Hope: The Kind That Keeps Us GoingSample

Day 2

WHAT IS HOPE? 

The Oxford Dictionary says hope is a feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen. It wants something to happen or be the case. Hope is a feeling of trust. 

While the above is correct and even used in the Bible, the biblical usage of hope is this:

Biblical hope not only desires something good for the future—it expects it to happen. It not only expects it to happen—it is confident that it will happen. There is a moral certainty that the good we expect and desire will be done. 

What or who you hope in is important. Is the object of your hope temporal or eternal? Is it circumstance driven or by something that transcends time and space. 

So the object of our hope is important. What we put our hope in determines whether we hope in vain or with a promise kept for us. 

Our HOPE object is in the truth that God is eternal, immortal, unchanging, infallible and constant. Our hope is something that should not waver because it is rooted in the faithfulness of God. 

"Faith and Hope work together. Romans 4:18 NIV says: Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed, and so became the father of many nations... In other words, whenever faith in God looks to the future, it can be called Hope. And whenever Hope rests on the word of God, it can be called faith." John Piper 

What is the connection between faith and hope? 

Hebrews 11:1: Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. (NIV) 

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (KJV) 

Here's how I would paraphrase this verse. Wherever there is full assurance of hope, there is faith. Faith is the full assurance of hope. Biblical faith is a confident expectation and desire for good things in the future. 

Nothing has taken God by surprise and never will. Not even the fall of His most beautiful creation can surprise Him by what we do and do not do. 

Salvation was not a plan B. Hope has always been anchored in eternity. Hope was defined in eternity past before the foundations of the world were laid. 

We know this because, in Revelation 13:8, All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast- all whose names have not been written in the Lamb's book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world. 

So HOPE was birthed before doubt destroyed God's divine destiny for the pinnacle of his creation—humankind. 

If you make any finite object your hope, such as money, career, relationship or your job, you can lose hope if any of these are stripped away from you. You will then live in cynicism and disillusionment. Hope anchored in anything temporal is hopeless. 

That is why a living hope that will never die is what we need. Unless we get an infinite perspective and point of reference to life, unless we have an imperishable hope, we will not be able to make sense of suffering, pain, and loss.  

REFLECT AND ASK YOURSELF

How have you reacted when things have not gone as planned?

Can you recount a time when you were disappointed, but then you reminded yourself of the hope you have in Jesus?