Joy and Overflowing Hope

I love the word, “overflow!” If you’re filled with joy, as Paul prays here (assuming you keep being filled), it has to overflow, and if you’re overflowing with joy, Paul makes it clear that you’ll also “overflow with hope.” Then, when joy and peace and hope flow out of you, everything and everyone around you is affected. Do you want to be a world changer? Do you want to be an agent for change that has an impact on everyone you meet? Joy will do that, for joy brings hope and if there’s one thing that people are craving in our world today, it’s hope.

Read the Book of Acts for some real-world examples of how this works… In Acts 17:6, the Jews of Thessalonica complained that, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also…” Paul had just come from Philippi, where his joyful praises and his hope in Christ shook the prison to its foundations, whereupon Paul promptly led the jailor and his entire family to Christ. Shaking things up, or turning the world upside down, if you prefer, is what Paul did. He shook up the status quo, because everywhere he went he praised God with full-throated joy, even when he was bound in chains in some filthy dungeon. And everywhere he went, he overflowed with a hope in Christ that was, to those who opened their hearts to his message, utterly irresistible.

If you want to change the world around you, if you want to reach your friends and neighbors for Christ, if you want to live your life so that it impacts eternity, be the one who overflows with joy, and overflows with hope! There’s plenty going on out there that will rob the joy from people. There’s plenty going on that can make the world seem like there’s just no hope (watch a news channel for the next five minutes and you’ll see what I mean), but when we overflow with the joy and the hope only Jesus can give, God shakes everything up!

Of course, Paul made it clear that the only route to this kind of overflow is “by the power of the Holy Spirit.” We’re really talking about the overflow that is uniquely the result of the anointing of God’s Spirit. That’s a whole other topic in itself to be sure, but if you’ve experienced the anointing, you know it to be the force that turns the world upside down, gives joy when joy should be impossible, and is the harbinger of hope for those who are cloaked in despair.