Hope Awakening: Wrap Up

“And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and with people.”
Luke 2:52

I pray God has awakened hope within you during the past forty days together. I pray He has drawn you to His Word and lit a fire in your soul to know Him more intimately.

We met a lot of ordinary people who were honored to play a role in Jesus’ birth. The common thread holding all these people together? Faith and obedience. They trusted God. They said yes, even when it brought hardship. The reward? God used them in extraordinary ways to usher in the hope of Jesus!

The story isn’t over . . . yet. I mean, we know how it ends, but there is still an amazing chapter yet to come. Jesus will come again to defeat evil for good. If you have accepted God’s free gift and called on Jesus as your Lord and Savior, then God has a job for you. We all have a role to play in Jesus’ second coming: to spread the good news! It sounds simple, but it can be so hard. It requires us to be vulnerable. Humble. Trusting.

When we feel compelled by the Spirit to move, I pray we will all remember the ordinary people we met in Luke 1 and 2. God equipped each and every one of them to faithfully walk the path He set before them. They didn’t do it on their own! They did it with God. It’s a partnership. The same is true for us because the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is alive within us today. The same Spirit that moved in Zechariah, Elizabeth, John, Mary, Joseph, Simeon, and Anna moves within us today. God has equipped us to do the hard things; we just have to trust.

What’s holding you back? Give it to God, and trust in Him to walk beside you on the journey. May God use all of our ordinary lives in extraordinary ways.

All praise and glory be to God, forever and ever!

Reflection: We’d love to hear how God revealed Himself to you through this journey! If you haven’t had a chance to do all the days, don’t worry – it’s on our blog so you can always return to it. Honestly, I (Jennifer) have been writing as we’ve published and I haven’t had a chance to sit and soak in the reflections! I plan to return to this in the coming months and start fresh. Our biggest hope and prayer for you, friend, is that God worked in your heart over the past forty days and that you will turn to him with faith and obedience for the path He set before you!