A prisoner of Hope

7th November 2012

Dear All

Today I meditated on this scripture Zechariah 9:12 " Return to the stronghold, You prisoners of Hope. Even today I declare That I will restore double to you."

Today I will boldly declare that I am a prisoner of Hope.

I would like to share with you, how I became a prisoner of Hope.

All my life, I thought, to be a good christian, I must go to church every Sunday, say my prayers, be good, be a responsible person and do my best. 

When I got married, I thought, I will do everything that will make my husband happy.
That I will put his interest above mine, so that he will think well of me and will always love me.

My husband was very pleased with me and we had a good marriage. My husband made me feel that I was the best thing that happened to him. 

He in return became my hero, who provided my every need for a good life. He worked so hard to provide the best for me and the children. Yes he too put the interest of his wife and children above him.

God be praised for granting me such a blessed man in my life.

I thought nothing can go wrong. After all both of us were doing our best, everything according to our understanding, what was pleasing to Him.

How wrong we were? What happened?

27 years of marriage went on smoothly until tragedy stricked. My husband was diagnosed with prostrate cancer in the year 2000.

When he was diagnosed with prostrate cancer, his whole world fell apart and he was gripped with fear. 

Even though, he was third stage of his illness, the doctors had assured us that he will recover. There was hope for a full recovery. 

He did recover fully in 2005. 

He did not believe and he resigned in his mind that his life was over and that he will die and so he gave up hope.

Thus he became very sad, angry, resentful, bitter and looked at everything as hopeless until the day he died on 14th November 2011.

What has this sad story got to do with hope? Let me explain.

By the grace of God, I believed in my heart, God will not let us down and so I had hoped in His healing.

For 11 years I had prayed, prayed, prayed that God will restore my husband into the person he was.

For 11 years I had missed my husband , the hero of 27 years who was loving, kind, and fun to be with.

Many nights were spent in tears only to pick up myself the next morning with His strength and hope that God will make all things come together for good. Rom 8:28.

I believed so much in my heart that hope always prevails. It is written in Rom 5:5 " Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us."

Though I placed my trust in God, I had allowed myself countless times to be gripped by fear and hopelessness in my moments of weakness. It was during these shameful moments, that I acted in the flesh by being angry with my husband for not fighting back, all the negative thoughts that was tomenting him in his mind.

I wanted him to be positive like me. I wanted him to know that, he was not the only one who was suffering. I am in the same boat with him. He was not alone. I desperately wanted him to believe that we can get out of this fury storm. 

 8 years went by with my futile attempts of convincing him to snap out of the negativity he had clothed himself. I felt I was being choked into a life of darkness and hopelessness.

In my desperation, I turned to the Lord, for help. When the lord saw that I had quit depending on my knowledge of how things ought to be, because I deserved better,  He started speaking into my heart.

The Lord showed me in 2009 that I can do nothing on my own, to change my husband into believing in God's help. Why do I say that?

The Lord had showed me that, the reason I wanted my husband to get well, with God's help, was because I had a personal agenda. That is, my happiness depended on him getting well and be the hero of my life again.

He showed me, I needed to depend on Him. That my happiness does not depend on anyone, not even myself. 

 Nobody owed me anything for my goodness. For every act of goodness comes from Him. I own nothing, for everything is His.

 I used to think otherwise, that because I was good to my husband, I deserved to be happy.

Holy Spirit showed me that only God can make me happy, by living in his fullness of His love. 

Instead the Lord showed me how I can hope in Him and conduct myself in my walk, to live hopefully.

He showed me how to accept the things I cannot change, but still hope that God can make all things come together for good for His greater glory.

He taught me to love my husband unconditionally, without expecting anything( the hero image) and continue to love the person he had become. 

The Lord taught me not to lean on my understanding, of what will make me happy, but to lean on His understanding even though I did not know what it was then,

The Lord taught me to take His Love in Rom 5:5 "love of God has been poured into our hearts" and fill the void in my heart.

The Lord taught me to pray ceaselessly as it is written in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-17 " Rejoice always and pray without ceasing". As a result, I decided to be happy no matter what my circumstances looked like.

The Lord taught me to put on the helmet of hope as it is written in 1 Thessalonians 5:8 "But let who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation." (liberty)

The Lord taught me to do everything for Him by offering everything (my pain, my disappointment, my loneliness,) to Him as He did for me on the cross.

The Lord taught me to bear everything with His love as it is written in
 Colossians 3:12-14 " Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, if another has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave, so you must do. But above all these things put on love which is the bond of perfection."

What did I gain after 3 years of waiting in hope for my husband to get well?

In 3 years, God had used my husband's health condition to mold me into the person of His making.

He used the weakness of that wonderful man to tranform me into the likeness of Christ.

I saw the hand of God in my life, using my husband's life, like a light, in a candle (his body) melting away like the wax  to mold me.

That light was Jesus in my husband who allowed his creature (my husband) to reject His hope, yet continued living in him, so that He can become the anchor of hope for me as it is written in the scriptures.

Heb 6: 19 " This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, which enters behind the veil."

It is this hope, that became my strength and my joy. Holy Spirit taught me to be strong in Him. That nothing can separate me from His love. 

The death of my husband could not separate me from His Love which had taken root in my heart and filled my every void.

Even though I had hoped so much for my husband to survive this trial, God had given me His heart to be courageous and have the grace to accept the things I cannot change, but to submit to His will. I thank God that indeed, His grace is sufficient for me.   

I now could identify the death of Jesus to the death of my husband. He took every infirmity, every fear, every lack, every pain of my husband to mold me into a person of Hope.

Now I can praise God with gratitude in my heart, and rejoice that His Word in Heb 3:6 " but Christ as a Son over His own house, whose house(temple of the Holy Spirit) we are if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end" has been fulfilled in my life."

Therefore as a prisoner of Hope, I will claim Zechariah 9:12 that even Today God will restore everything Double.

It is my prayer that whoever reads this testimony will be inspired by His Word and turn their eyes to Him with the gift of Hope in their hearts.



God Bless