How can you have the power to endure in times of great stress?

How can you have the power to endure in times of great stress and anxiety not just to carry on in the evil days, but to be joyful and to fill your life with the fruits of righteousness (Philippians 1:11), with deeds of kindness, with mercy, with labors of love? How, when your life is in jeopardy, or your job, or your marriage, or your health, or your respect in the community—how can you rise up with joy and bless those who abuse you and devote yourself to love? How can you give yourself in love to others when your own life is falling apart?

If you are going to love like Jesus loved, even in times of great stress and worry, you must be filled with "living hope."

God’s idea of hope is very different from human thinking on hope. In other words, hope, as you typically think about it, is a desire for some future thing which you are uncertain of attaining. That is not the way God, thinks about hope. Scripture says in 1Peter 1:13, "Hope fully in the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus," not to desire it and be uncertain of it. But the coming of Christ is a matter of having complete confidence of His return. So the command, "Hope fully," means to be confident that Jesus is coming again with grace for you.

There is something even more peculiar about Christian hope: It’s called "living hope."Living hope is hope that has power and produces changes in your life. Hebrews 4:12, says, "The word of God is living and effective." So as a believer in Christ your hope is a strong confidence in God which has power to produce changes in how you live.

"By his great mercy you have been born anew unto a living hope." Have you ever asked the question: What makes you You? What is the essence of your unique personhood? It is not your actions or thoughts or ideas. It is your desires. You are most basically what you crave. Ideas and principles will be brought in afterwards to justify your appetites and passions. The basic thing is you’re yearning and longing. Your individuality is determined by what you ache for.

So then a radical change in your desires and longings will mean a radical change in your personhood. Something new comes into being. You are "born anew to a living hope” because when you cease to attach your hopes on things that are in the world, and instead attach your hopes and desires on God, then a new you has been born.

There is no slackening to live like Jesus. When life is really tough; Read Gods Word beyond what you have ever Read. Seek Him like you’ve never sought Him. The Holy Spirit will give you the power to love like God Loves.