Hope
By: Kristen L. McNulty
If you enjoyed this Impact devotional, the author would love to hear from you. Email her at kristenmcnulty@hotmail.com.
If you'd like to reprint this devotional, please email the author first and she will get back to you within 24 hours. Thank you for your consideration.
Recently I read a quote from the Reverend Charles Allen. Reverend Allen said: "When you say a sitation or person is hopeless, you are slamming the door in the face if God." If this is true, then I fear that we are often slamming the door in the face of God. Just think about it. We say we believe that Jesus can change lives, but do we really believe it? How often have we looked a situation and said "it's hopeless", but what we so often forget that with God a person or situation is never hopeless.
Let's take one example from the Bible. You see, when Jesus walked the earth there was a girl named Mary who seemed to be in a hopeless situation, in fact most people avoided her because she was in their eyes hopeless. The Mary I'm talking about is Mary Magdalene, nicknamed "Mad Mary" because when Jesus' first encounter with her occurred, she had seven demons within her (for more information on that see Luke 8:12). To most she seemed quite hopeless, but not to Jesus. He saved her just like He saved you and me, and the demons were cast out.
Now after this "hopeless" case was saved, did she go about living it up, making up for missed time? No she didn't. She heard God's calling and followed Him. In fact while most of the chosen disciples had fled and many had denied Him, Mary as recorded in John 19:25 stood by His side at the cross, not ashamed of her faith in Him. To understand how remarkable this is you must understand the situation in Israel at the time. The Jewish leaders were so outraged with Jesus that anyone who appeared to be a follower of Jesus was either killed or imprisoned. While many of the chosen twelve fled in fear, this hopeless case stood firm for her faith.
Then, even after Jesus died, Mary continued to follow Jesus. While many of his followers wailed in misery that their Lord had been crucified, Mary still had faith that Jesus was the Son of God and that this was not the end of . Mary even had the faith to visit His tomb (see John 20:1) and she was the first to do so on that Sunday morning. Because of this step of faith, Jesus appeared to her and sent her to tell the disciples that He had risen. All this from a "hopeless" case.
You see, no person or situation is truly hopeless. Yes, the outlook may not look good, but is there still hope? The answer is yes. We may have given up, but God hasn't and God's Grace is sufficient enough for the least of us. Instead of judging a situation or a person hopeless and write them off as we do for our taxes, let's pray. Pray for the person, pray for the situation, pray that God is revealed because after all true Hope is found only in Him. If you think about it, we were all pretty hopeless before Jesus came and saved us. Only Christ Jesus can save the maddest of us all, let's pray that He does.
This devotional was aired as a part of the Making A Difference Christian Radio Show.