Hope.

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for...
 
Hope comes by the Word of God. So also faith comes by the Word. But it takes faith, fertilised by hope, for results to be delivered.

Faith gives substance to your hope. To be hopeless is to be helpless!

Every time you give up on an issue, you become absolutely hopeless. Not even God can help you then, because without faith, it is impossible to please Him.

No matter how strong your faith is, without hope it is unproductive.

Have you ever found a man, no matter how strong he is, who gave birth to children without a woman?

Faith gives substance to hope - there is a fertilization that produces an eventual evidence. So, if there is no hope, faith has no value!

There are quite a lot of people operating at the frequency of hopelessness, yet they are expecting faith to produce. Faith minus hope is barren!

What faith does is to fertilize hope. Wherever there is no hope, faith is worthless.

When you hear people say things like: "It can't work! It is a hopeless situation! You just need to understand what I'm saying. You don't know what I'm going through", leave such a man alone. Nothing will work for him!

Friends, every time you conclude a case as hopeless, you have killed the case!

Hope is the mother of the evidence that faith produces. When hope is dead, faith is valueless. There is nothing you can't see coming that will ever come.

I'm glad to let you know though, that if you're born again, by destiny you will never get to a point of hopelessness in any area of your life. You have that assurance.

Ecclesiastes 9:4 For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion.
 
There is hope for anyone joined to the living God, in whatever situation he might find himself.

By destiny you are a creature of hope –  hope that maketh not ashamed - because it has the backing of the Sovereign God.

He is the vine and you are the branches. So, the Bible says there is hope for you. Because you are joined to the living God, there is hope for you.

Listen, no case can be closed except by you! Don't let what any doctor says kill your faith!

Every time you lack expectation, you won't see any manifestation, because expectation is the mother of manifestation.

Nothing comes to light except it is first conceived, and then it is released.

This is your hour! You must be able to see ahead what you want to touch and handle.

I have never seen trouble ahead of me; even when people talk to me in dreams, I answer back!

Hope is what makes faith productive and dynamic, and places the results you are expecting in your hands.

Look at Abraham's case:

Romans 4:13 For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed,

through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.

4:14 For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect:

4:15 Because the law worketh wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression.

4:16 Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed;

not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all,

4:17 (As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God,

who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.

4:18 Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations,

according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be.
 
Despite all odds, Abraham believed! When it was no longer sensible to have hope, Abraham still believed!

See how the Bible described it:
"Who against hope believed in hope..."
It's simply amazing!

Abraham was not weak in faith. Friends, do you know what hope does? It strengthens your faith!

Now concerning that situation, tell yourself, "It is not over. This can't just be the end! Until I win, nobody will blow the final whistle.

Hope strengthens faith. "And being not weak in faith, because he believed in hope", the Bible says Abraham considered not his own body, which was as good as dead.

No counsellor at the time could have offered him any encouragement. But hope was in place, so his faith did not die!

As long as you have hope, your faith will remain alive. Abraham "considered not..." 
Active faith disregards contrary evidences.

Abraham considered not his own body, nor the "deadness of Sarah's womb"! This is what the power of hope is all about. It deadens your consideration of what the world calls facts.

Hope makes you become dead to facts and alive to faith. It destroys the power facts might want to have over you, and enthrones the force of faith.

Hope tells you, "It's not over!"

Romans 4:20 He staggered not at the promise of God...
 
When hope is in place, you find yourself disregarding contrary opinions, comments, and reports. When you do this, you become stable.

It is not just what God says therefore that is important, what you see is also important.

Hope tells you, "I can see it clearly. I won't get anything contrary to what God has said and what I have believed". And faith tells you, "God is equal to the task.

Friends, it is very important to understand the place of hope in the operations of faith.

In the early years of this faith movement, quite a lot of people felt hope is an enemy of faith.

They were saying, "Faith is now."

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Faith gives substance to hope. Hope has to be there first. When hope is dead, the substance of faith is worthless.

Have you ever seen or heard of a dead woman who became pregnant? When hope is dead, faith is gone! It becomes valueless.

As far as God is concerned, no case that will ever confront you is hopeless. I don't know what your doctors might have told you, or what your friends have said, but God is assuring you right now that there is hope.

If you can contact hope, then you have created an atmosphere for faith to come alive and for evidence to come forth.

There is hope for you! Your case is not closed, and can never be closed! Until it is decided in your favour.

Abraham saw the promise. That was the reason he didn't stagger. Faith is seeing the unseen.

2 Corinthians 4:18 While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen:

for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.
 
That failure you seem to be going through, that frustration, that obvious pressing need in your life, that is making you run from pillar to post, are all temporary!

Only the things that are not seen are eternal. Eternal means indestructible.

Romans 4:21 And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform.
 
Hope is what will help you to ignore and disregard everything contrary to your expectations. It will make you fully persuaded and help to stabilize you.

James said:

James 1:8 A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.

Such a man, he says, should not expect to receive anything from God.

When you have located a promise in the scriptures, you can believe it in your heart, but until you see it clearly, you can't declare it boldly.

This is probably the reasons you have not been able to declare many things your heart believes boldly –  you are yet to see them clearly.

You woman that has "been believing" God for a child, see your child in your hand right now. If you can see it, no one can counsel you to be careful.

You will shout it anywhere (that your baby is on the way) and make everybody mad!

If you knew me when I first started shouting prosperity you would have laughed me to scorn, like many did!

There was nothing to show that it was real I was the only one that could see it. I could see it so clearly that I didn't need to pray about it.

Hallelujah.

Excerpts from, Exploits of Faith by David Oyedepo.

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