#SweetSpirit #CreateYourNow #SoulfulSunday

It happens to the best of us. Life has a way of piling on — one circumstance after another — until you look around and think, Where did my hope go?

Maybe your circumstances aren’t what you asked for. Maybe they’re not even close to what you wanted. The job didn’t come through. The relationship didn’t heal the way you prayed it would. The doctor’s report wasn’t what you expected. The bills keep stacking up, and so does the weight on your shoulders. When you’re buried under all of that, hope can feel like a luxury you just can’t afford.

But here’s the thing. Hope was never meant to come from your circumstances in the first place.

Paul wrote something in his letter to the Romans that Christ-followers have been holding onto for centuries, and it’s just as alive today as it was then. “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13). Read that again slowly. God doesn’t just hand you a little sliver of hope to get you through the afternoon. He fills you — all joy, all peace — so that you overflow. That’s not a trickle. That’s an abundance that spills over the edges of everything you’re walking through.

And notice where it starts. It starts with trust.

Not with having it all figured out. Not with the circumstances changing. Not with finally getting to a place where life feels manageable. It starts with trusting Him right in the middle of the mess. That’s where the filling happens. That’s where the joy sneaks back in, not because things got easier, but because the God of hope met you exactly where you are.

The K.I.S.S. ~ Overflow with hope!

The psalmist understood this kind of trust. “When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought me joy” (Psalm 94:19). There it is — anxiety and joy in the same sentence. Because they can coexist when God is the source of one and the world is the source of the other. Your anxiety doesn’t disqualify you from joy. Your hard season doesn’t lock you out of peace. God’s consolation — His comfort, His nearness, His steady hand — brings joy right into the anxious places.

And peace? That’s not the absence of chaos. It never has been. Paul told the Philippians, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6–7). Peace that transcends understanding means it doesn’t have to make sense to everyone around you. People might look at your situation and wonder how you’re still standing, still smiling, still pressing forward. And the answer is that the peace guarding your heart didn’t come from logic. It came from the throne room.

So what does it actually look like to overflow with hope? It looks like waking up on the hard morning and still whispering, “God, I trust You.” It looks like choosing gratitude when your flesh wants to choose bitterness. It looks like being honest about the struggle and still believing that God is working all things together for your good, because Romans 8:28 isn’t just a bumper sticker — it’s a promise. It looks like letting the Holy Spirit do what only He can do, which is fill you with a hope that has absolutely nothing to do with what’s happening around you and everything to do with who is living within you.

The prophet Jeremiah recorded God’s words to a people who were in the middle of exile — not at the end of it, not looking back on it, but right smack in the thick of it — and God said, “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11). Hope and a future. Not when things settle down. Not when it all makes sense. Right now, in the middle of the exile, in the middle of the running, in the middle of the circumstances you didn’t ask for.

You don’t have to manufacture hope on your own. You were never meant to. The God of hope — not the God of “figure it out yourself” — wants to fill you so completely that it overflows. Not by your own strength, not by your own willpower, but by the power of the Holy Spirit working in you and through you.

So if you’re in that season of running, stop for just a moment. Take a breath. Open your hands. And let the God of hope do what He does best. He fills. He restores. He overflows. And your circumstances? They don’t get the final word. He does.

“Be present. Be incredible. Be YOU!!!“