Beyond Hope

A land stretches out before you continuing infinitely beyond your mind and heart. In this land, there are opportunities for expanding your mind, your heart, and your life forever and ever. In this land, whatever you dream about doing you can do with no limitations. There is no suffering and pain, only rejoicing. The spirits of the persons who live in this land soar as the eagle. There is no darkness or evil in this land. There is no cancer, arthritis, heart disease, or plague. This land provides for each person without sweat or toil. The light of this land never goes out. Inventiveness and creative work never stops. In this land, writers write, painters paint, builders build, farmers farm, all without exerting energy. No matter how much glory shines forth in this land there is always more. Love permeates every particle of matter and is absorbed into every spirit. This is the land beyond your earthly hope. This is the land you call Heaven.

Your earthly hope grows dim throughout your life. The pain, suffering, and hardship of this life rips away at your earthly hope. There are times when your earthly hope evaporates as water disappears in the desert sun. Your greatest mistake in life is to not see beyond your earthly hope and see into the true Hope of all humanity. You can see past this time in which you live but only by the use of imagination and from the calling of your Lord Jesus to come to Him and renew your spirit in Him. Christ voluntarily let Himself be put on the Cross as a sign to you there is a land of hope before you no matter how dark and bleak the present moment might be.

You must not be deluded into thinking there is an end to all things. When your hope runs out, you are sometimes tempted to give up. Your vision of your certain future glory grows dim and you say that there is an end to things, an end to you, and an end to people you love. However, God is mocked when you say there is an end to life. God is mocked for it was never His intention to see you enslaved by the darkness and evil that will take every human life.

God wants you now and in the future to grasp ahold of the hope that exceeds your capacity to grasp it. God wants you to grasp ahold of what you cannot grasp. God wants you to delight in reaching out for that which you cannot touch. God wants you to see the great humor and lightheartedness in His wonderful construct of giving you glimpses of the great beyond, even when you are in the great mess of the present. For no life is ever over, no life is ever hopeless, no life is ever out of spirit, and no life is ever truly without a future. When you think there is no hope then you have not tried to reach out for the abundant love and spirit of God.

Hope resides within you in the same place where the Kingdom of God resides. Hope is such a grand design of God that when you least expect to find it then it appears. When you are caught in earthly chains and you have given up trying to free yourself then God sends hope your way if you but ask, seek, and knock on the door of His great kingdom within you.

All power for living resides in hope through your loving Father in Heaven. He opens His storehouse of power to you if you will just look up to Him. He will not let you be in chains forever. Even if you must die to be free then you will still be free. The moment of your death seems to be an earthly moment of no hope and utter desperation. However, it is at this most hopeless moment Christ waves His hand at you and welcomes you to a land that knows no darkness or slavery. It is God's wonderful irony that in this life you can absorb the greatest hope when you reach the point of no hope. It is as if God is playing this splendid joke upon you. In this life when there is nothing but darkness and utter futility, when the clock is running out with only seconds remaining and then the buzzer sounds, you think the game is over. Yet not so! In this life when the buzzer sounds there is a great transfer of spirit and power. This transfer is not from Him to you; it is from you to Him. For you do not stay here and remain in the chains of this life but you sail over there. In this life, when defeat is certain the victory comes amidst a celebration with joy and laughter.

When you see Jesus you will find the joke was on you all along and you will laugh for millennia at how foolish you were while here on Earth. Laughter will ring out through Heaven for you will see in every moment of your earthly life there was a golden strand connecting your heart to His heart. You will see down this golden strand ran continuous messages and power that transformed your life and infused your heart with an uplifting touch. In this golden strand, you will see He was continually sending His love and care and you will see He wanted you to see Him, to know Him and to accept His hope into your life, heart, and mind.

There is before you a chance to do every great work known to human imagination and then some. When you are ninety years of age, crippled with arthritis, lame because you cannot walk, and silent because you have said all there is in you to say…then before you is the great hope beyond hope.

When the snares of life catch you and they do not let you go, when you cannot see any way out,  there is a moment when you can see your Lord upon the tree. You then see His body taken down and laid in a grave. You see the stone rolled over the opening of His grave and you sense the hopelessness of all that is. However, in the next moment you see the burst of God's power as the stone rolls away from the door, you feel the trembling of your reality, and then you see Him walking out of the grave.

When the snares of life entrap your heart and life there comes to you a great exhilaration. You see Him and know He is alive within you. When the snares grasp you and you see Him the greatest hope of all overflows within your heart. This greatest hope melts down the strongest iron snares and you sail off to find Him within you.

Romans 5:3 Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. (NIV)