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Hope and Despair from Refreshing Hope Ministries on Vimeo.

The difference between life and death often has less to do with the strength of our physical body than our mental health. Prisoners of war who survived had something to look forward to outside the barbwire fence. Those who lost hope in the future fell into despair, curled up in a ball, and died. Viktor Frankl was a psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz and three other Nazi concentration camps. He wrote this in his book, Man's Search for Meaning:

"The prisoner who had lost faith in the future—his future—was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay. Usually this happened quite suddenly, in the form of a crisis, the symptoms of which were familiar to the experienced camp inmate.…

Usually it began with the prisoner refusing one morning to get dressed and wash or to go out on the parade grounds. No entreaties, no blows, no threats had any effect. He just lay there, hardly moving. If this crisis was brought about by an illness, he refused to be taken to the sick-bay or to do anything to help himself. He simply gave up. There he remained, lying in his own excreta, and nothing bothered him any more."

Despair will kill you, but hope in God will give you life. We have to hope in something beyond what we see here in the natural realm, to look beyond the fence. The prophet Isaiah wrote this to the exiled Jews who had been deported to Babylon. They had been living in captivity for decades and were beginning to despair:

(Isaiah 40:28–31 NKJV)  Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the LORD, The Creator of the ends of the earth, Neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the weak, And to those who have no might He increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, And the young men shall utterly fall, But those who wait on the LORD Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.

Eagles are amazing creatures. They glide on rising warm air currents called thermals and can soar to over 10,000 feet. They love storms and use the high winds to climb above the rain clouds without using their own energy. It's good to be an eagle.

Similarly, we can rise on the Holy Spirit and face any storm that comes if we do not lose hope. He will give us the strength to soar over anything we face. David wrote it this way:

(Psalm 27:13 NKJV)  I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD In the land of the living.

Despair will kill you, but hope in God will give you life. We have to look beyond the fence to what the Lord has promised us. Waiting on the Lord is not sitting around in boredom. In fact, living for Him can be very exciting at times. Just read the book of Acts.

We despair because we lose focus on eternity. The fleeting human life we live here on Earth is disposable, temporary. Our spirit lives forever, but our physical body here will eventually return to the dust it came from. If what we see around us is our hope, we are in trouble.

No matter how much stuff you gather, you will leave it all behind one day. For in eternity, all you will have is what you have sent forward, the treasure you stored in heaven. So be generous. Invest in people and the Lord's work. Jesus Christ said it this way:

(Matthew 6:19–21 NKJV)  "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

It boils down to trust. Do you trust in money more than God's ability to provide for you? Do your actions actually demonstrate what you believe? God loves you, but He won't feed our greed.

After the Israelites came out of Egypt, they lived in tents in the wilderness. The Lord rained enough manna from heaven each morning to feed them all for forty years.

(Exodus 16:4 NKJV)  Then the LORD said to Moses, "Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you. And the people shall go out and gather a certain quota every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in My law or not.

What was this test? To see if they would trust Him to provide for them tomorrow or try to hoard what He gave them for security. Guess what their human instinct led them to do?

(Exodus 16:19–20 NKJV)  And Moses said, "Let no one leave any of it till morning." Notwithstanding they did not heed Moses. But some of them left part of it until morning, and it bred worms and stank. And Moses was angry with them.

I love how honest the Bible is. It sugarcoats nothing. The Lord provides for the birds of the air, the flowers of the field, and for us the same way. Each morning will bring more of what we need if we don't get greedy and try to hoard a bunch of it and get our eyes on it instead of Him.

Sometimes we despair because we have set a deadline and feel like God isn't moving fast enough. Doesn't He care? A beautiful thing about God Almighty is that He is not confined to time. Picture a bicycle wheel. We travel down one spoke at a time. But the Lord is in the center hub and can see down all the spokes simultaneously.

(Isaiah 46:9–10 NKJV)  "Remember the former things of old, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things that are not yet done"

At any moment of your life, God is actively working on 10,000 things you don't even know about. He is working years ahead of you, yet you may feel like He is running behind schedule. His train always arrives on time, but He may not tell you everything you want to know. Like a general giving an order, your instructions come on an as-needed basis. Privates are not given the entire battle plan, but enough to fulfill their mission.

Despair will kill you, but hope in God will give you life. We are all weak, but we are not called to be superhuman. For His strength is made perfect in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). All we have to do is be faithful to what He has given us to do in this life, and that call is different for each of us. When we put the Lord first, set our hearts on things above, keep eternity in mind, and love one another, then His Spirit will lift us like the wind and renew our strength. The storms we face will only push us higher.

You can pray this with me if you like:

Prayer: Heavenly Father, I will put You first instead of last. Please lift me up and restore my strength. My hope is in You. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me. In the name of Jesus Christ, I pray. Amen!