“When grace rains, we are not in despair but in the hope of His glory.” I’ve been reflecting on this spiritual sacrifice (1 Peter 2:5) which I had jotted down in my journal upon offering it to God three years ago. I wanted to keep a note of it as it drew faith from my heart (as spiritual sacrifices will do, in that they reflect Christ). Rereading it recently, I experienced the same manifestation of grace.

“When grace rains” is not a call to revival, but a description of our daily walk with God – the Christian lifestyle is built around daily receiving God’s grace that He freely supplies for our labor of faith. So when I say “when” grace rains, I’m not talking about a hopeful “someday” when God shows up, and He begins to rain down upon us. The Lord is getting the church out of the hurtful “someday” mentality.

The spiritual sacrifice about grace raining speaks of God’s consistency to issue grace upon grace for our daily labor of faith to reflect Christ, and that experience of grace comes with the power of God in the inner man that glorifies God because of the work God is doing in the heart.

Grace is fuel for faith and God meant to rain grace upon us every day just for that reason. It’s a promise that He keeps daily. That’s His faithfulness. As grace fuels our faith for our daily labor, God reciprocates and gives substance to our hope.

I want you to take a moment to see that what I’m describing here in this series of reciprocations is, in fact, a living, Spirit-breathed relationship with God. A relationship with God is based on reciprocation in kind. The very thing you were hoping for is happening: God’s work in your heart is strengthening your will, you hear God speak to you, He’s creating equity in your inner man, He’s creating the likeness of Christ in you, and so much more!

Jesus defined the word “glorify” with the “work” God gave Him to do on earth. He said He finished the work God gave Him to do, meaning that He became the new covenant and power for our faith to reflect Him. Now hope has no barriers. Now faith can prosper in the soul. Now is the kingdom of God increased in the heart and in the earth.

John 17:4-5
⁴ I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.

⁵ And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.

Jesus’ definition of “glorify” is a defence for your faith because it separates God’s true meaning from the pictures most are familiar with: hands and hearts uplifted to God in gratitude and worship. And although we are grateful for our salvation, to glorify God is a different work; it’s part of the divine process of God daily building Christ’s virtue in our souls; it’s an action on our part to labor with the knowledge and tools that God sanctified for us to be one with Him; it’s the response of the anointing as we observe Christ in His covenant.

God set a plan in motion that allows His work to be finished in you. This plan depends on you knowing how to participate. Each day, as God reciprocates His gifts of grace to us for our labor in His house, He also gives substance to our hope.

In my reflections, I considered how God contrasts hope with despair by defining His work in us. Where is despair? The new law of grace and truth excludes it.

It’s one thing to make this contrast between God’s glory and man’s despair; and another thing to live it. It’s there for each Christian to walk in, but they need to be shown the path of covenant. This is why God’s restored government are the path finders of today’s church. I want to talk to you about how to live in hope of God’s glory, but also about the fear many face today.

Isaiah 42:16
And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them.

Many people today experience a sense of hopelessness as they face an uncertain future and unchartered waters. In recent years, change has been upon the world quicker and more invasively than anyone would have wanted, and many people speak about feeling depressed in the face of the unknown.

Perhaps you are one of the many who feel like that. If so, know that God’s glory is very real today and is yours. God’s call to glorify Him is a call to fruit-bearing. This is God’s season of fruit-bearing for faith as He restores Jesus’ absolute sufficiency to believers in restoring the oversight of sanctified stewardship to direct believers to a covenant relationship with God.

Because of the fall of man, we inherited a natural inclination to expect the worst in the face of uncertainty, making one feel insecure and fretful. Depression follows when there is no light at the end of the tunnel, and the silver lining is nowhere to be seen.

In truth, Jesus told us why men’s hearts would fail: “for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.” (Luke 21:26)

God is shaking the confidence of the church in the false (misdirected) hope many have been given through doctrinal error and showing believers that the substance they thought they had as they built confidence upon the sand (the doctrines of men) is being blown away by the wind of the Spirit.

God is cutting many religious ties to reveal the true state of the soul. Why is God doing all of this? He’s working to change the condition of hopelessness by building faith upon a new foundation of knowledge, whereby He places our hope in the changeless terms of His new covenant.

So then, “when grace rains, we are not in despair but in the hope of His glory.” That’s the reality we live in Christ every day. I understand that it can sound pretty abstract to talk about “paths” and “substance” and “faith” and “hope” and “grace. That’s why God restored His spiritual government, to show millions of seekers the terms of God’s covenant that begins with laying a new foundation.

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Proverbs 13:12)

What is deferred hope? It is hope that is misdirected and therefore never comes to fruition. Hope is tied to expectation, and expectation is tied to what you believe to be true about something or someone.

When one’s expectation is to expect the worse because the goalposts keep shifting, expectation keeps shifting too and faith feels like shifting sand: nothing seems secure anymore. Despair is a result of hopelessness. More than ever before, it’s vital that you learn where God wants to place your hope.

I’ll say it again, knowledge of the new covenant is God’s path for our faith to follow, which in turn lays the path for our hope. Whenever hope takes a back seat to despair it is because faith has also taken a back seat to the cares of this life, and hope is driven by the waves of the sea (the ups and downs of the circumstances of life). You will find that once you have taken the path of covenant faith that God switches your hope to the same power. This is God’s very real promise for you.

When scripture speaks of Christ as being “the hope of glory,” it means that when we place our hope in Him, our hope is no longer earthbound, no longer rooted in this world, no longer reflecting self, but reflecting Christ.

Colossians 1:5
For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel;

To further define glory, here is an excerpt from Apostle Eric vonAnderseck’s terms glossary, available within our online IDCCST Course:

God uses substance to illustrate His glory in Genesis 31:1, ‘And he heard the words of Laban’s sons, saying, Jacob hath taken away all that was our father’s, and of that which was our father’s hath he gotten all this glory.’

Jacob’s substance was his glory. He increased according to the hand of God on him. Of course, in Christ we are not speaking of increasing in earthly, material substance, but rather the substance of the virtue of Christ in our soul that we gain through contact with Him. God builds His own virtue in the heart by His Spirit.

All of God’s creation is His substance, but He places the greatest value upon the human soul because He created our souls to possess the substance His virtue. Because God has a future plan for our increase in the baptism of light based on this power, He places the highest value upon His work in us now. We are thus the praise of God’s glory.

Christ is our hope because it is He who will present His righteous ones holy, unblameable and unreproveable in God’s sight: “IF you continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel” (1 Colossians 22-23)

To continue in the faith is to continue in God’s Intelligent Design for Christ-Centered Spiritual Transformation through covenant contact with God. Our IDCCST Course is fully comprehensive and freely accessible online to help you share in that place of vivid hope.