David said, ‘Wait…for God. Wait with hope. Hope now; hope always!’ When you decide things are hopeless, you slam the door in God’s face. For most of us, as long as we’re in reasonably good health and know where the rent is coming from, hope doesn’t work.

First: Ask yourself what’s your strongest desire. Imagine you’re eighty and looking back. Are you satisfied? If not, challenge yourself to come up with an answer. Hope must be personal, not the kind you think you should have. It must be fervent enough to govern everything you do.

Second: Give it a symbol – something you can centre your thoughts around. Jeremiah taught God’s people a lesson in hope by buying land at Anathoth (see Jeremiah 32:9). He knew they would be taken into captivity, and during those long years, the memory of that faraway field in Judah would act as a symbol of future restoration. During World War II when Leo Algimas and his family were herded into concentration camps, they maintained a symbol of hope, a tiny piece of paper from a box of chocolates with an American flag on the bottom. They passed it from hand to hand, looked at it, held it, and whispered about the liberation army that was coming.

Symbols help us fix our minds on what’s possible. In fact, the greatest symbol the world has ever known was the hardest to believe. A baby in a manger signalled God’s kingdom on earth and changed mankind’s destiny. And He can change your destiny. Define what you hope for, ask in His name, and no matter how impossible it looks, expect it to come true.