God knows the plans He has for us, and those plans are for good, plans to give you a future, plans of hope. Hope in the Bible is not necessarily the same definition we use everyday. Hope in the Bible (the Old Testament in particular) is often closer to the words trust or confidence. It differs from that of the word trust in that it is a confidence that the object you are putting your hope into will have a confidently good outcome in the future. It’s the present progressive of trusting, so to speak.

This is what the Lord has done in my life, He has given me hope and given me a future. I am confident that His plans for me are much better than the plans that I had, and I look forward to seeing His plans play out in my life.

Before reading on, I suggest you catch up to this point. As you can see by the title this is part 5 of 5 in “Don’t Despise Small Things”. In my original post to this series I started it off with the verse from Zechariah 4:10 where he says “Who has despised the day of small things?”. The point that God was making through Zechariah was that in doing a work for Him there are many small days and small things that we must go through in order to accomplish bigger things. So when you find yourself going day-to-day, one small thing after another, don’t become discouraged in doing the work of the Lord. In fact, rejoice in these small things and small days. After all, Jesus told us to be faithful in the small things first.

To read the other four parts click these links,

http://shallspeaktonations.wordpress.com/2012/05/07/dont-despise-small-things/

http://shallspeaktonations.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/dont-despise-small-things-part-2/

http://shallspeaktonations.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/dont-despise-small-things-part-3/

http://shallspeaktonations.wordpress.com/2012/05/11/dont-despise-small-things-part-4/

As I had posted about last time, I had already been to Ecuador once. Since being there I had been praying about going back there to serve as a missionary, but had still been hearing ‘Wait’ from the Lord. In the mean time, I had been going to a secular college and teaching in the Jr. High Youth Group. That said, I think the easiest way to help you see the progression of me serving the Lord in California as a youth leader to being called to be a foreign missionary is to recount some of my private journal entries. To do this, we are going to have to go back in time a bit and overlap some on areas I have already described. I had graduated and returned from the York Calvary Chapel Bible College in May 2009, with instructions from the Lord to tell others what He had done in my life.

This a great article by Inspirational Christian Blogs newest contributing author Matt from Shall Speak To Nation’s Blog. I have say that this is a great series. This one article is somewhat long, but it is well worth the time to read it. I came away from this article feeling blessed because it demonstrated loud and clear, that if we seek the Lord out in His will…He answers! Please take the time to read this wonderful article of Matt’s journey from serving self, to serving the Lord, it will bless you.

To finish reading this article, please head over to http://shallspeaktonations.wordpress.com/2012/05/18/dont-despise-small-things-part-5/. While you are there, why not check out the rest of Matt’s site, let him know something he wrote blessed you!

To understand all of what this article is talking about, you may want to check out the previous articles in Matt’s series.

http://inspirationalchristiansfortoday.com/2012/05/18/dont-despise-small-things/
http://inspirationalchristiansfortoday.com/2012/05/19/dont-despise-small-things-part-2/
http://inspirationalchristiansfortoday.com/2012/05/20/dont-despise-small-things-part-3/
http://inspirationalchristiansfortoday.com/2012/05/21/dont-despise-small-things-part-4/