Navigating life with faith and expectation
Driving into the studio this morning and the song, “Living Hope” by Phil Wickham was playing. The words declare, “Jesus Christ, my living hope!” And that’s what I want to share with you today. You hear us say, “experience hope” every single day. It is part of the fabric of the ministry.
Hope is the last thing ever lost. You can lose a lot of things and still have hope. You can lose a marriage and still have hope. So many people lose their health, but they still have hope. You may lose your job, and hope continues. But when hope is gone, you are in trouble.
It’s likely you have stood by people who have lost hope. You look into their lives from the outside and think, Well, look at all the things in their life that are going well for them. Yet once hope is drained, it becomes a very dangerous thing.
All of us can reach a point of losing hope. Proverbs 13:12 says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life” (NIV). When you defer something, you hold it off. A hope deferred is a hope delayed.
Viktor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist who survived the concentration camps during the Holocaust, wrote the book, Man’s Search for Meaning. While imprisoned, he studied the people who were there with him in captivity. He noticed a difference between people who tended to thrive or at least survive, and those who did not. He found it came down to hope. In his book he shared his discovery that as long as a person had a sense of a future – something they wanted after the Holocaust – they tended to survive. Perhaps it was a hope to be reunited with loved one.
God has given you a hope in a future (Jeremiah 29:11). Frankl noted those that lost their sense of hope or a future did not survive.
After Donna and I were married, we went through a period of more than eight years of infertility. I wouldn’t say we were feeling hopeless, but we were certainly asking God, “What are you what are you up to in our lives?” And some of you have been through something that challenges you to lose hope. It might be infertility, a relationship with family or some other issues that might make you feel your hope is being deferred or the things that you are hoping for are being delayed in your life.
What is hope?
Hope is the confident expectation of God to do what He promised through His strength and in His faithfulness. Our hope is not in ourselves. It is not like I hope for a pizza. I hope for a new car. Hope is our confidence in Christ; it is the promises of Christ.
Hope is an actual reality in Christ. 1 Timothy 1:1 says that Jesus is our hope. And it’s vitally important for those of us who are Christians to understand that our hope comes from that deep level of our relationship with Him.
Hope is assured, but experiencing hope is optional.
Hope is not dependent on us. Our hope is in Christ. It’s like a giant reservoir of hope promised to us. It’s never going to go away. It was there in the past, and it will be there in the future. So, ask yourself, Am I going to partake of the hope that Christ has given me or not?
How do you experience hope?
In this blog and the next, I have a total of 10 verses to use to illustrate how we can experience hope.
1. Celebrate Being Alive
For those who feel like they’re losing hope, you can encourage them to enjoy today. I heard a caller from Phoenix sharing her story on the Family Life Radio Kankelfrtiz and Friends morning show. And I am paraphrasing, but she said, I get up every morning. I start my day feeling depressed, feeling down, feeling alone. You guys laugh, share scripture and have fun. Please keep it coming because she wants to experience the fact that life matters.
Across the airwaves and in our content, we’re bringing people together. We are celebrating life. As long as we are breathing, we are to celebrate being alive.
Enjoy today!
“There is hope only for the living. As they say, ‘It’s better to be a live dog than a dead lion’” (Ecclesiastes 9:4 NLT)! In the wisdom of Scripture, Solomon is encouraging, “Celebrate your life.
2. Wait patiently and confidently.
Paul says we are to wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies He has promised us. We were given this hope when we were saved. If we already have something we do not need to hope for, but if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently (Romans 823-25 paraphrased).
For those who are losing hope, you can help them wait patiently and confidently.
Create a waiting room in your life.
We all hate waiting in rooms. Some people wait patiently. They are there, just holding their hands and waiting. Others are nervous.
Your waiting room could be a literal place. Maybe you have a chair that you go to when you are feeling frustrated, lost or a little hopeless to be able to read Scripture, pray and draw closer to Christ. It’s just your quiet place.
We all need a place that gives us a sense of calmness, patience and perspective in our lives.
3. Start with the end in mind
1 Corinthians, 15:19 says, “And if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world” (NLT). We live in a world that tries to find hope until they died because there were people in this time, as there are today, that believe when we die, the body and everything disappears.
But we know that our hope is in Christ. On that day when we leave earth, we are immediately in His presence (See 2 Corinthians 5:8).
You can experience home when you start with the end in mind.
Keep your eyes on the prize.
When we focus on the problem, we lose perspective. Donna likes clean windows at home. And I said, “Donna, we don’t have to hire anyone. I can take care of the windows.” But, I never do it quite right. I will be outside, cleaning the window, and I see her walk by. And then she comes over and points out a little smudge on the window. I believe it’s on the inside; and she’s convinced it’s on the outside.
We lose perspective because we spend so much time saying, “It’s on your side,” when the goal is a clean window.
Jesus was with His disciples shortly before He was to go to the cross. They spent three and a half years with him, seeing His miracles, hearing the truth, knowing everything that was going on and suddenly, in the upper room, they exclaim, with probably some fear – What? You are going to be leaving us?
Jesus says to his disciples, “Do not let your heart be troubled” (NIV). See, they are they are focused on the problem. The problem is Jesus is going to the cross. They are missing the point. He is promising them He will come back (John 14:3).
It is so easy for us to focus on the feelings of loss, loneliness or whatever it is, that we lose the big perspective. Jesus says to His disciples – don’t do that! “I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (John 14:2-3 NIV). Jesus is giving them that hope of the future.
The hope that you can have in Christ is a powerful thing.
4. Hope against hope.
That little phrase “Hope against hope” was first said back in the 1800s by a person who had been reading Romans 4:18. “Even when there was no reason for hope, Abraham kept hoping—believing that he would become the father of many nations” (NLT).
Think about if you were Abraham for a moment. You are this old man; your wife is old too, and God saying you are to be the father of many nations. Your hope has been deferred a long time, and you’re thinking, Wait a minute! That is hope against hope.
Look for a miracle.
Have you ever reached a place where you said, “God, if you don’t do something, there is nothing anyone else is going to do. I have done everything I can.”
We’ve got to trust God for a miracle. We believe in miracles. Perhaps you’ve even seen Him do them in your own life.
God is still in the business of miracles. He is still touching people’s lives, changing marriages, healing people. We do not always understand it, but the reality is that He loves you.
So those are four ways to experience hope. We will look at the other six ways in the next blog, How to Experience Hope Part 2.
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