“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. We should look to no other.]
May He “Fill you with all joy and peace”
[These 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, meaning 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, then He has blessings even beyond joy and peace for us, as the last phrase tells us.]
“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,” 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, offering the sacrifice of thanksgiving in each situation and thereby become infused with joy and peace so we can be springs of hope, carriers of hope to all we meet today and every day.
