“Deep within you, nothing is hopeless. You are a child of God, and he has planted hope in you. Let go of the regret and fear, and instead focus on the hope. Focus on the desire, and let hope in.” Pete Wilson, Let Hope In
Could you use an extra helping of hope this week? Who couldn’t! Do yourself a favor…grab a cup of coffee, your Bible, a highlighter, and a copy of Let Hope In by Pete Wilson. If you aren’t the one in need of hope right now, I’m sure you can quickly think of someone that could use some help in this area. If you aren’t the one in need of hope right now, rest assured, you will need it soon.
One of the main things that immediately sticks out to me about Let Hope In is Wilson’s intentional use of Scripture throughout. I firmly believe that a book about Hope should only point to Jesus and Wilson has done a masterful job of that. The goal of this book is to help the reader see that letting hope in is a choice that must be made on a daily, hourly…moment by moment basis. The four choices that Wilson outlines are grounded in prayer, Scripture, and the need for accountability in our lives.
Wilson is a pastor and that is very evident in his writing as he seeks to connect with the reader and draw them closer to what God has for them. There are a number of personal anecdotes that build a familiarity allowing the reader to let their guard down and really explore the idea of putting down your fears, your past, your regrets and put on the courage to run headlong into God’s amazing grace.
I highlighted several things while reading and have pasted them below…
CHOICE ONE: Choosing to Transform Instead of Transfer
- Your past is not your past if it’s still impacting your present.
- If we don’t learn to transform the pain, we’ll just transfer it.
- Genesis 50:20 NASB
- God is bigger than your history and more concerned with your destiny.
- Shame stamps us with memories that feed us lies for the rest of our lives.
- Regret is a powerful emotion that often gets more powerful with the passage of time, which brings us to an important point: time doesn’t heal all wounds; God heals wounds.
- The cross is the only safe place for human regret.
CHOICE TWO: Choosing To Be Okay With Not Being Okay
- Anything God leads us to do will initially involve some level of fear.
- Let the story of you be a story of redemption.
- Lamentations 3:21-23
- God is faithfully healing our brokenness. He is restoring hope and freedom. Let the story of you be a story of forgiveness and redemption. Let hope in.
- 2 Timothy 2:13 NIV
- 2 Cor 12:9-10 NIV
- John 16:33 NIV
- Scripture teaches that in the end surrender turns out to be the only way we can win.
- There is strength in letting go. There is radical power in surrender.
- Romans 8:35-39 NKJV
- One of the most intense, surprising, and hopeful scenes in Scripture is centered around scars.
- There’s too much “me trying” and not enough “me abiding.”
- My greatest hope is for meaning and purpose. And letting hope in happens when I begin to not just tolerate my past but embrace my past, surrendering it to God’s higher purposes.
CHOICE THREE: Choosing To Trust Rather Than Please
- 4A’s: attention, acceptance, appreciation, and affection.
- Pleasing God is a great longing, but it cannot be our primary motivation or it will imprison our hearts. When our motive is trusting God, our focus is then living out who God says I am. As a follower of Christ you have received a new heart. You have a new identity. You’ve already been changed and now you get to mature into who you already are.
- Hebrews 11:6 NIV
- Living for acceptance and love is slavery; living from acceptance and love is freedom.
- What comes into your mind when you think about God? Your answer to that question will have huge implications for how you begin to let go of your past and let hope in.
- It’s easy in our religious culture to start to think that this life is all about us “running to the Father,” that we’re the ones who are working and obeying to get to the father. But Jesus reminds us that there is a heavenly Father who is running us down. He reaches out to us through the person of Jesus Christ.
- God’s grace is a surprising reversal of the way things work in this world and reminds us that our God is no normal God.
- Look back. You’ll see how God’s hand has guided you through so many things in life. I just don’t believe that God has some secret direction for you life that he expects you to figure out before it happens. He doesn’t have a secret path for your life that he’s keeping from you.
- God’s main purpose for you is not what you do. It’s who you become.
- God’s will is your growth in Christlikeness.
- We bypass the joy of today when we center all our focus on yesterday or tomorrow.
- Gratitude is also one of the most important and underrated aspects of our walk with God. It’s an important discipline that helps bring healing to our past and hope for our future.
- Gratitude is silenced by assumptions.
- Gratitude begins where your sense of entitlement ends.
- The higher our sense of entitlement, the lower our sense of gratitude.
- Gratitude is most often about perspective.
- Gratitude is based on not how good your situation is but how good you see your situation to be.
- The grateful heart is not developed in a single moment; it is the result of a thousand choices. It’s a repetitive choice that transforms our hearts and becomes a part of us over time. p. 142
CHOICE FOUR: Choosing to Free People Rather Than Hurt Them
- You don’t forgive someone for their sake; you do it for your own freedom.
- Authentic forgiveness is never cheap.
- As we forgive people, we gradually begin to see them differently.
- You can’t breathe out what you haven’t breathed in. Breathing grace totally hinges on your moment-to-moment dependency on God. We have to find ways to continually “breathe in” God’s grace.
- While hurt people will hurt people, free people will free people.
- John 14:27 NIV
- Romans 12:2 NIV
- Proverbs 3:5 NASB
- The beauty for those who claim to follow Christ is we can trust in something far more reliable than our own mind and understanding.
- Your fear comes from not trusting that God can take care of you.
- God’s love drives out fear. It has to be more than just a biblical fact and something we let in daily. Let love in. Let hope in. And let go of fear. There’s no longer room for it.
- Fear is knocking on the door of your heart. Doubt is whispering in your ear. Insecurities are begging for full reign. Reject them. Focus on the love of God, which drives out all fear, and let hope in.
- We can either shape the people around us by intentionally or unintentionally hurting them, or we can shape their life through loving them. It’s impossible to live having a neutral relational impact on the people around us.
- Focusing on sinning less doesn’t guarantee you will love more, but focusing on loving more will always guarantee that you will sin less.
- Find Value in Every Person
- Overcome Self-Centeredness
- Love People More Than Being Right
- Jesus did not just come to save us from our sin, but to save us for the kind of life we were created to live. To save us for lives that make a radical difference in our world. Every life was created to make a difference.
- It is important to understand that your past is not really the problem. The real problem is the lie you believed when an event happened in your past.
Prayer #1: Give me a greater view of you
- Most of us are educated far beyond our obedience.
Prayer #2: Is there anything in my life that needs to be pruned?
Prayer #3: Give me heroic courage.
- 2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV
- We worship a God who specializes in resurrections in the ultimate hopeless situation.
- Ephesians 1:19-20
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through their book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 <http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html> : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”