A Fortress of Hope {Verses of Hope}

I never thought of hope in the terms of a fortress or even a prison, but as I go through the trials of life I realize hope is vital to make it through. There may be a myriad of reasons that we need hope. Life can be so hard...

Bills to pay. Schedules to arrange. Busyness to control. Conflicts to navigate. Grief to heal from. Illness to recover from. Sorrow to process. Tension.  Loss. Heartache.  

How does a person overcome it all? Or forget overcoming...how about just managing the day-by-day so that you don't drown in it all. When we lose hope we walk out of the fortress and the hurt of life can kill us. Better to put up your defenses and surround yourself with hope than to succumb to it all. Hope is like a circling of the wagons, the building of some trenches, or installing of a security system. It protects us from whatever we may come up against.

To give it up is to give up. Defeat is sure to follow.

For me and those of you who have suffered a loss of any type, Zechariah 9:12 tells us why we can have hope. Our God won't leave us in the loss. In fact, he will restore twice as much to us. It doesn't mean he will bring back our deceased love one or even a particular relationship, but it does mean that He will find ways to bring restoration that will outweigh the loss. We can have hope that whatever the loss is He will redeem it.

So today I choose hope as my fortress, my prison. I plan to stay awhile...

This post is part of a series called, Verses of Hope.  Please join me for other scriptures that can maintain your fortress.