By: Steve Wilmot
Hope is essential for life. Without hope, we give up. Without hope, we muddle through life the best we can. Without hope, we settle for life that’s less than what God prepared for us. Without hope, life becomes an endless rainfall under ever darkened skies.
We need hope to keep going. Hope that tomorrow will be better than today. Hope that things won’t stay the way they are now.
What is hope? Most of the time we think of it like a “hope so.”
“I hope I win the Publisher’s Clearing House drawing and get 5,000 dollars a week for the rest of my life.”
We cross our fingers, rub the rabbit’s foot in our pocket and “hope” for the best. But deep down we know the chances are slim to none.
No wonder our hearts are crushed, and we find ourselves trapped in the hamster wheel of the routine hopeless life — we go to bed, get up in the morning, work, watch a little television, go to bed, and do it all again the next day.
I’m not interested in hope if that’s what it is, are you? Is there a different kind of hope? Real hope? There is.
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15.13). Paul describes God as “the God of hope.” God is hope. He is the source of hope. The giver of hope.
God isn’t selfish when doling out hope. His desire is that we “may overflow with hope.” While the only hope most people can muster is a “hope so, but probably not,” the hope God offers us is a confident expectation.
“And hope does not disappoint…” (Romans 5.5). “Now faith is the confidence of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11.1).
That’s what the hope God offers is. It is a confident expectation. It’s an expectation because we haven’t received what we hope for yet. It’s still in the future. Still out there. As Paul wrote, “Who hopes for what he already has?” (Romans 8.24).
No one hopes for something he already has. No, hope is an expectation for something yet to come. But what separates it from the “hope so” hope we usually have is that it is a confident expectation.
It’s something we know will happen sometime in the future because God promised it will. There’s nothing to fear today, tomorrow, or in the future because we’re fully assured God has everything under control.
We can confidently expect a day to arrive when there is no longer any sin or temptation. A day when we are free of every addiction that has sucked the life out of us, ruined so many relationships, and robbed us of the future God intended for us.
A day when every tear will be dried, and every painful memory erased. A day when we truly will live happily ever after. It may not happen until we get to heaven but happen it will.
Returning to Romans 15.13, observe that joy, peace, and trust are all connected with hope. When we have a confident expectation for our future, we are filled with joy because no matter what is happening today — what we see, what we feel, or what other people say — we have an unshakeable conviction it will not deter anything God has prepared for us.
When we have a confident expectation for the future, peace floods our soul because we know nothing can stop God from doing what he promised us.
Notice joy and peace and hope are all preceded by trusting in God. We can’t have a confident expectation if we doubt that God is going to come through. We can’t have peace unless we’re sure that God’s got our future under control.
We can’t have joy if we don’t trust God is working through all the bad situations in our life to bring our hopes to pass.
It all comes down to trust. Do you believe God is going to do what he’s promised? Do you believe he is working in every moment of the day for your eventual good?
Clare Boothe Luce once said, “There are no hopeless situations; there are only people who have grown hopeless about them.”
Don’t be one of those people. You don’t have to be if you’ve set your hope in the God of all hope.
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Steve Wilmot is a former Edgerton, Ohio area pastor who now seeks “to still bear fruit in old age” through writing. He is the author of seven books designed to assist believers to make steady progress on their spiritual journey.