Enough Hope to Face Mountains

Have faith in God. For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them. And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.” Mark 11:22-26 (see also Matthew 6:14-15)

Forgiveness changes the present and the future, not the past.

Forgiveness demonstrates our faith and hope in God. We cannot have hope in the past. We can study and know the past but we can only have hope in the present and the future. Forgiveness frees us to live in the hope that God gives us. By forgiving the past that we can't change, we can change the present by putting it in alignment with the vision we hold on to of the future with hope. We let go of what we can’t change, giving it to God and we live in the hope of what we can still do something about. When we believe that God holds the future in his hands we can have hope in the future because our hope is in God.

If you find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere.

We will all make mistakes at times and have obstacles along our path of life , but those obstacles don't have to keep us from moving forward. God walks down the path with us and so we don't need to fear the obstacles. Facing the obstacles builds our hope in God as we learn to trust Him to lead us through them instead of trying to avoid them on our own strength. There will be mountains in the paths ahead of us. The way we remove the mountains in front of us is not by having courage in our ability to conquer the mountains but by believing God is bigger than the mountains. When our concentration is on the greatness of our God, the smallness of the mountains becomes irrelevant. If we focus on finding a path with no obstacles, then our focus cannot be of finding God; if our focus is on God, the obstacles become irrelevant

Problems usually aren't nearly as bad as you imagine, once you work up the courage to look them in the face.

Our hope isn't in the absence of obstacles; our hope is in God. Once we gather up the courage to pursue a relationship with God, we have the freedom to forgive others and to hike through the mountains. A preoccupation with our problems will lead to a lack of courage to face them, a preoccupation with God will lead us to facing our problems. We will look back and say, it wasn’t too difficult because we learned to trust God through it. Don’t look for the path with no obstacles, look for God. As you journey through the obstacles of life, the obstacles will grow smaller as God grows bigger in your vision. We change the future by focusing on God and forgiving and forgetting the bad things that happened to us.