Romans 15:13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.
In a world full of uncertainty, this verse from Romans stands like a lighthouse in the storm: “The God of hope…” Not just the God who gives hope, but the very source of it. When everything around us seems shaken — economies falter, nations rage, relationships strain — it is the God of hope who remains unshaken and unchanging.
The apostle Paul is writing this as both a blessing and a prayer. His desire is that believers wouldn’t just scrape by emotionally, but be filled — overflowing with joy and peace. But there’s a condition: “in believing.” Joy and peace are not produced by circumstances going right, but by faith — by believing that God is good, God is near, and God is working all things together for good.
And here’s the beautiful secret: it’s not up to us to manufacture this hope. Paul says it is “by the power of the Holy Spirit” that we abound in hope. That means when you feel empty, weak, or discouraged, you can cry out to the Spirit of God, and He will fill you. This is not wishful thinking; this is supernatural empowerment.
But it doesn’t end with you. The hope God gives is not meant to be bottled up. If you’re not centered in His hope, you’ll have nothing of substance to give to a hopeless world. But when you are filled — when your life is anchored in His peace and joy through faith — you become a vessel that overflows. You begin to spread abounding hope to those around you: in your family, in your workplace, in your community, and even across nations. Hope becomes contagious. And in these last days, a hope-filled believer becomes a blazing signpost pointing to a living Savior.
So rise up, child of God. The world is drowning in fear, division, and despair—but you carry the answer. Let the God of hope fill you so completely that hopelessness has no room to linger. Let joy silence anxiety. Let peace disarm chaos. And let the blazing hope of the Holy Spirit within you pierce the darkness like a sword of light.
This is your calling — not just to survive in these days, but to abound. To be a walking embassy of heaven’s hope. To lift the weary. To speak life into the broken. To shine with a supernatural confidence that the world cannot explain — because your hope isn’t rooted in headlines, but in the unshakable promises of God.
You were not meant to carry a dim candle. You were meant to burn bright with holy fire. So stay centered in His hope—and then go and spread it with boldness, until the whole world knows: there is a God of hope, and His name is Yeshua (Jesus).
Copyright 1999-2025 Worthy Devotions. This devotional was originally published on Worthy Devotions and was reproduced with permission.
How to display the above article within the Worthy Suite WordPress Plugin.
[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]The Hebrew word for “face” is “panim”, (the Hebrew letters, peh-nun-yud-mem), literally “faces”, a plural word. Normally, when we think about God, we focus only upon one of His “faces” at a time. God is “love” – or He is “holy”– or He is “just”— or He’s a God of “wrath”. Yet, of course, ALL these “faces” are His at once; and so the word “panim” accurately reflects the truth of God’s multifaceted being. As we get to know Him better we begin to appreciate the complexity of His nature and the fact that our focus on one “face” is a very limited view, since there’s so much more going on in His amazing “Personality”.
Patience is one of those things… so hard to learn it… so hard to practice it faithfully in our daily walk. It’s one of of those things I truly wish we didn’t have to learn — but God requires it of us! As I was reading through this passage again in Exodus, it dawned on me that Moses sat on the mountain for six entire days before the Lord spoke to him. He had to patiently wait for the Lord for six days!
The book of Isaiah, often called the Old Testament Gospel, reveals that a child was to be born and his name called “The Mighty God, and the Everlasting Father”. We know that this Child was Yeshua (Jesus) of Nazareth, that He is the unique Son of God, the express image of the invisible God. The throne of David was to be given to Him and He now holds its “key”, a symbol of the right and authority of His reign, which will be consummated when He returns to this world and restores the Kingdom to Israel [Acts 1:6-7].
When I studied Isaiah 53 earnestly in the ancient Hebrew, I was taken back by the Hebrew word for “afflicted” (me-u-neh). In modern Hebrew this word means “tortured”. When I was young, and first learned what torture actually involved, my soul was shocked that this could happen to people; in fact that it was happening to people. That a person could be kept alive for the purpose of intentionally causing him intense agonizing pain was an astounding enigma for my young soul. It really frightened me; and I think that fear of torture is probably the greatest fear that humans can experience. We read about people who have been tortured, with a kind of horrified awe. And quietly we wonder inside, “How can this be?” And, “Could this ever happen to me?”
I love this story! Peter was sitting between two guards and suddenly an angel of the Lord comes to him and frees him — and he thinks it’s a vision! He’s not sure if he truly believes it.
“Exhausted but still in pursuit…” Well, now we know why the angel of YHVH addressed Gideon the way he did. With his small three hundred man army he had just decimated the army of Midian — but the victory wasn’t complete, and so the Jewish general and his small, exhausted, hungry, band were determined to cross the Jordan and take care of 15,000 additional Midanite enemies and their leaders, Zebah and Zalmunna.
His nightmares began each day when he awoke. James Stegalls was nineteen. He was in Vietnam. Though he carried a small Gideon New Testament in his shirt pocket, he couldn’t bring himself to read it. His buddies were cut down around him, terror was building within him, and God seemed far away. His twentieth birthday passed, then his twenty-first. At last, he felt he couldn’t go on.