Before God would lead me through any direction on this journey, He would show me bits and pieces of how things would look, like many tiny clips on a movie projector.

God would show me just enough for me to understand the plan, but not enough to make a solid decision most of the time. I would know what God has promised, but I would not know the details that I needed to make a decision. 

That is because this is a path that is supposed to be traveled by faith. If I knew everything, it wouldn’t be faith at all. So the Holy Spirit would gently help me take each step and if I ever found myself moving in the wrong direction, He would redirect me onto the right path. 

But there is one key that I wanted to share that has helped me find my way more than anything else. Even before God woke me up early in the morning and said “Follow Me through the Aspen trees to the place of tangible hopes”, I had certain situations in my life coming that required me to travel out of state. 

I had to drop my daughter off to college so that she could start her own journey, and so I was hoping that God would take me in that direction. Hope is where God moved every single time. 

That day before we left, I wasn’t sure right off the bat of where God would have me “follow Him”. So we waited around for some kind of clarity. I only knew that He wanted me to follow Him. 

After a couple of hours, I felt some pressure to make a move. I knew that I had to drop off my daughter in less than 10 days at that time to college in a different state, and I finally just took the leap of faith and I went to where I “HOPED” that God would take us. 

We hopped onto the highway, and we drove to an entirely new state, but we also had an appointment to be there as well. I didn’t feel ready to just go right downtown, plus the rooms there were twice the amounts. I hoped that God would not take us there yet. 

As I was driving, I was hit with a sweet nostalgia of when we used to live in Naperville, IL. I started to really hope that God would take us there. So we pulled into a rest area and looked at the available hotels. 

We saw one of our favorite places listed, and I really hoped that we could go there. I sensed God smiling over our choice, and His peace filled my soul. I knew that we were moving in the right place. So we booked that hotel and headed to the first stopping point on the journey. 

Every night after a day full of decisions, God would meet with me and go over my “faith test results” LOL. The thing that was a surprise was I never once moved in the wrong direction on this path, as far as what hotel or what town to stay in. God really helped me see the power of following hope and trusting that He is right there with us.

That is the way that it has always gone. Except for the one night in the car. But before that night came, God showed me an RV and I had a feeling that we would have a night of being in a “Mobile…aka auto home”. 

During the night when I was in the car, God told me that He ONLY had us go there to make this story better and to teach me about the spiritual fence of protection between faith and fear.

Because it is not a very good story if there are not both highs and lows. There needs to climax, danger, love, and a happy ending. After all, this is going to be a “Cinderella type story”. 

Through it all, God has kept us on His very narrow path. However, there were many times, that I only knew which way to move by following my hopes. Sometimes God would show me the exact details of where He would take us, like a movie in my dreams. 

But then as I would wake up, He would “seal” off those dreams from my memory, so that I was forced to flow by faith and most of all…HOPE. 

Over all these years and through seeing so many miracles from God, He has always emphasized to me to follow my hopes. He always tells me, “Dannette, think about what you hope to happen and never think about anything that you don’t hope to go through”. 

Hope is our anchor for the storm, and it is also our compass. Hope is attached to the promise. Hope is the confident assurance that will not slip or break down under pressure, no matter how much weight is placed upon it. To hope is to trust. It is a place of confident expectation in God’s goodness. 

I will tell you, from real experience of having to follow God through some of the most narrow and dangerous seeming paths for many years, that God will often not show up to reveal the clear path until after we have started to move in the direction of our hopes.

Hope is the compass that helps us find our way, and faith is the movement of putting all of our trust in God. You have to trust that God has ordered your steps and thoughts, in order to move boldly to follow Jesus. 

You have to believe that you are One and that He is not somewhere far away, but that He is within, and He is showing you the way to go. He shows the way by giving us those sweet prophetic visions or words in part, but the other part is by hope. 

Wherever you are right now, think about what you hope to be done before you do anything else. Think about the way that you hope God will move. Think about what you hope God will do. That is how we receive a fulfillment to our prayers without doubting or being double-minded….we depend on hope. 

Hope in God will not put us to shame, and as you start making decisions out of hope, you will see the path open up before your eyes. 

Whatever you are praying for right now in your life, rest in your hopes on that situation, and it is certain to be done for you. Hope is a place where there is no doubt and there is settled trust in God. By hope, there is no resistance for you to receive. 

Hope is the road of miracles, and it is the most often the direction where God will have us go. When you have doubt about something, then just lean into your hope and find rest there. Because hope is your anchor that will turn out just as you deeply hope on the inside. 

When you really make the choice to believe in hope, then prepare to be overwhelmed. Because God will super abundantly do far beyond all you can hope or dream, or even think. 

I am sharing this because God showed me that there was someone out there who needed to know that it is safe to trust and follow their hopes. 

I love you, and I pray that the path before you leads to the place of tangible hopes. 

Dannette 

https://linktr.ee/dannetteward