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Romans 15:13 “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.”

Think

We live in a world that leaks hope.

News cycles stir fear. Social media feeds comparison. Even Christian circles can sometimes elevate performance over peace. It’s not hard to see why so many people are tired, skeptical, and quietly discouraged. It’s not that they’ve stopped believing in God. It’s that they’ve stopped expecting anything good.

That’s why Romans ends the way it does. Not with warnings, but with a blessing. Not with pressure, but with promise. Paul knows the human heart gets weary. So he prays that his readers would not just have hope, but overflow with it.

And not through sheer effort or positive thinking. But “by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Biblical hope is different from the world’s version. It’s not a vague optimism or a “things will probably get better” mindset. It’s rooted in something stronger—the faithfulness of God. Hope in Scripture is always tied to who God is and what God has done. It remembers the cross, trusts the Spirit, and holds fast to the promise that God will finish what he started.

Paul calls him “the God of hope.” Not a God who occasionally hands out hope when you’ve earned it, but a God who is hope. When you trust him, he doesn’t just improve your attitude. He fills you with joy and peace—and not barely enough. He fills you to the point of overflow.

That word is important. Overflow means there’s more than enough. It’s the image of a cup so full that it spills over and begins to affect everything around it. A person filled with hope cannot help but spill hope onto others.

But if we’re honest, that doesn’t always feel like our reality.

Maybe you’ve been in a long season of waiting, or silence, or suffering. Maybe hope feels like something that used to be real, but now feels out of reach. You’re still showing up to church, still praying, still reading, but there’s a quiet question underneath it all: is God really going to come through?

If that’s you, you’re not alone. Hope is not about pretending everything is fine. It’s about anchoring yourself in the truth when everything else feels fragile.

In the early 1800s, a man named Edward Mote wrote the hymn My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less. He had grown up in a non-Christian home, worked as a cabinetmaker, and came to faith later in life. One day, while walking to work, lyrics came to him almost out of nowhere: “On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.” It became one of the most enduring declarations of faith in church history.

Hope is not built on how we feel. It’s built on the Rock.

Still, it takes effort to remain open to hope. It’s easy to become hard-hearted when life keeps disappointing us. Pain can seal us up. But hope flows best through people who are willing to remain soft, even when it’s costly.

Think of the difference between a sponge and a sealed jar. A sponge absorbs and releases. It’s open, flexible, used often. A sealed jar might stay clean and unbothered, but nothing gets in and nothing gets out. Some of us have been walking with God like sealed jars. Safe, but disconnected. Preserved, but not poured out.

To overflow with hope, we need to stay open to the Spirit. That doesn’t mean you have to be perfect. It just means you stop trying to handle everything on your own. Hope begins to rise again when you give God access to the places where you’ve shut down.

It also grows when you’re around people who carry it. Hope is contagious. When someone speaks life over you, when someone shares what God has brought them through, when someone chooses joy in a hard season, it stirs something in you. That’s not just emotional encouragement. That’s the power of the Spirit doing what Paul prayed for.

So if you’ve been running on empty, know this: God is not withholding joy from you. He is not asking you to earn peace. He is inviting you to trust him again. Not because it makes sense yet. Not because the answers have arrived. But because he is who he says he is.

And when that trust takes root, the Spirit fills you. Not with hype. Not with hollow platitudes. But with the real thing. Joy that holds in the middle of sorrow. Peace that stays in the middle of chaos. Hope that overflows, not because of your strength, but because of his.

If Romans begins with sin, guilt, and human brokenness, it ends with joy, peace, and supernatural confidence. That’s the arc of the gospel. Not just saved from, but saved into. Not just forgiven, but filled. Not just helped, but empowered. So don’t settle for a drip of hope. Ask God for the overflow.

Apply

Take a quiet moment today and ask yourself: where am I running low? Write down three areas where you need God to fill you with joy, peace, or fresh expectation. Then pray Romans 15:13 out loud—slowly and personally. Ask the Holy Spirit to fill you again. Not just for you, but for the people around you who are desperate to see that hope is still alive.

Pray

God of hope, fill me again. Fill the places where I’ve become cynical. Fill the places where I’ve gone silent. Fill the places where I’ve stopped expecting good from you. Give me joy that doesn’t depend on circumstance. Give me peace that surpasses my understanding. And let it overflow. I don’t want to live just getting by. I want to live full of your Spirit. In Jesus’ name. Amen.