A Pocket Full of Hope: For When Your Pocket Is Empty

By Ayesha O. Daniels

A Pocket Full of Hope was written for anyone who is desperate to find the light and the presence of hope when life feels dark and empty.

Through thirty-one days of anecdotes, the author will make you smile, laugh, and cry while helping you to

• increase your faith,

• gain a new perspective on failure,

• recognize God in your circumstances,

• expect good possibilities, and

• build your hope through Bible scriptures.

When you have completed your thirty-one-day journey, you will have the tools to motivate and encourage yourself to get up when life weighs you down, see the potential for change in any situation, and teach others how to do the same!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098095673

Book preview

Day 1

Health Inspections

Have you ever gone into a restaurant and right by its front entrance, posted on the wall, you see the public health inspection rating? Generally, it’s a percentage, 100 being the best and 0 being the worst. I have never seen a top rating of 100, and I’ve been in some pretty fantastic restaurants. The highest rating that I’ve ever seen is 99 percent. Now while most would accept that as an excellent, almost perfect rating, my mind tends to wander and question that missing 1 percent. Why wasn’t it perfect? Why didn’t it get a 100 percent rating? Will that 1 percent be evident in the food that I am about to eat? Did the cook not wash his or her hands? Did they drop the food on the floor and replate it? Do they have critters living in the kitchen? Okay, that’s a little extreme, but you get the idea. Almost perfect is not perfect!

God does not fall short of perfection.

It would be pointless to encourage you to put all of your confidence in someone who has the potential to fail you. Even if that person had a 99 percent success rate, who is to say that your situation will not be that 1 percent failure? The good news is that God does not fall short of perfection. In fact, He can do everything but fail. Failure goes against the nature of God. He is not almost perfect; He is perfect. Rest assured that when you put your hope in God, He will work out everything that concerns you. The catch is that He doesn’t always do things in the manner that we expect Him to. Actually, His ways are always better than ours. Go ahead and think about your most challenging situation and come up with a brilliant idea to solve it. As glorious as your solution may be, God can do better than that. You can trust Him.

Suggested reading

Ephesians 3:20–21 Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

Isaiah 55:10–11 For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, And do not return there without watering the earth And making it bear and sprout, And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, Without accomplishing what I desire, And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.

Day 2

Options

Our family prays together every night before we go to sleep. Each of us is given a turn to pray from the heart. Our oldest had gotten himself into a little trouble one day. We had a talk with him about why he was in trouble and explained to him that he will often be presented with options. He will have to choose to do what he believes is right or what he believes is wrong. We never know how much of what we say is actually getting through to the children, but that night, in his prayers, he asked the Lord, Please help my brother and me to make good choices.

Hope is always an option.

Mark 5:25–34 tells the story of a woman who had been sick for twelve years. She had been to several physicians and exhausted all of her finances trying to get better. Instead of getting better, her condition got worse. She was out of options. Surely, she had reached a point of despair and settled for the conclusion that she would continue to be sick until the day she died.

Something happened one day though. The people around the town were talking about Jesus, the great healer and miracle worker. She heard that He had healed the blind and the lame; He had even raised the dead. Hearing about Jesus ignited her hope. Her hope told her that if she could somehow be in the right place, at the right time, when Jesus was passing by; all she would have to do is touch the hem of His clothing. Surely, with all of the supernatural power that He held, that touch alone would be enough to heal her of her condition.

When she noticed that the crowd was large and that there was no way she could simply walk to Jesus, she took the only remaining option, to push through the crowd and somehow grab a hold of Jesus’s cloak. Immediately, the woman was healed.

When you get to that place where you don’t have the luxury of multiple options, take a quick inventory of the things that your eyes don’t easily see. You will find faith. You will find hope. You will find God. When your own solutions fail, when all earthly options prove unsuccessful, hope is always an option. The woman in this story had to wait until Jesus was passing. You don’t have to wait; Jesus is always just a prayer away. As long as He is with us, we can have hope that when we call out to Him, He will answer us. You may not see Him physically, but if you reach out to Him, you will touch Him.

Suggested reading

Psalm 145:18 The LORD is near to all who call upon Him, To all who call upon Him in truth.

Psalm 71:14 "But as for me, I will hope continually, And will praise You yet more and