According to the English Oxford Living Dictionary the word hope is defined as “a feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen.” We hope for many things in our lives. We hope our favorite sports teams win championships, we hope we will have enough time, or we hope we are having something good for dinner tonight (something I often hear from my own children). Hope is what we would like to see, or what we wish would happen. We may hope for something, but that doesn’t necessarily make it so. God offers us a different type of hope. Biblical hope is the “confident expectation” of what God has promised. The strength in this type of hope comes from knowing God’s true nature and His faithfulness.
Romans 8:24-25 (ESV) says “For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” As a believer, we trust by faith that we are saved through Jesus. We cannot see it, but we believe it. It is a “confident expectation.” This is hope. We wait patiently for what we do not see but what we know God has promised to us. This patience builds our trust in God. Although more archaic, another definition of hope is a feeling of trust. We can put our hope in God’s promises because we can put our trust in His faithfulness. Hope and trust are closely related.
Our hope, as believers, is not a wishy washy hope for a wish to come true. Our hope has a solid foundation on which we can stand; it is the strength of God’s faithfulness. We hope in God (Psalm 42:5) and our hope comes from God (Psalm 62:5). In Jeremiah 29:11 God tells us that His plans for us are to give us “a future and a hope.” We all have desires in our hearts and through Christ we have hope that these desires will be fulfilled. It is a confident expectation because God places those desires in our hearts and He will give them to us in His perfect timing. We can be confident that God will fulfill our desires and His promises. This is God’s true nature and this is how He expresses His love for us. We can say with confidence that this hope is an anchor for our souls, firm and secure (Hebrews 6:19).
Take Action – What are the desires God has placed in your heart? Make a list of these desires. You can put your hope (confident expectation) in God that these desires will be fulfilled. Pray to God about these desires and you will see movement.
Meditate on Scripture: Hebrews 6:17-18 (NIV) – Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath. God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged.
Hebrews 10:23 (NIV) – Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.
Further Study – Study and think on the words of hope written in Psalms. There are quite a few Psalms that speak specifically of our hope in God. But truly, the Psalms in their entirety are words of hope for us. Choose a Psalm or two that really speak to you. How does this Psalm reflect hope?
Hope. (2019). In English Oxford Living Dictionaries. Retrieved from https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/hope