Being in a place of hope: my testimony

​Past times tell of how far we’ve come…whenever discouraged, we look back. 

Yesterday I was very troubled in mind, body, soul and spirit. I was because for sometime now I’ve not been too enthused about my life because I feel one aspect of my life isn’t working well the way I want it to. I am a very organized person, constantly making plans for my life, and putting things in order because I hate being in a situation where I’m caught off guard and have to just cling on hope. I want to always have a grip on my life and I feel I work so hard on myself to keep things that way.

 

But for some months now, life has kept me clinging on hope and I do hate it so much. I hate to be in a place where I can’t figure things out, have solutions to things and just have to hope it works out, hope I sail through, hope I survive. I hate to HOPE! I want to KNOW! 
I don’t like to hope I get to a certain destination in life, I want to know based on my plans for the journey, that I will surely get there. I always want to know and plan how my next one year will be like, how the house will run the next one year, how much should be put into savings or investments, etc. You know, that kind of thing.

But lately God has been scattering all my plans, or so it felt. And He allows certain situations to keep triggering that feeling of helplessness that makes you cling on hope.
Yes, so yesterday I couldn’t sleep. And I didn’t know what to do as I left the bedroom to just be in the hall all by myself at around midnight. Then after sitting for a while, something (I guess God) made me take my laptop, go grab my external drive and just go through the photo database I’ve created on it. Maybe that was just my way of passing the time, but then, God started whispering to me in my mind as I watched many pictures from as far back as I could to the present, that OUR PAST TIMES TELL OF HOW FAR WE’VE COME. 
I saw so many past blessings including the fact that I could afford my own flight ticket and we could afford my wife’s flight tickets every year all through her masters degree on a bursary that did not cover cost of flights. We could afford a descent accommodation and in fact, change accommodation 3 times in 2 years without exhausting all the rent period in the previous two and not even getting refunded. We’ve sacrificed to help many in times of their needs, amongst many other blessings. 

And the rhema God finally left me as I went back to bed around 3:30am, prayed till 4am, and then got up around 5:30am for work was that, WHENEVER I’M DISCOURAGED, I SHOULD LOOK BACK ON MY PAST. He categorically said I SHOULD NEVER FORGET MY PAST; I SHOULD NEVER FORGET WHERE MY BLESSINGS COME FROM. 
He said Son, don’t worry, I trained you that way to always be sure of what’s coming, but even when it looks like all you have is hope, I’VE GOT IT ALL UNDER CONTROL. 

With that assurance, I don’t know if my problem is solved, whether I won’t worry again the next time things are not moving on well according to my plans, but I learned it’s OK to be in A PLACE OF HOPE. 

©Mark Gadogbe (McApple), 2017