Spiritual Growth – Page 114 – REACHING HURTING WOMEN MINISTRIES

Happy New Year Friends!

In preparation for the new year I wanted to quickly give you an overview of what you can expect from upcoming Reaching Hurting Women blog columns. For 2019 I’m returning to a monthly magazine format that I used a few years ago. I’m excited to be sharing four of my favorite topics! You can expect a new column each Friday. Each month the columns will have the following schedule:

1st Friday: Serenity Prayer The first Friday of each month we will be studying The Serenity Prayer. We are breaking down this well-known prayer a phrase at a time and applying it to our life today.

2nd Friday: Psalm 23 On the second Friday of each month we will be studying The 23rd Psalm. We will break down this beloved psalm verse by verse and find God’s grace and mercy for today.

3rd Friday: 2 Corinthians 4:15-18 This particular section of Scripture is my life verse. Since it was first given to me by the Holy Spirit in 2006, I have found application in every season of my life. Each third Friday of the month we will break it down by sections to find application for us all.

4th Friday: Humility Study The last few years I’ve devoted much study to the subject of Humility. Each fourth Friday, with the help of Saint Benedict, we will learn how better to walk the 12 Steps of Humility with Christ.

5th Friday: Book Reviews The months of March, May, August and November each have five Fridays. On these weeks you can expect a book review that will line up with a topic for that month.

I’m looking forward to a wonderful year of study and writing. I hope you will join me and bring along a friend when you can.

May the grace and peace of Christ be with you…

Tamara

The Great Unknown: The long-suffering that accompanies unanswered prayers.

Most of us don’t process our needs toward God in the best way. We have all kinds of life struggles: a financial crisis, health issues, family strife… More often that not, we shoot off a laundry list of complaints or worse just assume He knows everything and don’t say anything at all. Neither of these are activating our faith.

I have access by faith into His grace where I now stand and rejoice in the hope of God’s glory manifesting in my life! ~ Romans 5:2 (my personal confession version)

With most spiritual progress, much of what we’re waiting on depends upon our own attitude and mindset. If we are discouraged and lacking hope there’s a good chance we won’t see what we are wanting to see happen the way we want it to.

When faith and hope line up miracles of grace happen. If we allow faith to fill our hearts with hope they will rise up to meet God’s grace coming down. Wow! The possibilities are endless.

HOPE: the happy anticipation of something good.

FAITH: is the reality of things hoped for.

GRACE: God’s undeserved love put into action on our behalf.

Hope must come before faith. In other words, faith brings hope into reality by manifesting, bringing about, God’s supernatural grace in our natural realm.

Look at the image above:

Hope is our dream represented by a balloon. Our Faith fills up the Hope balloon which carries it up to God. As our Hope balloon rises, God sees our heart filled with faith and hope and then showers His Grace on our life in all sorts of ways.

Faith and hope are not prerequisites for God’s grace because there’s nothing we can do to deserve His favor. However, faith and hope put our hearts in the proper position to receive. God’s grace showers down on us as faith fills our hopeful hearts.

How does this help me deal with the great unknown of unanswered prayer? While we’re in this sufferably long state of waiting for God’s hand to move in our direction we must encourage ourselves by fueling our faith with God’s Word, which in turn fills our hearts with hope. As we prayerfully make our requests to God we can confidently sing a song of hope because the God of Heaven will come down in showers of grace upon us!