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 the 1950s, a Harvard psychologist named Dr. Curt Richter conducted a now-famous experiment involving rats and buckets of water. At first glance, it was a grim study, but a profound truth about the human spirit was buried within it.
In his initial test, Richter placed rats in water to see how long they could swim before giving up. On average, they lasted just 15 minutes before succumbing to exhaustion. But then something remarkable happened, he added the possibility of hope to see the results.
Just before the rats were about to drown, Richter would reach in, pull them out, dry them off, let them rest, and then return them to the water.
And this time?
They didn’t just swim another 15 minutes.
They lasted hours with one rat that continued to swim for an astonishing 60 hours.
What changed? Richter concluded “the rats quickly learn that the situation is not actually hopeless” and that “after elimination of hopelessness the rats do not die.”
Because they had been rescued once, the rats now believed they might be rescued again—and that hope gave them the strength to endure far beyond what they were capable of before.
Let that settle in your heart for a moment: hope kept them swimming.
If hope can keep a tired rat going for 60 hours, imagine what hope in God can do in your life.
Difficult seasons are inevitable. But the crushing weight of hopelessness is far more dangerous than hardship itself.
Hope doesn’t deny the difficulty — it gives us strength in the middle of it. It lifts our eyes off the storm and fixes them on the Savior. And sometimes, that small flicker of hope is all we need to keep swimming.
That’s why Scripture reminds us that the God of hope is able to fill us with joy and peace as we trust in Him—so that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we can overflow with hope even in the hardest moments.
Perhaps you feel like you’re treading water, moments from going under. Maybe someone close to you is silently struggling to stay afloat. Never underestimate the power of hope, especially the kind rooted in Yeshua (Jesus). It can carry you further than you ever imagined.
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]Over the past two devotionals, we heard the song of the redeemed and stood at the wells of salvation. We saw how strength, song, and salvation flow from Yeshua Himself — how the joy of drawing from His presence is not just a poetic promise but a lifeline for our day. Yet today, we stand at a prophetic threshold. Something has shifted. Something has broken open. We are not only being refreshed — we are being awakened and called.
Yesterday, we heard the anthem of the redeemed rise like a trumpet blast: “The LORD is my strength and song, and He has become my salvation.” We explored how this was more than personal — it was prophetic, Messianic, and generational. We saw Yeshua not only as our Deliverer but as the very embodiment of God’s strength, the melody of our praise, and the fulfillment of every promise. We stood in awe as tents of rejoicing rose in the midst of warfare, and households became sanctuaries of celebration. But today, we go deeper — we step to the well.
There’s a reason this verse resounds like a national anthem of the redeemed. It’s not just a personal declaration—it’s a generational cry that echoes back to Moses at the Red Sea (Exodus 15:2) and forward to the final deliverance of Israel. The Hebrew word for salvation—Yeshua—makes this verse unmistakably Messianic. It isn’t a vague deliverance. It is the revelation of Yeshua (Jesus), the Deliverer, who embodies strength, becomes our song, and stands as the fulfillment of God’s redemptive plan.
The cry that shattered the stillness of Golgotha—“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Psalm 22:1; Matthew 27:46)—was not a random cry of despair, but the deliberate voice of Yeshua pointing to Scripture. As He hung on the tree, bearing the sin of the world, He invoked the ancient words of David—not only identifying Himself as the righteous sufferer, but signaling that Psalm 22 was unfolding before their very eyes. In that moment, heaven and earth bore witness to a divine mystery: the Holy One, seemingly abandoned, was fulfilling a prophecy written a millennium earlier. Yeshua did not merely suffer—He fulfilled every word, every shadow, every stroke of divine prophecy.
King David wrote these words generations before the empty tomb shook the foundations of death. At first glance, Psalm 16 reads like a personal prayer of trust — a yearning for security and closeness with God. But beneath the surface, the Spirit was revealing something deeper, something eternal: a promise not just for David, but for all of us.
The majestic Messianic prophecy of Isaiah 9 culminates in a powerful declaration: “The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.” Not might. Not maybe. Not if we work hard enough. It will be done — because God Himself is passionate to see it through. The Hebrew word for “zeal” here is קִנְאָה (kin’ah), which also means jealousy or burning passion. This is not passive interest — it’s the fiery determination of the LORD of Hosts to establish His Kingdom. The same fiery zeal that struck Egypt with plagues—shattering the power of false gods, that parted the Red Sea and made a way where there was none, that birthed a nation from the womb of slavery, and that drove the Son of God to the cross at Calvary — is the very zeal that will fulfill every promise declared in Isaiah 9.
In a world weary from political upheaval, moral confusion, and fleeting peace, Isaiah offers us a vision of something profoundly different—an ever-increasing kingdom ruled by a King whose justice is not compromised, whose peace is not fleeting, and whose throne is eternally secure. The phrase “of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end” speaks not just of duration, but of expansion—a kingdom that doesn’t plateau, doesn’t weaken, and doesn’t shrink back in the face of darkness. Instead, it advances, multiplies, and transforms.