We left our home state back in July, and it has been an up and down roller coaster the entire time. Even in the times that seemed utterly unsurvivable, God would show up to deliver the funds that we would need for our room, our food, and the other bills that seemed to always be growing like moss under a tree. 

The weather started to get bitterly cold in this new state where God has taken us to. I was worn out from being lashed with the waves of constant onslaught, and my faith was feeling really weak. 

Yet if there was ever a time that I needed God’s promise of room support and coverage of needs to be tangible, it was during this season. It felt like I was on my last thread of hope, because living through dangers and having my faith stretched was very tiring. 

But I learned that when you are holding your last thread of hope…it is time to learn to sew. It was nearly time for our reservation to end, and I just didn’t have the strength or stamina to press my faith. At the same time, the thought of going thought the pain of before was something that I couldn’t even think about without feeling nauseous. 

I was at a crossroads and I needed to choose. Will I give up, or will I hold onto my hope? Naturally, since our lives depended on it, I chose to hold onto hope in God’s promises and in the plans that He had made. 

There was so much uncertainty about what would happen when the reservation would end, and that uncertainty was a breeding ground for doubt. So I took my thread of hope and started very small. 

I made God a list of my hopes, and I called them my “hope prayers”. I numbered each prayer and the first prayer was that “I hope we can extend the room and stay longer”. 

After I made the hope prayer list, I made an alter ego list of my fears and I gave God my fears of those hopes not coming true. Then I started to only think about what I hoped to happen. 

Like crossing a thread over and over itself, I only thought about my hopes. That tiny thread of hope grew stronger and stronger, and eventually I was bursting with exuberant faith. I ended up in a place of excitement and joy because I knew God would do what I hoped. 

After I endured the process of growing my hopes into confident faith, God knocked at the door with the tangible answer to my hopes. Someone reached out to me and offered to pay our hotel room for 2 more weeks and that was almost $1500 worth of love support from God! 

It was such a huge relief and blessing–and God did just as I had hoped! I was also drowning in so many needs that had been accumulating for months and months. So many of my bills were put on the back burner and our clothes were falling apart from the wear and tear of the journey we are on. 

My needs and odd ball bills were incredibly huge, and it looked impossible to ever get them fulfilled. I felt like I was so “hungry” because we needed so much. My phone will was nearly $400, and we needed winter things, like boots and well…you catch my drift by now. 

One night when I was sleeping, God gave me a vision of one of my payment processors offering me a small loan and in the vision, I saw the number clearly, and I clicked “accept”. 

By faith, I accepted that as a promise and I wrote that I hoped to have that loan in my hope prayer list. I went through the process that I am leaving at the end of this post, and I used my little “bread crumb” of hope to start with. 

Every day, I tried to see if the loan would be offered to me, but it was denied every time. It would give me the excuse that I was “not eligible”. Yet one day was different, and I opened the page for the loan, and it invited me to apply. 

I applied, and I tried to not allow myself to fear. I held hope like a balloon in my heart while I applied, and then I was accepted. Within seconds, that money was transferred to my account and God had fulfilled the dream promise. 

That unusual blessing soaked up our needs really fast, because when you are traveling and living like this, the needs are so much bigger than when we were in the same place, like last winter. 

I think that is what makes this journey so scary, but it is always a choice to choose hope instead of fear. When you choose hope, that is when miracles appear. 

I was already bone dry out of money again, and the room reservation was about to be over again. When I was praying about what God had planned for us, He led me to think about what I hoped to happen. 

I really hoped that we could stay longer, and so I put “extend our room again” on my hope prayer list. Within only a few days, God moved through my hopes again. He sent someone to pay for our room for another two weeks and that was almost $1500 again! 

I wish I could share with you the level of relief that this brought me because things look very dangerous at the moment. It was in the negatives outside and my car wouldn’t start because of the cold. 

So we are stuck and there is no way to go anywhere. I hoped with all my heart that God would extend the room, and that is what He did. Now, I am hoping for the car related things too, but that is a different post for me to share for a different time. 🙂 

For days, God has been telling me to write out some of my “hope growing” process with you, so that you can be blessed by tangible hopes too. I made a list of some of the things that God has taught me through this journey, and I pray it is a blessing to someone. 

Thank you for sharing this journey with me. I hope you enjoy the hope notes! 

Love, Dannette ♡

1.  Prepare the space, like clearing the tables of old dishes and wiping the surface clean. Be real and honest with God. If you are mad or frustrated…tell Him. Pour your heart out to Him and get your grievances off of your chest. But then leave them there and consider them gone and taken care of.
2. Let go of what is blocking you from opening your heart to receive. Give fears and worries and doubts. Release any limiting beliefs that causes you to doubt that this can happen for you. Let go of the past pain and disappointments. Choose to release the past and trust God to make things new. Have confident hope that things will be new now and not like what you suffered before.
3. Come clean about your own problems that could be preventing you from seeing your hopes fulfilled. Ask God to show you anything that needs to be washed away. Repent for any areas that need to be addressed, like sweeping dirt off the floor, for me, it was self-pity. Also forgive those that have hurt you and release them of those offenses as you give the charges to God. If possible, make peace.
4. Plant seeds for beauty. Think constant positive thoughts. What you give focus to is what heats up and expands in your life. Your beliefs are simply thoughts that you keep thinking, so teach yourself to believe in the outcomes that you hope to happen by only thinking about what is lovely and a good report.
5. Make sure you don’t plant bad things to receive. Do not think about fears. Do not imagine fears. The best thing you can do is not to entertain fear at all. Never think about anything that you don’t want to go through. The thoughts that we think often orchestrate the way things will be, like planting a good seed or a bad seed.
6. Make an agreement with hope. It is all about agreement. You can agree with hope, or you can agree with fear or suffering. It is sowing and reaping. If you plant negative thoughts (belief’s) then you will receive negative things. So plant hopes and like Elisabeth Elliot say so perfectly “don’t dig up in doubt what you planted in faith”.
7. Give the Lord whatever you can financially, and as often as possible. Generous givers receive generosity into their lives. Giving is a form of worship and trust in God, so don’t be stingy or greedy with whatever God has placed in your hands. Giving is the gateway to receiving.
8. Make your vision free of doubt through details. The absence of clarity brings confusion and doubt. So eliminate all uncertainty by making a detailed vision and clear request to God. Fill in the colors and go deep into your dreams. Make the details clear of what you want to see. The more details that you bring to the vision of what you hope to see, the more clarity you will see. It will also help you to lock into your target and visualize things to be just as you dream. Clarity brings confidence and the joy of relief. Once you have a clear vision, you can easily see those things come to fruition.
9. Make room to receive. Those things that you are hoping for are like an invisible energetic substance and require space to be made for them. Hope big as you expand and make room to receive. If you don’t make room, it won’t come because there is no place for it to go. Hope stirs you up to expect it and blooms into full faith that is certain. Hope is what brings those things that you desire out into attainment. Focused thoughts of hope stirs up your faith to believe. When you believe, then you will receive.
10. Saturate yourself in your hopes and promises from God in any way possible. Soak your soul (mind, will, and emotions) in the outcome that you prayed for and in what God promised. I made myself an audio recording of detailed spoken proclamations in present and past tense to the sound of relaxing music that I would listen to over and over. That filled up so much space in my life, which left very little room for fear or doubt to distract me. Focus so much on good that there is no room to think about anything bad.
11. Speak in past tense in regard to what you hope for being done. If you say anything future tense, it only pushes it away from you. Faith IS Now… It is not future focused. You have to see as though you already have it and speak in past tense,“ I am so thankful that God fulfilled my prayer”.
12. You have to enter like a child playing pretend, as they imagine that already have what they hope for. You must begin from the end. That is why so many never see fulfillment, because they stay in a place of futuristic waiting, instead of full faith to believe that it is already received. To have a perspective of waiting is to come into agreement with lack and impatience….which is the opposite of faith and trust. The futuristic mindset of waiting only enforces doubt and lack, and confirms that you don’t have it. 
13. Exercise your faith by going deep. Imagine and feel like you already have it. A perspective of “waiting” is coming into agreement that you don’t have it and actually pushes it back and resists the fulfillment. If you believe that you HAVE received it, then it is yours. Mark 11:24, Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
14. Convince yourself that it is certain with self talk, like the woman in the Bible with the issue of blood. She said to herself in her thoughts, “if I can only touch the hem of His garment, I will be healed”. What you say to yourself, whether in word or thought, is powerful. Once you are certain, then you are not “feeling” separated and impatient. We need to “abide” in the outcome that we hope to see and rest in our hopes as though they are done.  You are connected, not waiting for it to happen. Impatience blocks the fulfillment, so keep yourself free from an attitude of impatience. Just rest and trust God to show up.
15. Allow your faith to be stretched and hold it. This is a stretching of faith, and the hardest part of stretching is holding the position. Sometimes we have to hold the stretch way longer than it is comfortable. Hold onto the desired outcome with a “knowing” that it is yours. Don’t allow any room for doubt. When we are being stretched by faith, often the stretch is held to the point where we feel the “burn” as the outside pressures accumulate and press against us.
16. Keep going and don’t let go of hope. Keep stretching and holding onto HOPE. Push through until you see it come to pass. Many don’t see their desire come to the surface because they give up hope and assume it won’t happen if they have to wait longer than they are comfortable with.  Sometimes we can be really hard to work with and demanding that it must happen in the comforts of our time frames. But that is a form of impatient control, and that blocks the fulfillment.
17. Settle it as absolute in your heart. Come into a deep knowing that it is already done, and start planning on it to the point where you act like your prayers are answered. While always trusting in God’s timing to show up in before any troubles arise. You will start to feel like it has already happened because it is so real to you. It is like putting on fancy clothes at the store that still have the tags on and haven’t been paid for yet, but knowing that God will cover the bill. Put on the garments of promise and trust without a second thought.
18. Have faith in God to do this for you. Think that God can and will do it and not how it cannot happen. You have to trust in God’s power, willingness to deliver the request, and ever-presence to move through your situations.
19. Visualize often. If God has given you prophetic dreams or visions of confirmation, play it like a movie over and over in your imagination. If not, create it by faith by imagining your hopes being done. Make sure to go deep enough into the vision that you feel the “sigh of relief”. Whenever you enter the “feeling” stage of faith, there is a “sigh of relief” that we release, and it is the feeling of fulfillment and having the relief that we need. The sigh of relief is the ultimate form of faith. When you reach that place, miracle power starts to flow out.
20. Open your heart to receive with gratitude. Constantly thank God. That opens your heart to receive and helps you stay in the joyful place that believes. It is hard to have doubt when you are in a mindset of feeling thankful.
21. Press into hope above all else. Above all….always press into your hopes as you hope and hope and hope. Always entertain great hopes! Your persistent hopes will lift you into a place of faith, and that will cause the desire to flourish out. Faith is the substance of what we hope for and the proof of what we cannot yet see. “I always entertain great hopes” Robert Frost 

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