Fight for Hope
by Drenda Keesee
Did you listen?
Most children start out with lists of dreams and hopes in their hearts. If you ask a child what they want to be when they grow up, you most likely won’t get just one answer. I know one twelve-year-old girl who will tell you she wants to be a gymnast and a fashion designer and a meteorologist and a mom and own her own bakery. She has plenty of dreams and hopes for her future!
She hasn’t been told not to get her hopes up.
What about you? Has someone in your life been a dream-crusher? Or have you gotten your hopes up only to face disappointment? Have you taken steps toward your dreams only to hear a little voice inside say, “You could never do that;” “You don’t deserve to be happy;” “Look at all of the mistakes you’ve made”?
If that’s you, it’s time to let go of all of that.
It’s time you…
…let go of your past. It’s time to let go of any guilt, shame, lack of confidence, mistakes, or regrets.
It’s time to get your hopes up.
Rehearsing the past or living with regret will only hold you hostage and keep you from moving forward. These things rob you of the confidence you need to take the necessary chances in life that will help you grow and accomplish the impossible with God.
It’s all too easy for us to give up on God’s plan for our lives when we have experienced personal setbacks or someone failed to live up to their part of a plan. When this happens, we tend to step back and tuck our dreams away into hidden places, never to be seen again.
Even if you’ve faced obstacles or hurdles in life, you shouldn’t throw out God’s plan. See those obstacles as opportunities. Scripture instructs us to “fight the good fight of the faith” (1 Timothy 6:12).
It is a fight to keep hope.
You will likely face situations in life that will challenge your hope, situations that will challenge your faith, and situations that will challenge you to the core of your being.
But you can keep your hopes up and navigate forward.
Don’t wait for someone else to tell you that you can do it. Know that you were created for something special. You may never have a circle of people cheering you on or supporting you, but be assured, God is always speaking words of encouragement.
God wants you to hope. He wants you to dream. In fact, dreams are His language; He wants you to dream again and again and again.
So, nurture your dreams. Seek God first and let His Kingdom make a way where there seems to be an impossibility.
Your Father knows how to touch your heart with intimate and hand-tailored blessings even when your dreams may seem completely shattered. God will put the pieces back together if you will let Him.
When you fall down and skin your knee, He knows how to help you get back up, mend the bruise, and He says, “You’re not going down. Make some adjustments and keep moving forward. I believe in you.”
It will take courage to follow your God-given dreams, and it will require faith. But He will give you the courage to step out when you must make a tough decision or to step up when it’s time to let your light shine in the darkness.
There is so much potential in you, especially when you give yourself wholeheartedly to the plans of God.
We will never get it perfect, no matter how hard we work or how completely we endeavor to follow God’s plans. That’s why we need Him. But if we keep moving forward, we will ultimately arrive much further than we ever dreamed possible. And the blessings will far outweigh the price.
There is so much more I want to share with you about getting your hopes up and keeping them up! You can click here to get your copy of Get Your Hopes Up on CD now.
~Drenda
ps…Are you looking for a good church? Be sure and listen on Saturday evening or catch the 3 services on Sunday for Faith Life Church!
Drenda Keesee’s contagious zeal and humorous personal experiences help make her ministry of spiritual, emotional, and relational wholeness one that will bless your life and spark a new fire in your spirit.
A wife of over 30 years and a mother of five children, Drenda has ministered at churches, seminars, and conferences, and through the mediums of television and radio, for more than 20 years.
Her books, The New Vintage Family, Better Than You Think, and She Gets It are available wherever books are sold. In these heartfelt books, Drenda shares her personal journey and the life lessons that have brought her to where she is today, as well as practical answers that all people need to live a joyful life.
Drenda and her husband Gary founded Faith Life Now, a ministry designed to spread the message of freedom in the areas of finances, faith, marriage, and family. Tune in for their weekly messages here. Faith Life Now hosts conferences worldwide and sponsors both Fixing the Money Thing, which Drenda co-hosts with her husband Gary and Drenda.
Through their own life experiences, the Keesee’s have found the principles from God’s Word to be powerful and effective. At one point, Drenda was a young, suicidal feminist with no hope of ever being “good enough” for her own standards of perfection. She never wanted the “inconvenience” of a husband or children, and she was on her own path to success. But the stress of trying to achieve perfection and perform for love left her broken and used. She had success, but it was nothing compared to the pain and loneliness it had also brought.
That’s when God got a hold of her heart. It was there—at her lowest point—that she found the One who accepted and loved her, faults and all. Since that transformation, Drenda has had a passion to reach women who find themselves where she once was.
She married Gary after attending college, and there she found herself in a personal boot camp of sorts. She says, “I cried and told God, ‘I can do anything but be a wife and mother.’” She committed to learning how to do it God’s way. Through the many years of raising their children and struggling to make ends meet, Drenda learned from their mistakes. “I didn’t know how to be a wife and mother, but God saved our marriage, taught us how to parent our children for success, showed us how to have financial success, and then the irony of all ironies, He called us to ministry.” It’s truly because of these life experiences that Drenda can now share so many insightful principles for people who are now going through the same struggles.
