Life can be tough, but there’s no shortage of God’s grace and goodness in hard times. You might think the Bible is a book about heroes and holy men, super-spiritual people who never failed and always did the right thing. But the truth is, it features an all too human cast of failures who were transformed by the grace of God to accomplish great good.

If you think there’s no hope for you, take a quick look at the people who changed their world: Moses, King David, and the apostle Paul were all murderers, yet among them, they wrote at least 19 of the 66 books of the Bible.

Others who fall into this area are Moses’ brother Aaron (Israel’s first high priest), who led the nation into idolatry, and Samson, the strongest man in the world, who had a fatal sexual addiction. But what happened when the Bible’s league of rejects encountered God’s grace? Moses led God’s people to a land of promise, and David repented and served the Lord so faithfully, that God Himself called him “a man after My own heart.”

The message here is clear—God turns abject failures into spiritual champions and then uses them to change the world! That is why I have hope for you and me. You may have failed in some pretty spectacular ways, but your failures only qualify you for greater transformation.

I simply know firsthand the transforming grace of God to take a rebellious, drunken Canadian teenager and turn him into a vessel He could use to touch thousands of lives, and I know that if God can change me, He can change anyone. I have greater confidence in God’s ability to transform you than in your ability to fail.

Hope is indispensable for generating enthusiasm, creativity, enlightened decision making, and effective action. More than oil, ethanol, hydrogen, and nuclear power, hope is a nation’s most important, most precious source of energy. But hope cannot be managed by bureaucrats or decreed by presidents. Only the God of hope can give hope, yet He will not force it. You and I must choose to receive it from Him and put it to work in an increasingly hopeless world.

Since it spurs action and ignites faith, St. Paul described it as our incentive for change as well as our longing for heaven. Let hope in His resurrection and eternity with Him, and hope for the world become a habit of earnest expectation of God’s goodness and blessings in your life and in others’ lives as well.