Hope

Now these three remain, faith, hope and love…

It is a lie that some things will just be the way they are. Messed up parents don’t have to produce messed up kids. Children from broken homes don’t have to grow up and get divorced. No matter how high the odds are against someone, our God is bigger. God raised people from the dead! Surely He can overcome obstacles thrown at us.

We need to stop believing the lie that we will have certain struggles forever. I don’t have to be claustraphobic forever. Blind people don’t have to be blind forever. There is hope. Jesus came to restore what was broken. He doesn’t want people to be blind forever. He wants people to see. He doesn’t want people to be depressed forever, no matter what science might argue otherwise. God invented science! He is bigger. Do we believe that?

Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Jesus healed people in the Bible and He never changes, so He heals people today too. We don’t have to be stuck. We don’t have to just settle. God wants to free us completely. God wants everyone to be healed, not just some people. It doesn’t matter whether we understand why some people aren’t healed as long as we believe that God wants everyone to be healed.

Maybe this isn’t a logical explanation, but what does logic have to do with is? We don’t have to understand everything that we believe. The Bible says that God is a healer. He is a redeemer. He is a Father. He is joy. He doesn’t get mad at people. This is Truth. Let’s believe Truth. Believing inevitabilites and statistics doesn’t leave room for hope.

Some people may argue that God’s will is for some people to remain sick or to struggle. While good may result, because God can bring good out of any situation, that doesn’t mean He desires for that person not to be healed. Bondage in any form is not God’s will for your life. And fear is not from God. He didn’t create people to be afraid. His Word says that He has not given us a spirit of fear but a Spirit of power, love and a sound mind. If we don’t want to be afraid, we don’t have to be. That is not who we are. We like to put ourselves in bondage that we don’t have to be in; God already set us free from all of it!

The biblical definition of hope is the positive anticipation of something good happening. In every area of your life, you should have a positive anticipation or expectation of something good happening. If you don’t, then the anticipation or expectation that you do have is not from the Lord, because He is Love and Love hopes all things.

A synonym of hope, is expect. To trust means to expect with confidence, meaning with expectation of obtainment. God tells us to pray expectantly when He says, “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mark 11:24). When we expect good gifts from Our Father, we receive good gifts from Him. He wants to give them to us.

Hope goes hand in hand with faith in that it can remain even against great odds. Hope assumes that things don’t have to be the way they have always been or are destined to become. Jesus Christ is referred to as “our Hope” (1 Tim. 1:1) and our Hope does not dissapoint.

Abraham learned this when “against all hope, in hope he believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been told him, ‘so shall your offspring be’” (Romans 4:18). Statistically speaking, his wife would have had a 0% chance of becoming pregnant at her age. Yet, hope told Abraham otherwise. The outcome of his hope was that his wife did in fact have a son.

Hope is the key to miracles, because miracles are “the impossible” but hope says the impossible is possible. Thus, we see impossible things become realities as we put our hope in God. God even reveals to us through Paul in the book of Colossians that “Christ in [us] is the hope of glory”. As we hope in God, we are trusting Him, putting ourselves in a dependent position. We are recognizing that He is the source of everything good. Then, like little children, we are in a position to receive the good things that He has to offer.

The writer of Hebrews writes that, “we have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure” (Hebrews 6:19). So, in light of this Truth, “let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful” (Hebrews 10:23).