ZPCBlog

About the author: Jason Chenoweth is the CEO of Outreach Inc. Outreach works with homeless youth and young adults between the ages of 14-24 years old. Each year around 500 young people are shown love, care, provided needed resources, and offered hope here in Indianapolis.

Hope is a powerful force in our world. The absence of it can rob a person or a community of its ability to withstand, to move forward, to persevere.  When hope flows freely we find unity, grace, and joy grow in equal measures. At Outreach, as we work each day with teenagers and young adults who are homeless, one of our primary goals is to offer hope.

Romans 5:3-5 says, “We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.” 

Hope is found in Christ. That hope comes from character being formed in us by Jesus. The character is a product of learning to endure. Endurance only comes from problems and trials. How we face our problems ultimately determines if the hope of Christ can be created in us. This means when we face difficult times and pain, we need to do three things. 

One, can we see the goal, the day and place where this current pain has been healed? Seeing the end result is so important. Secondly, can we see a path to that result? Can we see a way to get from the challenges of today to that better day yet to come? Third, do we believe we have the means to get there? Do we have what we need to make our way down that path?

It is on these three questions we can pray. If we can’t see the goal beyond this pain, ask God to show us. If we can’t see a way to get there, ask him to lay it out for us. If we think we are lacking, that we are not enough, ask Jesus to remind us of his love for us and that he is more than enough.

Prayer:

Jesus, today I want to ask for your help. I feel stuck. I believe the challenges I’m facing today are temporary. Can you show me where you and I are going? Will you show me the steps to take? Would you remind me that you’re strong exactly where I am weak? Thank you for giving me hope in this painful time.” 

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