Let me make it clear though, I didn’t get
a new set of circumstances overnight. When
I walked out of the garage at the end of that
week, my debts were just as big and my
problems just as real as when I began. But
something inside me had begun to change.
Hope had been born in me.
When I say “hope,” I don’t mean the
weak “I wish” kind of hope the world gives.
I mean the Bible kind of confident expectancy
that comes when you get an inner image of
something that hasn’t happened yet. That
kind of hope, Romans 5:5 says, never disappoints
you.
Most people aren’t familiar with godly
hope. They are, however, quite experienced
in “worry,” which is a negative form of it.
Worry begins with a thought in someone’s
mind. As it progresses, that thought becomes
a mental picture.
Once the picture is formed, every time
the person thinks of that thing, he can see it
happening. As he concentrates on that picture,
mulling it over again and again, it gets
stronger and clearer.
What he’s actually doing is meditating on
something that hasn’t come to pass yet.
Eventually, he’ll begin to talk like it has
already happened because of the inner image
he has built inside his consciousness. If he
talks it long enough, that image will show
up as a reality in his world.
Hope works that same way. The difference
is, hope’s pictures are not based on
natural circumstances and devil-inspired
fears, but on the Word of God.
If you’re going to follow the faith of
Abraham, you need to practice developing
that kind of hope.
“But, Brother Copeland, I told you before,
my situation is hopeless!”
It’s probably not any more hopeless than
mine was—and it certainly is not any more
hopeless than Abraham’s was. When God
told him he was going to have a son, he was
already 100 years old. Obviously there was
no natural hope for that to happen. To make
matters worse, his wife, Sarah, was in her
90s and had been barren all her life.
Yet the Bible says Abraham hoped against
hope (Romans 4:18). He built a picture in his
mind because of God’s promise to him, a picture
that was contrary to the pictures of childlessness
that his circumstances had given him.
Abraham drew hope from what God had
said to him and hung onto it. He drew it
into his spirit and imagined having a son. He
built it into his consciousness until he drove
out every other idea.
It doesn’t matter how far down you are
today—financially, physically or any other
way—you can do the same thing. You can
begin to build dreams out of God’s Word. A
good foundation for them is Deuteronomy 28.
It’s God’s Word and I can tell you from experience,
it is good dream-building material.
God intended for man to be a dreamer.
He built into us the capacity to do it. But
He didn’t intend for us to be limited by
natural thoughts and circumstances. He
meant for us to dream beyond them.
That’s what Abraham did. He locked into
God’s dream—and it was bigger than anything
he could have thought up on his own.
It will be that way for you, too. God’s
dream is bigger than your dream for yourself.
It is, as I said before, exceeding, abundantly
beyond all you can ask or think! (See
Ephesians 3:20.)
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