Keep Hope Alive You don’t have to just sit there with an unfulfilled desire. You can work for something. You can hope. A few of the men I spoke to shared a sentiment I have felt myself. They said that while they would love to see their daughters get off the streets and get married, their own lives have gotten to the point that they can’t be a part of the process. We’re not all meant to be fathers. But we are all meant to hope. And God wants us to have hope. He wants us to get out of bed every morning and want to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. In his book What’s Gotten into You? author Stephen Arterburn tells a story of a guy who was working on a construction crew, one of the most dangerous and demanding jobs there is. He had a lot of bills. He didn’t know how he would pay them. He thought of nothing but the needs of his children. He did not worry about himself. In the middle of the workday he would stop, drop his tools, kneel in front of his supervisor and just cry out his frustration. “I’m failing as a man,” he cried out. The supervisor said, “Son, let me tell you something. You’re supposed to fail as a man.” The man’s name was Samuel. He became one of the greatest men in the Bible. If you are not failing, you are not doing it right. If you want to know if your son is a young man that God will allow to become a father, the test isn’t about his bank account or the grades he gets or how many times he gets kicked out of class. The test is whether or not he has hope, whether he is full of desire to pursue something bigger than himself and whether or not he has already been given the hope of a family. “A desire to be a father was not something that came into being in my head, or at least not alone. It came with the word of God being planted in my heart, being whispered to me in prayer and in the Word of God.” God has a plan for your life and He doesn’t want you in the dark about it. He wants you to see it so that when you get to the end, you can see how God has changed your life. To see that He is at work, changing the world for your future and shaping your hope. Your hope is not for your own benefit. It is not for your pleasure. It is not for your comfort or your fun. It is about God’s glory and God’s story and God’s dream of what He wants you to be. Your hope is so that God can be God in the world and we can love God with our bodies and the world with our bodies. So that you can love your wife and she can be the mother of your children. So that you can make a family, so that your family can grow and flourish. So that you can fulfill your potential and God’s dreams for the world can be fulfilled through you and through us. For our sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich. (2 Cor. 8:9) The desire to be a father is not one to be found in our heads or in our bank accounts. It is a desire planted in our hearts by the word of God and sustained and nurtured by the Lord Himself. The desire to be a father is not something that comes into being in my head, or at least not alone. It comes with the word of God being planted in my heart, being whispered to me in prayer and in the Word of God. When I was a child, we went through a time when our family of four was on food stamps. It was a time when we were on welfare, when we were trying to figure out how we were going to survive. On the first day of our first food stamp appointment, my father walked into the office, his face was drawn and he said, “If I had food stamps right now, I’d be back on welfare again.” I do not remember what our family did, or if we were able to be self-sufficient and raise our family from the depths of financial desperation, but I do remember the look on my father’s face as he said those words. It was desperation. He didn’t want to go back to welfare. He wanted to go back to being on food stamps. But that is not what God has called you to. You have been called to go back to Jesus. You have been called to repentance. And because you have come before God with a good heart and a good mind, you have been welcomed to the house of God. Where else would we meet but in the house of God? God made us in his image. He wants us to be his image on earth. His sons and daughters. So let’s follow God into His house and follow Him in the way He’s calling us. God has the dream for your life. He is making you and forming you into the man He wants you to be. And the hope is that you will be part of the family that has become known as “Us” No Comments Follow Us Get the App About Ministry Lamb & Lion Ministries was established for the purpose of proclaiming the soon return of Jesus. We do not believe it is possible to know the date when Jesus will return. But we do believe it is possible to know the season of the Lord's return, and it is our conviction that we are living in that season...