“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
Romans 15:13
There is an old hymn that has been resonating with me lately, It Is Well with My Soul. I imagine many of us have sung those words at one time or another, perhaps without thinking too deeply about the story from which they came.
The hymn was written by Horatio Spafford in 1873 following tremendous personal loss. His four daughters died when the ship they were travelling on sank while crossing the Atlantic. His wife survived, and as Spafford later made the journey across the ocean to join her, he passed near the place where his daughters had died. It was during that journey, in the midst of profound grief, that the words which would become It Is Well with My Soul began to emerge.
There is something about knowing the story behind those words that causes me to hear them differently. This was not a declaration made because life was going well or because everything had somehow been resolved. It came from a place of deep sorrow, yet somehow, in the middle of that sorrow, there remained an awareness of the peace and presence of God.
I have been thinking about that as I sit with Paul’s prayer in Romans 15:13: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him.”
I love that Paul calls Him the God of hope.
Our hope is not ultimately rooted in circumstances changing the way we would like them to, nor is our peace dependent upon having every question answered. There is a joy and a peace that the Holy Spirit desires to form within us as we learn to trust the Father, even when we cannot yet see what He is doing.
I find myself needing that reminder too. There are moments when trusting God seems to come easily, and there are other times when we have to continually bring our hearts back to Him. We may be carrying unanswered prayers, walking alongside someone we love through a difficult season, waiting for a promise to be fulfilled, or simply wondering what God is doing in an area of our lives that does not seem to make sense.
It is often in those places that we discover something deeper about the nature of His peace.
The peace Jesus gives us is not the absence of difficulty. It is His presence with us in the middle of it. We do not have to deny what hurts or pretend that disappointment, grief or uncertainty are not real. Instead, we are invited to bring those things honestly before the Father and allow the Holy Spirit to meet us there.
Perhaps that is part of what it means to say, “It is well with my soul.” Not that everything around me is well, but that somewhere beneath the questions and uncertainty, my heart is learning again that I am held by a Father who is good and faithful.
There is another part of Paul’s prayer that I find particularly beautiful. He prays that we would be filled with joy and peace so that we might overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
I don't believe that overflow is only for us.
There are people all around us who are carrying things we may never fully know. Our families, neighbours, coworkers and communities are filled with people navigating disappointment, loneliness, fear and uncertainty. What might happen if the people of God became known as people who carried hope into those places? Not a shallow optimism that ignores what is happening around us, but a deep, Spirit-filled hope that comes from knowing the Father and trusting His heart.
Sometimes that hope may look like praying with someone. Sometimes it may mean listening without trying to fix everything, offering encouragement, showing unexpected kindness, or simply being present. We may never fully know how the Holy Spirit uses those seemingly small moments to remind someone that they are seen and that God is near.
And the beautiful thing is that we are not being asked to produce this kind of hope through our own strength. Paul tells us that it comes “by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Our invitation is to trust, to remain close to the Father, and to allow His Spirit to fill us until what He is doing within us begins to touch the people around us.
So wherever you find yourself today, perhaps we can make Paul’s prayer our own.
Father, fill us again with Your joy and Your peace as we trust You. Meet us in the places where we still have questions and in the circumstances we cannot control. By the power of Your Holy Spirit, cause hope to rise within us again, not only enough for ourselves, but enough that it begins to overflow into our families, our communities and the people You place in front of us.
May we discover, even in the uncertain places, that You are near, You are faithful, and Your presence is enough to sustain us.
And may our lives increasingly become an overflow of that hope to a world that desperately needs it.