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Building an Empire of Hope

Jewels - Part 2

Jereme DittmerMay 9, 2018

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Jereme DittmerMay 10, 2018

Jereme DittmerMay 8, 2018

2018-01-13 08.35.28 1691489882391445803_3956854224.jpg

Ben Courson

Ben Courson is founder of Hope Generation, host of a global TV and national radio program, and is an author and speaker based out of Applegate Christian Fellowship.

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Thanks Dad, for teaching me about the love of my heavenly Father since I was a little boy. In the Old Testament, you had to take off your shoes, for this was holy ground...but in the New Testament, the Father gives the prodigal shoes for his feet for he is worthy to stand in Abba’s presence as a son. Boom. #hopeisdope #hopegen
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#dad #generationtogeneration #joncourson #bencourson #hope #teach #faith #believe #godofhope #jacksonvilleoregon #applegatefellowship #applegatechristianfellowship #applegatevalley

Such a sick pic copped from speaking this week in Running Springs, CA. As fun as it is to speak in front of people all the time, it’s what we do in the darkness that determines how bright we shine in the spotlight. How hard we work in private even when life is confusing determines how useful we are in public when all is peaceful. Success means persevering when you don’t understand what is happening around you. We humans have almost nothing figured out. (NASA is a case in point. Contrary to popular opinion, NASA isn’t just seeking to discover other planets, it’s seeking to discover Earth. The Earth is 71% covered in water. 95% of that water is totally unexplored. Every sea creature we‘very ever discovered we have discovered in the 5% of water that we have explored). As Job and the Psalmist both affirmed: no one can know all the works of God because His greatness is unsearchable. We haven’t got it all figured out. It’s been said that faith doesn’t answer all our questions, but it knows where to take them. Just as we don’t understand what happens in the earth’s deeps, so we don’t understand the deeps we go through on earth. We don’t always know why we go through storms...but what we do know is that while the wind and the waves could not wake Jesus, the cry of human need could. As you endure Euroclydon, brave the wave, swim the Styx, venture the valley, weather the whirlwind, survive the storm, and tread upon the tempest, remember the storm can’t ever take you where God won’t always keep you. Your suffering is in the service of your destiny. God will turn your pain into power and your visions into victories. Own your oddness and your shame will become your glory. No matter how crazy your dreams are, don’t deny them. Depression happens when you deny your desires; hope happens when you move more deeply into your desires. In the words s David, “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” God doesn’t put desires in your heart to FRUSTRATE you...He puts desires in your heart to FULFILL you. Why live in hell when there is no place like hope?📷@aaronlovesyouu

My mom is the most joyful and hopeful person I’ve ever met. She is my mentor. A mentor is someone who allows you to see the hope inside yourself. The mediocre mentor tells. The good mentor explains. The superior mentor demonstrates. The great mentor inspires. Mom, thank you for being a mentor that inspires me daily. #hopeisdope #hopegen .
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#mom #joy #joyful #mentor #hopegeneration #inspire #inspiration

Did you get rejected? Did your plans fall through? Let me tell you a story about a preacher named Vincent. He was a man of profound faith who wanted to share the Gospel and serve others. His experiences as an art dealer left him disenchanted by corporate enterprise, so he decided to take a missionary position in a little Belgian village. Apparently Vincent studied the New Testament and took it to heart, because he shunned wealth and opted for a super simple life. Vincent sold his possessions. Became homeless. And slept behind a baker’s house in a haystack. Can you picture in your mind’s eye Vincent getting up to preach, hay all over his body and the smell of bread wafting off him? His congregation took a collection to raise financial means for Vincent. They told him to buy clothes that didn’t stink and purchase a place to stay. But Vincent copied Jesus. He gave all the money away, and bestowed it upon the poor coal miners of the village. He returned to his haystack to sleep. The baker’s wife allegedly heard him weeping at night, perhaps heartbroken by the poverty all round him. Christ-like though Vincent’s activity was, the church authorities and the congregation couldn’t stomach being led by a homeless man. So they fired him. Having been disillusioned by the commercialization of art and now rejected by the church, the marginalized Vincent decided to become a painter. This disenfranchised, aspiring preacher rejected by his church is better known as Vincent Van Gogh. The closed door of churchianity and religiosity led him to the open door of artistry. The church Vincent served was closed to him (that’s why in his painting “The Starry Night” lights in the village were turned on but the lights in the church were sadly off). But this rejection led him to become the greatest artist of the 19th century. Every exit is an entry to somewhere else. IF YOUR PLANS DON’T WORK OUT IT’S BECAUSE GOD HAS BETTER ONES. He didn’t create you to have means with no meaning or enough to live by but not enough to live for. You have destiny about you, and God isn’t about to let you miss it. Every closed door is an open door to something greater. Your rejection is God’s protection.

I love looking into the flame and garnet sunset of our planet, piercing the twilit skies, and gazing into the galaxies beyond. It baptizes my imagination. Like David who considered the moon and the stars and was filled with reverence and awe, I too am afire with wonder when I walk among the stars as friends. In the middle of our galaxy there is a supermassive black hole! It’s huge. It’s 307 times the mass of our sun! It’s SO huge, in fact, that a star close to it called S2 - as its orbit nears this supermassive black hole, goes 2 percent LIGHT SPEED!!!!!! This supermassive black also warps space-time. According to the theory of relativity (which is so REAL our GPS actually uses Einstein’s theory so it can work on our iPhones) if you had a son, and then you left him on planet Earth while you went to live near a black hole by yourself for a time, when you returned to Earth and to your child, your kid would actually be older than you! Yup. Welcome to Hogwarts, ya muggle. And then there’s that VOLCANO ON MARS. It’s so tall it dwarfs Mt. Everest in height #nbd. Our own moon apparently used to have an atmosphere because of VOLCANIC ACTIVITY. Jupiter’s moons are oblong (not every moon is shaped like a bowling ball!) Jupiter itself is a gas giant made of the same stuff as our sun, so if you increased Jupiter’s mass by 80 times, it too would turn into a star! And some shooting stars you glimpse elegantly gliding across the night sky, hailing from the Oort Cloud, are no bigger than a GRAIN OF SAND. They move so fast upon burning up in our atmosphere that the shooting stars look huge but could FIT IN YOUR PALM. You can quite literally take a falling star and put it in your pocket. And then there’s all that rain on other planets in our solar system (which itself is dinky). Because the visible universe is a million million million million miles across, our solar system only fills less than A TRILLIONTH of available space. It’s moving at 558,000 MPH, yet it still takes our solar system between 200 and 250 million years to orbit the Milky Way ONCE. Uh-huh. How can you get jaded when you’re living in a cosmos as magical as Narnia?📸@brightong #hopeisdope #hopegen

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