Thoughts on Romans 15:13: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace, as you trust in him, so that your life may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
Let’s look at each aspect of this verse.
“May the God of hope”
[Our God is the source of all we hope for, the spring of all positive possibilities, the well of all goodness, the fountain of hope. We should look to no other, put our hope in no other.]
May He “Fill you with all joy and peace”
[Joy and peace are what we all long and strive for, but fail to get on our own. Our heavenly Father, however, stands ready with ALL joy and peace, eager to pour them into our lives, if we will only join Him in the process, as the next phrase tells us.]
“As you trust in Him”
[This is our part: if we trust, we are given joy and peace; but conversely, failure to trust equals no joy or peace. If we don’t trust Him, we are, in our pride, trusting in ourselves. This means we are cutting ourselves off from His grace. “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6). But if we humble ourselves and trust in Him, rather than trusting in ourselves, or some leader, or the goverment to supply what we need, then He has many blessings for us beyond joy and peace, as the last phrase tells us.
As it says in Psalm 68:6 “…he leads out the prisoners with singing (those who follow Him in trust out of the dominion of darkness into the Kingdom of light); but the rebellious (those who do not trust Him) live in a sun-scorched land (where there is no peace, no joy, no hope).
“So that your life may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
[As we trust God, we can then join Him in a new dimension, becoming “carriers of hope,” to all around us. We can be people of hope, just as He is the God of all hope–a hope that will splash over on all those around us. We will be “hope empowered” by the Holy Spirit, becoming more and more like Jesus, the God of all hope.
So let’s trust our eternal living God, follow Jesus, offering the sacrifice of thanksgiving in each situation and thereby become infused with joy and peace. Then we can become springs of hope, rivers of hope, carriers of hope to all we meet today and every day.
