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WINNING WITH THE WORD “Winning with the Word” is a weekly blog that will help you to be a winner in life by applying God’s principles for living the abundant life as found in the Bible, God’s manual for life. AN INVITATION TO YOU: To subscribe to this blog, click here.  To subscribe to this podcast, click here. If this blog and podcast have blessed you, please encourage your family and friends to subscribe as well. Thank you! Be sure to check out our Featured Book of the Week at the end of this post. ______________________________________ Do you prefer listening instead of reading? Then click below to listen to today's blog post on podcast. https://media.blubrry.com/winning_with_the_word/content.blubrry.com/winning_with_the_word/WWW_04_12_21_Have_You_Lost_Your_Hope_.mp3 ______________________________________ Hello and Happy Day! This is Dr. MaryAnn Diorio, novelist and life coach, welcoming you to another episode of Winning with the Word. Today is April 12, 2021, and this is Episode #10 of Series 2021. This episode is titled "Have You Lost Your Hope?" _______________________________ It is no secret that we have been living in times that pose a great challenge to our hope. Hopelessness, depression, and despair are widespread, particularly among our young people. So, what can we do not to lose hope? As always, the Bible gives us the answer. In the Apostle Paul's first letter to Timothy, he writes, "Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope" (1 Timothy 1: 1). Notice that Paul calls Jesus Christ our Hope. Jesus is our Hope. We not only put our hope in Him. He is Hope itself. Let's take a look at the nature of hope. What is it, and why is it so essential to life? In his 1828 dictionary, Noah Webster defines hope as follows: "Confidence in a future event, the highest degree of well-founded expectation of good; as a hope found on God's gracious promises." Webster continues his definition of hope by quoting the Scripture verse in Joel 3: 16: "The Lord will be the hope of His people." __________________________________ "Jesus Christ, our Hope" (1 Timothy 1: 1) __________________________________ So, according to Webster's definition, the Lord God is our Expectation of Goodness. When we consider the Lord, we can always expect goodness from His hand. When we place our trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are expressing confidence in the truth that goodness from His hand always lies ahead. This is hope. So, how does hope operate? Now, please pay close attention to what I am about to explain, as it is very important to receiving what we need from God. This truth transformed my life. I know it will transform yours as well if you grasp it and apply it to your own life. Just as the soul is comprised of the mind, the will, and the emotions, the spirit is comprised of the conscience, the intuition, and the imagination. Hope is a function of the imagination. Hope is the blueprint that resides in our imagination. That blueprint is the inner picture we have of ourselves and of our situation in life. So, we can say that hope is a blueprint. This blueprint or picture of ourselves inside ourselves is what faith turns into reality. Let me give you an example: Years ago, my husband and I built a house. Before the house was built, the architects gave us the blueprints of the house. When family and friends would come over to visit, we would show them the blueprints and say, "This is our house." Now, the blueprints were not the actual, physical house. They were the picture of what the house would eventually be. They were, in other words, the hope of the house. When we looked at the blueprints, we were exercising the hope that one day that house would be a physical reality.  When the physical house was actually built, it was the substance of our fulfilled hope--the physical, material reality of what we had seen on the blueprints.