My story of hope

    Hi my name is Dan Plants, today I want to share with you a short message titled "My Story Of About Hope" Just a little back story. I was 21 years old when I lost my father due to a tragic work accident. Im not really sure what exactly happened but i know that he fell 100 feet or so and had died on impact. So I had no time to say my goodbyes. He walked out the door and never returned home… and I was at a bad place in my life when he did die, I had made a lot of bad decisions the prior 3 years, so I had a lot of regrets about what I would have done differently, If I would have known that he was going to die. I was very close to my father and looked up to him greatly. I feel like my relationship with him was very rare, there were no walls with my dad and I. I felt the door was always open and we could talk about anything… I do mean anything, me and my dad had some crazy conversations and he never judged me once… but even so so I felt like a failure, that I hadn't made better decisions when he was alive. I realized that I took for granted his love, the fact that I had such an amazing dad and the wisdom that he had. 

    I went through a very dark season of my life after I had lost him, I felt feelings that I thought had changed me for the worst. I found myself at a place of great sorrow and confusion. I felt that fear had me in such a grip I could never escape it. I was for sure that the best years of my life were behind me and that I was living just to die… And it was there, that valley of the shadow of death that david talked about in the bible, it was there that I found hope. It was there that I realized I wasn't alone, there were thousands who were feeling just how I felt. Hopeless with no vision. I use to talk long walks down a country road to talk, to clear my head and find a little sanity. I said to myself that if this was really all my life was, if I really had no purpose, no vision and no hope, than it was pointless for me to continue living. 

    I found hope, I found purpose. Ironically Arriving to a place of hopelessness gave me hope. Understanding that my story had the power to heal people. Understanding that my purpose is to inspire people, be a channel for Gods love. I began to give god thanks for what I had, all the years of awesome moments that I was blessed with, all the love, two parents who loved me greatly. We cant see what God can, we cant create something out of nothing like he can. He can take destruction and create beauty. all we can see is what we are faced with, and so often its frightening. But we need to take heart and find hope in knowing that our story has the power to heal people, that we have the power to inspire a generation of people to get back up and continue running the race that is set before them. Whatever you are going through, maybe you lost someone you love, maybe you are going through a breakup, maybe your just depressed and don't know why. Know that you are not without hope. 

    my vision now is to inspire people to pursue there God given destiny, to never give up, to always keep on keeping on. No matter how hard life gets. We never know whats waiting around the turn, we never know how God might use us. So I am here to tell you "my story of hope." I found hope when I realized that God is going to use me to bring others hope. That is my purpose in life. That is my anchor. 

    

Dan Plants