With hope you can endure anything. Without hope everything is a burden. Hope lifts your spirit like helium lifts a balloon. Hope also pads your soul, absorbing the shock of life's journey down a bumpy road. Whenever life disappoints, hope has a genuinely encouraging response. You can lose your job, your car, your house, your health, and even a loved one, but no one can take away from you God's gift of eternal life. Don't put your hope in anything you can lose. This kind of wordly hope leads to despair and doubt. To benefit from hope, you must put your hope only in what you can't lose. He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. Jim Elliot How about you? What kind of hope do you have? Are you so discouraged you've given up hope? Life beats you down. Darkness engulfs you. Your brokenness is all you can see. Then you doubt God's goodness. Standing up and walking confidently forward can seem impossible. God's truth can seem irrelevant or even useless. To doubt God's truth is to give into despair. Despair has physical (position) and mental (attitude) components. Do the following sound like you? Position: dead end, trapped, confined, held back, no traction, sinking in quick sand, no way out, frozen. Attitude: defeated, fatalistic, doomed, failed before started, negative, impossible, pessimistic. When you feel hopeless, you are deceived. When God is involved, there is always hope. The truth of the Gospel renders despair an illusion. Hope is real when what you hope in is real. Hope is possessing full assurance that outrageously better times are on their way. When God is involved, a lot is possible. Is there hope for you? Yes, there is, even if you are discouraged and full of doubt. Whenever all you see is a dead end, there is always a hidden door that leads forward. The LORD is there to rescue all who are discouraged and have given up hope. Psalm 34:18 CEV God is on your side, actively working to lift you out of despair. As you move away from despair, you experience a cautious, but growing optimism. You start to believe there is a way out. Hopeless becomes maybe. Impossible becomes I'll give it a try. You're no longer frozen, but warming up. What does experiencing a complete and pure hope look like? When you're hopeful, you're confident of the way forward even when you can't fully see it. You're joyful, energetic, motivated, certain, assured, sold-out, all-in. You're not just warm or hot; you're on fire. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. Ephesians 3:20-21 ESV How To Use This Book You'll gain more from your journaling experience when you journal in layers. Journaling in layers has four steps: Represent: communicate what is internal or subconscious by expressing it in some external or explicit medium (words, symbols, sculptures). Rest: acknowledge what you expressed, then wait. Let it simmer, percolate, steep. Focus on something else. Review: revisit what you expressed, taking it back in and looking for understanding and meaning. Repeat: return to step 1. This book has 30 truth lessons. Respond to each truth, then return at a regular interval (1 day, 1 week, or 1 month) to reflect on the truth again, including all of your previous responses. Then, write a new response. This will deepen the truth for you.