COVID-19.
As I search for a sentence to follow that, I’m blank. What do I say?
Everyone is talking about it or trying to forget about it. It’s all over social media. At times, I find myself wanting to practice social distance from everything vying for my attention on all media outlets, especially now. BUT, I have noticed a ribbon of hope in some messages out there. it’s this:
“I pray that God, the source of HOPE, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in Him. Then you will overflow with confident HOPE through the power of the Holy Spirit.” Romans 15:13
Last summer when I was considering my next painting series, God put this verse on my heart. It’s actually a verse my husband Jim prayed for me and our boys. I wanted to pray this verse and paint a dove as a representation of the Holy Spirit. I knew I was taking a risk with something that was more overtly Christian than the hearts I painted last year; however, I felt like God placed that verse on my heart.
So I wrote that verse on every dove painting before I painted it and prayed that verse for the people who would receive it — all 75 of them.
When you write something and pray something that many times, you begin to internalize it. And I did. I began writing it from memory, pretty early on. I wrote it and prayed it in a cadence like this:
I pray that God,
the source of HOPE,
will fill you completely with
JOY and PEACE
because you trust in HIM.
THEN you will overflow with
CONFIDENT HOPE
through the power of the
HOLY SPIRIT.
I underlined “because you trust in HIM” and I circled “THEN.” I wanted to really study this verse to see our part — trusting Him — and what happened as a result of our trusting — overflowing with confident hope.
My prayer is that you will memorize and pray this verse, or another verse that God lays on your heart, during this time of social distancing and that you keep up that practice when things return to normal. Break it down, look at what it all means. Read it in context. Let God, through the Holy Spirit, speak to you through his Word. Don’t let any of this isolation or destruction be wasted on things that don’t matter but instead seek God and spend time with Him, growing in your relationship with Him, so that you may share the Good News of Christ to a world that so desperately needs it.
*** Please know, before I wrote this blog, I prayed for all of you who would read it. ***