Did You Know This About God?

Romans 15:13--Now may the God of hope fill you with joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
     Paul calls God the God of hope. The Greek word for hope is--elpis. Strong's Exhaustive Concordance defines elpis as--to anticipate, usually with pleasure. Or, we could say "happy anticipation".
     In the beginning, God worked with His usual diligence and with "happy anticipation" to create a "good" place for His masterpiece of creation---Man. God created until He saw that it was all "good". He didn't bring His Man into a place that was shabby, run-down or half-way pieced together. He worked with a "happy anticipation" that everything would be "just so" for His Man.
     When mankind ruined his masterpiece through sin, God moved with "happy anticipation" and sent His Son to die so He could blot out their sin. He wanted to remove everything that hindered His fellowship with the Man that He loved.
     He gave promise after promise to His Man ever since creation. He gave these promises with a "happy anticipation" of keeping those promises. It was and still is His greatest desire to ensure the joy of His Man child.
     This God of "happy anticipation" wants to fill you with joy and peace--as you believe. Not as you whine, pout, get angry or go to cussin'. The greatest work that you could ever do is believe (with "happy anticipation") what God has promised. Paul declared that there is joy and peace in believing in God's "happy anticipation".  Have you ever thought about it that way before?
     After all the apostle Paul went through, I just believe that he knows what he's talking about. He firmly stated that the God of eternal "happy anticipation" would FILL you with joy and peace WHILE you were believing that His Word is true and that He's working on a solution to your problem.
     Paul's experience takes it one more step and declares that AS you believe God's "happy anticipation", you would overflow in your own "happy anticipation" by the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit. God is His Word. There's agape love in His Word. There is "happy anticipation" in His Word because it came from a "happy anticipation" God. The longer and stronger we believe His Word more than the circumstances that we are faced with, the longer and stronger the power of the Holy Spirit increases our "happy anticipation" until we overflow with it.
     You've given sad, mad, and feeling bad a real, real, real, real good shot at changing your circumstances. So why not hook up with God's "happy anticipation" and give that a try? What can you lose? Your worries? Your cares? You anger? Your sin? Your sickness? Your poverty?