Prisoners of Hope

 

Return to your fortress, you prisoners of hope;
    even now I announce that I will restore twice as much to you.  

Zechariah 9:12 

I have been a prisoner.  To...Anxiety. Depression. Fear.  Negative thinking.  They have walled me in with seemingly no way of escape.  In the depths of depression (the kind that you can't pull yourself out of), I was convinced that I would never find a way out.  But when I stumbled upon Zechariah 9:12, I was shocked to find that we can be prisoners of something positive.

Prisoners of Hope.  The phrase makes no sense.  Unless...

you decide to walk into that cell and close the barred door.  A prisoner of hope is one that makes a choice.  A decision to look beyond the bars to the awaited redemption.

Fear. Anxiety. Jealousy. Depression. Hatred. Bitterness.

They are all prisons. Could it be that we even make a choice to walk into those filthy cells and lock the door behind us?  Just to be clear, I am not talking about clinical depression or anxiety disorders.  No one walks into a mental illness by choice.  But are there times when we go down a depressing road that leads to a prison of our own design because we excel at negative thinking? Do we invite prison walls in our anger, jealousy, or hatred?

If we make choices in the negative why couldn't we also choose hope as our prison cell?

The hope that says...

Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him; I will surely defend my ways to his face. Job 13:15

Though the fig tree does not bud
    and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
    and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
    and no cattle in the stalls, 

 yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
    I will be joyful in God my Savior.

Habakkuk 3:17-18 

The hope that looks beyond our circumstances to what God has in store for us. To what God will restore to us.  Twice over.  Life is loss, and yet, with God there is restoration.  Redemption. He doesn't give back to us what we have lost.  He gives us MORE than we have lost.  The trick is to hang on.  To hang in that cell of

Hope until His restoration appears.