn,” “Leeeft turn” as they approached the gates. All Kenan had to do was keep moving and trust the direction of his instructor. If he did, he would navigate the course flawlessly and cross the finish line safely.
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While the hardship you’re dealing with may be different from Ed Kenan’s, maybe you can relate in some small way. Maybe you know what it’s like to suffer an unexpected loss. Maybe you understand how it feels to deal with a crushing disappointment. Maybe you’re facing a frightening diagnosis. Maybe someone or something you thought would always be there is suddenly gone. And maybe you’re asking yourself the question
Do I give up now, or do I find a way to keep going?

Whatever darkness you’re dealing with, let me remind you that you’re not alone. God sees what you’re going through, and He is right there with you. Isaiah 30:21 says, “And your ears will hear a word behind you, saying, This is the way; walk in it, when you turn to the right hand and when you turn to the left.” That means God has promised to be your guide. When you can’t see where to go, don’t be afraid. Don’t play possum!

Sometimes moving just means getting out of bed and cleaning your house, or going to work; other times it means following some specific direction from God. Either way, simple or more challenging, God wants us to be active so we don’t atrophy spiritually! God will guide you and you’ll hear Him say “Riiight turn,” “Leeeft turn.” The more you use your faith, the more faith you will have! Jesus said, “For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will be
furnished richly so that he will have an abundance; but from the one who does not have, even what he does have will be taken away” (Matthew 25:29). He was speaking about the faith that was needed to take action instead of hiding in fear. Keep moving—it is one of the most powerful things you can do!