There are three bequeathed heavenly qualities that permeate our world that are eternal and offer everything we need every day for everyone who can believe. These are faith, hope and love.
Faith works by love and is built upon hope, so hope is important to everything. We need hope because we need faith and love.
It would be easy to allow the things of the world to overwhelm us and diminish hope, so we need to remain steadfast and not allow it to be crushed.
In this age, there is a sense in which the media, rumour and hype control many lives, pumping out information that tends toward the negative. So how can we maintain equilibrium and sustain a balanced worldview?
The answer is hope–a positive anticipation of a better now and a better future–a hope that leads to a sense of security and peace.
Jesus told us that in this world we would have tests, trials and tribulation, but to still be of good cheer, and to be of good courage, because He had overcome the world (John 16:33).
He made it possible for us to remain hopeful despite the challenges we will and do face. He secured this promise by giving us His peace, which transcends all understanding. It is a peace that helps us reign in life despite the odds.
Great expectations
Bible hope is the fervent expectation of good. It is more than a feeling or an emotion. It is a realisation that we are not alone in the universe and that there are things ahead of us that lead to a better situation than we can even imagine. And this hope is free and accessible.
The Word of God tells us many great things about hope–how hope helped people achieve amazing endurance, despite the difficulties they faced, with a confident anticipation that could only occur with an understanding of who God is and what He means to us.
This is great clue to hope, because many people either don’t understand God or are unaware or unsure of whether He is willing to be personally involved in our lives, past, present and future. The good news is that He is more than willing, He is actually willing us to come to Him.
When we learn to trust God and have faith in His Word to us, we will enter a new regime of the Spirit. Enlightenment to God’s ways will open our eyes to His possibilities. We will gain an understanding of the hope that comes with His call.
Our attention will be grabbed as we yield to His profound will and grace. Paul prayed for this opening of our eyes to the potential being offered.
Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.
Ephesians 1:15-21
This is a passage that should be read over and over until we begin to grasp the significance of what we are being told here, and the vastness of God’s promises and desire towards us as His chosen people of faith. And we can build on it. See what Peter adds.
Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
2 Peter 1:2-4
So much we could unpack here, but it is just a taste of the hope that arrives with a relationship with God. We will have escaped the negative and entered the expansively positive when we received Jesus as Lord and Saviour. We will come into the eternal kingdom of faith, hope and love.
We will have a secure and divine future in Him. We will still have challenges because we remain temporarily in this world, but we will have the power, grace and endurance to overcome trials and triumph in Him. His Word is our victory.
Hope that works
If our hope is solely in other people, in the temporal, in governments, in politics, in finances, or anything of the world then we will find that there is no dependency that can satisfy.
When our hope begins with faith in God, we can learn to live a completely hopeful life with great expectations not only in the future but now–here in the present. When we learn that God is for us and not against us we can place our hope in Him and in His ways.
How does God reassure us then? Well, we know that He loved us so much that He sent His only begotten Son to not only meet with us, live amongst us and sacrifice Himself on our behalf, but also to be the Way, the Life and the Truth that leads us into faith, hope and love (John 3:16).
When we lose hope we are miserable. We lose sight of anything tangible that can encourage us. Finding hope is one of the great cures for everything negative, from anxiety to fear to rejection. Hope brings us back home into the bosom of the Creator.
Having an expectation means acknowledging God and His promises. The starting point is to believe that God is, and that He is a Rewarder of those who diligently seek Him (Heb.11:6).
If you seek God with all your heart you will find Him. Draw near to Him and He will draw near to you. If you call on His name you will never be ashamed, you will never be rejected, you will never be disappointed. He will welcome you into His arms.
The beginning of hope is to seek God. He is so close you will be amazed. He is on your lips and in your heart. He is not distant. He is not unwilling. He is Love. It is through His love that we are gathered to Him, and it is by this love that we overcome all fear and torment.
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. We love Him because He first loved us.
1 John 4:18-19
Learning to hope begins with learning to seek God with all you are and all you have. You no longer need to be overwhelmed with the world’s fearsome terrors. God’s hope is the anchor of our soul and the connecting point to great opportunities for a blessed life.
Today is always the best start time. And you can’t outthink or out-give God. He is able to do more with and through us that we can possibly imagine.
Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Ephesians 3:20-21
