A HOPE THAT CAN ENDURE

What then does the Bible say hope is? How do we define a hope that avoids self-gratifying desires and also honestly acknowledges reality?

The Bible says, “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Yehovah …I wait for Yehovah, my soul waits, and in His word I hope” (Psalm 130:1,5, ESV). We’re told to hope in one thing: God’s Word.

Now, God is pretty frank about the state of most of our dreams and desires. “People will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Timothy 3:2-4). By this tangible representation of fact, humanity has made a brutal, wrecked place of the world; and of and by ourselves we cannot save ourselves or mend the brokenness.

Into the desperate cycle of pain, Yehovah Elohim - God by His son the Messiah Jesus has intervened, and that intervention gives us hope that one day the wrongs will be righted, justice will be done and forgiveness will heal. “For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness” (Galatians 5:5).

This is not hope that “life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone.” Nowhere does the word of God guarantee that our lives will be better or richer in any material sense. This hope is not based on our own efforts, the state of our lives or future aspirations. Biblical hope is that God sees every act and motivation; He will grant justice and mercy; His strength will redeem and transform; His path and plans for our lives will ultimately be the most fulfilling because that’s where we will most clearly experience his presence.

John Piper put it this way, “If I am put down, I look to the emotional reservoir of hope for the strength to return good for evil. Without hope, I have no power to absorb the wrong and walk in love, and I sink into self-pity or self-justification. If I face a temptation to be dishonest, to steal, to lie, or to lust, I look to the emotional reservoir of the hope our God and Father Yehovah has given us for the strength to hold fast to the way of His righteousness, and deny myself some brief, unsatisfying pleasure.”

This is how biblical hope is intertwined with our faith (see Hebrews 11:1). In that same chapter of Hebrews, Abel is commended for his faith, which we might also read as hope. He was a herdsman, not exactly an illustrious career. As far as we know, he never married, never had children, and was murdered by his own brother at a young age. Nevertheless, we’re told, “Through his faith, though he died, he still speaks” (Hebrews 11:4). Our hope in God doesn’t guarantee success, relationships, legacy, or long life. Rather biblical hope pins itself on God’s purpose for us and how He will glorify Himself through our lives. The question we need to ask ourselves is, Are we living our lives to become more like the Messiah Jesus who was and is the outshining of his God and Father Yehovah. We become perfect as we strive to become more like the Lord Messiah Jesus. The amazing hope our God has given us through his promises that we who are new creation in the Messiah, will co-rule and co-inherit all the Jesus will inherit when he takes his place on the throne of David at Zion to begin his 1,000-year rule over the nation of the world that have survived God’s wrath.

This is what allowed Paul, despite all of his ordeals with persecution from secular powers and problems thanks to disgruntled church members, to write:

“We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us” (Romans 5:3-5).

In his podcast episode on combatting hopelessness, Gary Wilkerson noted, “There is this arrow from the Holy Spirit that penetrates all those walls of self interest and building up self. It breaks through that and says, ‘That's not what your heart was built for. You weren't built for yourself. You were built for others; you were built for God. You were built for his kingdom.’ No one is happy unless they come to that place of realizing ‘I’m not meant to live for myself.’”

Biblical hope is not the passive tolerance nor is it self-generated, although it does encompass the truth that there are many aspects of our lives that we cannot change by our own power. Biblical hope is not the individualistic self-indulgence of the American dream, although it does embrace the eager eye toward the future.

Our hope is a trust in our God and Father Yehovah who has made a way for us to know Him. No better words may conclude these thoughts than those of God’s word:

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope” (Romans 15:13).

Written by World Challenge Staff, edited and added to by Bruce Lyon