Think there’s no hope for you? Just 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 nineteen of the Bible’s sixty-six books. But what happened when the Bible’s league of rejects encountered God’s grace? Moses led God’s people to a land of promise. David repented and served the Lord so faithfully that God Himself called him “a man after My own heart.” Saul met Jesus in a vision and then became Paul, the most prolific missionary in history.

I am not cheerleading, nor am I expressing faith in your innate ability to change yourself. 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. And I know that if God could change me, He can change anyone. I have greater confidence in God’s ability to transform you than in your ability to fail.

Hope spurs action and ignites faith. That is why St. Paul described hope as our incentive for change rather than our longing for heaven. Only the God of hope can give hope, yet He will not force it. You and I must choose to receive hope from Him and then put it to work in an increasingly hopeless world. The message should be 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 also may have failed in some pretty spectacular ways—I know I have… but your failures only qualify you for greater transformation.

(Chapter 7, The Voice of Hope, p. 87-92)

This blog is an excerpt from Terry Law’s book “The Hope Habit.”