Hope For Today Videos

It’s Valentine’s Day today.  This day is meant to remind us of love and hearts joined together in friendship and commitment.  God has shared His heart with us and invites us to share our hearts with Him. 

What does generous living have to do with living successfully? We live in a self-centered world and that kind of lifestyle typically becomes a person’s way of life without a conscious plan to live otherwise. And here comes God telling us that it is the opposite kind of lifestyle that actually satisfies us – the one that gives and the one that lives to refresh others. What are we to make of that?

Strength is a gift.  Strength is the product of an ongoing relationship with God.  Strength is the result of trusting God, waiting for God to act, and following God’s word and plan for fullness of life.  That is what gives us joy, keeps us safe, and helps us understand and respond well to the events of each day.

It is God’s heart for us that we live with dignity, with our heads held high, and in mutually respectful relationships. That doesn’t always happen, as we know too many sad stories of destructive relationships. Family breakdown, abuse, bullying, and discrimination are just some stress points in destructive relationships. We need to learn how to establish safe boundaries even while we pray for healing and restoration wherever possible.

What words about God’s goodness and love inspire you today? From early on in my walk with God, there is a prayer, familiar to many, that has touched my heart in a way that both stabilizes me and which creates a longing in me to love God more and respond more to Him.  What’s your reaction to this prayer?

How far is the east from the west?  It is a distance we can never travel and a destination we can never reach. Now here’s good news for all of us: Based on our acceptance of the death and resurrection of Jesus, God has removed our sins from us and sent them to that place we can never reach – as far as the east is from the west.

In our 24/7 never-ending activity it’s good to hear the call to stop and pay attention to the one who created us and acknowledge who He is as our Lord and how good He is to us as His beloved children.

We pray. God acts on our behalf.  Things are fine.  We go on our merry way until we bump into the next problem and then …. We find ourselves in mental and emotional turmoil wondering where God is. We don't understand what's going on because our hearts are hard.  I wonder how much or God’s goodness we fail to understand because of it?

In our topsy-turvy world of new information and change by the day and more often by the hour, we need to hold on to the things that are constant, that don’t change, and that will be there ongoing no matter what.

Someone once said, “The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.” I like that. There are so many opportunities around us every single day – opportunities to encourage, to lend a helping hand, to just listen and be with someone who is struggling.  The list is endless.  Today we pray to recognize and use well the opportunities that this day gives us.

Anyone who has tried to break free from the harmful use of a substance or an addictive habit understands temptation. We all know how easy it is to lie to ourselves until we are convinced that something we have been yearning for will make us happy and help us solve all our problems – only to relearn that painful lesson that things only get worse, not better.  Jesus knows best of all how difficult it is to deal with temptation. He'll show us what to do to live above temptation.

We all have friends we don’t know what we’d do without – friends who have been there for us through thick and thin – friends we could turn to when we needed help and they’d be there for us.  The Bible got it right when it says: A friend is always loyal, and a brother is born to help in time of need. Proverbs 17:17