This is something I see every time we visit Africa. Every November, I take teams of leaders to Nairobi, Kenya. I love the people. I love the culture. I love the grandeur and beauty, and I love seeing what people of hope can accomplish. Every year, we visit the same vibrant church in the slum of Dandora. The streets are dangerous, but the people are warmhearted.

Despite its poverty, this church has an AIDS center, runs a jobs program, and houses a school for three hundred children—all in facilities that are so inadequate you would never imagine that anything could happen. This place is transforming their community. Why is this place having such a positive effect? One dynamite woman with hope named Hilda.

In 2007, on my second visit, Hilda led me to a structure built to be a worship center. It had no windows, and the floor was mud. It had the potential to be good building, but as it stood, it wasn’t usable. The three hundred children under her care desperately needed to use this building. She took me on a tour.

“What do you use this for?” I asked.

“We can’t use it,” she said. “It’s too muddy.”

“What would it take to make it usable? You have three hundred kids with no place to meet.”

“We’ve been saving money to put pebbles on the floor,” she said. “At least that will soak up the water.”

“When did you start this project?”

“Fifteen years ago,” she said, “just as the economy went down.”

“Fifteen years?”

“Yes,” she said, “and it’s going to happen! Once a week I come and take off my shoes because this is holy ground. I pray that God will do a miracle and we will finish this building and the children will be able to use it.”

Then she looked me straight in the eye and said, “This is going to happen.”

There is a lot of power in one person having hope. Back home, our church gathered leaders, raised money, and returned a year later. Scores of people from the community and fifteen guys from our church rebuilt the entire floor with concrete instead of just pebbles. That building has been used to reach that community ever since.

Adequate resources don’t change the world. People with hearts strengthened by hope change the world!

In my next blog, I’m going to write about the courage that hope brings.

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There is incredible power in one person having hope.

The post The Four Things That Only Hope Can Do, Part 4: Hope Is the Fuel that Makes the World a Better Place appeared first on Hope Quotient.

Hope gives birth to dreams, which creates momentum. I often tell leaders, “Momentum attracts support. It leads to personal renewal, relational renewal, and organizational renewal. Momentum and vision keep your ministry future-focused. But without hope, you won’t have momentum. And without momentum, you’re in trouble.”

Hope sparks dreams, and dreams bring into existence some incredible initiatives. Every one of those initiatives started with hope. Corrie ten Boom hoped for freedom for Jews in the Netherlands. Martin Luther King had enough hope to have a dream of better days ahead for every person who had faced discrimination. Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan took a bullet to the head because she believes in better days ahead when girls can attend school. Dr. Carolyn Koons, a professor at Azusa Pacific University, launched the largest student mission in the world because she believed that God had better days ahead for every underresourced person in northern Mexico.

Last year, the high school kids in our church had a dream to build a child survival program in Dandora, Kenya. These kids raised fifty thousand dollars and sent it to Kenya. The year before, some students heard about a homeless couple with three children living outside of Mexicali, Mexico. Their youngest child had died of exposure. Our students gave up their spring break, went down to Mexicali, and built this family a home. Other members of our church built more homes. But that one family is now in a safe place and their kids are out of the cold because a group of high school students had a dream that the world could be a better place for them. Those kinds of dreams don’t happen without hope.

In my next blog, I’m going to write about how hope is the fuel that makes the world a better place.

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Hope builds momentum—and momentum attracts support.

The post The Four Things That Only Hope Can Do, Part 3: Hope Sets You Free to Dream appeared first on Hope Quotient.

Check out this list and see if you can find yourself:

• Joseph endured mistreatment from a dysfunctional family. I bet there isn’t anyone who doesn’t have some relative the others try not to sit next to at Christmas dinner.
• David bounced back from several devastating failures: moral, leadership, career, and even worse. Have any past failures? A great comeback is possible!
• Elijah suffered personal criticism. I speak to over twelve thousand people every weekend and thousands more by radio. Usually, people each week write in or come up to say something encouraging. I remember very little of that. But I can tell you every critical comment. Why do we remember the things we ought to forget, and forget the things we ought to remember?
• Nehemiah was discouraged with harsh political, legal, and social circumstances at the highest levels. He had wall-to-wall problems—literally.
• John Mark was rejected by a high-ranking Christian leader. I know people for whom one negative comment from an authority figure—be it a teacher, a pastor, or a coach—has marked them for life.
• Peter was disappointed with his inability to withstand pressure and also disappointed with himself. Sound familiar? My number one source of discouragement is, unfortunately, myself.
• Jesus was let down by people of all types—friends, relatives, religious leaders. At His hour of greatest need, He takes three guys and says, “I need your support.” When He comes back, they are fast asleep.

Every person in the Bible had to bounce back from something (Lazarus even had to come back from being dead)! In almost every case, whether somebody bounces back or not has to do with one question: “Does that person have hope?” Hope looks at what can be instead of what is. Hope looks at the future rather than just the past. Hope believes in future possibility rather than resigning to current reality. People bounce back when they have hope.

In my next blog, I’m going to write about how hope sets you free to dream again.

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Every successful person has had to come back from discouraging circumstances.

The post The Four Things That Only Hope Can Do, Part 2: Hope Helps You Bounce Back appeared first on Hope Quotient.

1. Hope liberates. Hope releases you from your past.
2. Hope motivates. Hope helps you bounce back.
3. Hope initiates. Hope sets you free to dream again.
4. Hope activates. Hope is the fuel that makes the world a better place.

In this blog, let’s talk a look at how hope releases you from your past. It sets them free from past failures and hurts, dysfunctional family patterns, guilt, low expectations, and even crippling lack of confidence.

I grew up in something of an executive, jet-set family, where divorce ruled. Everybody got divorced. We cannot find a lasting marriage in 150 years of our family tree. Add to that my family’s raging alcoholism and explosive anger, and maybe you can see why divorce was epidemic and how I grew up convinced that my life probably wouldn’t feature a lasting marriage. At no time did I ever think, I can have a fulfilling family life.

That belief got a major makeover after a bunch of terrific couples put their arms around me in an awesome Southern California church of 110 people. For the first time in my life, I saw couples that had been married for ten, fifteen, twenty, and even thirty or more years. During five years in that church, I never saw a single couple break up. That totally changed my frame of reference. For the first time, I thought, Wow! I could really have a lasting marriage. That could be my future.

My wife, Carol, and I just celebrated our thirtieth-first anniversary, which means I am in the longest-lasting marriage in the history of my family. We have four children—Mark, Scott, Christy, and Leslie—whom, as of the date of this writing, I still like, and who, more amazingly, like me. They are incredible young adults who love Jesus and who look forward to one day creating their own strong marriages and loving families. Thirty years ago, I couldn’t imagine any of this.

The couples in that church gave me a great gift. They liberated me from the expectation that my past background would be the determining factor in my future relationships. Hope will do that for you. Hope liberates from past failures, from bitterness, from anger, from insecurity, and from the kind of low expectations that keep people chained to the past.

In my next blog, I’m going to write about how hope helps you bounce back.

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Hope releases you from your past.

The post The Four Things That Only Hope Can Do, Part 1: Hope Releases You from Your Past appeared first on Hope Quotient.