30 Before 30: Hopeful

Goooooooddd day y'all!

I have been praying for a way to send off my twenties and today I realized the only way I can do that with grace is to do a daily mini-video (on my IG and Facebook) and to write a devotion.  I probably won't send every single day's entry to you all (don't wanna bombard you) but they will be on my Facebook and my blog.  So here goes!

There is a song by Twista and Faith Evans from the soundtrack of Coach Carter called "Hope."  The course is this:

Cuz I'm hopeful, yes I am, hopeful for today,

Take this music and use it

Let it take you away,

And be hopeful (hopeful) and he'll make a way

I know it ain't easy but that's okay.

Cause we hopeful

I thought of it this morning as I thought about how I have been through the years.  Even though part of me is sad about turning 30, the rational, Faith-filled part of me is hopeful.  Hope is defined as a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen or grounds for believing that something good may happen.  And without a doubt, I certainly have hope.

Last night after dropping my baby niece off, I saw my first ever shooting star.  It was amazing to see, right in front of me as I pulled to the stop sign.  I knew it was God saying to me that everything will be okay, and that what lies ahead of me is far better than I can imagine and to keep hoping because it IS coming!  

Shooting stars are signs of wishes coming true.  And two scriptures that embody that ideal that I've been confessing for various prayers is Psalm 20:4 and Psalm 21:2, which say:

May he grant your heart's desires and make all your plans succeed.  Psalm 20:4 NLT

For you have given him his heart's desire; you have withheld nothing he requested.  Psalm 21:2

In confessing these and in seeing the star, the seemingly random Facebook and Instagram posts of others, the devotions I get...it has finally dawned on me to remain hopeful despite what I currently see.  

You see the devil wants you to give up and doubt God.  He wants you to lose sight of the promise and to question God.  He wants you to be hopeless and curse God and die!  But when there are so many signs and things present to encourage you if you would merely see them!!!  

Keep the hope alive and it will happen!!

And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.  And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.  1 John 5:14-15